Letters from Mexico
Contributors: Anthony Pagden (Translator)
Edition: New Ed edition
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: September 1, 2001
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 640
ISBN-13: 9780300090949
Subjects: American history: c 1500 to c 1800; Biography: historical; Colonization & independence; Other prose: 16th to 18th centuries; c 1500 to c 1600; Mexico - History; History; History - General History; History: World; Mexico; Latin America - Mexico; Renaissance; History / Mexico
First sentence: MOST HIGH, MIGHTY AND EXCELLENT PRINCES, MOST CATHOLIC AND POWERFUL KINGS AND SOVEREIGNS: We have reason to believe that Your Royal Highnesses have been informed, by letters of Diego Velazquez, the admiral's lieutenant in the island of Fernandina (Cuba), of a new land that was discovered in these parts some two years ago more or less, and which was first called Cozumel and later Yucatan, without it being either the one or the other as Your Royal Highnesses shall see from our report.
Description: "Hernan Cortes's Cartas de Relacion, written over a seven-year period to Charles V of Spain, provide an extraordinary narrative account of the conquest of Mexico from the founding of the coastal town of Veracruz until Cortes's journey to Honduras in 1525.

Pagden's English translation has been prepared from a close examination of the earliest surviving manuscript and of the first printed editions, and he also provides a new introduction offering a bold and innovative interpretation of the nature of the conquest and Cortes's involvement in it. J. H. Elliott's introductory essay explains Cortes's conflicts with the Crown and with Diego Velazquez, the governor of Cuba."--BOOK JACKET.