Alain Guillot

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304 Camilla Townsend: A New History of the Aztecs

About Camilla Townsend

Camilla Townsend is a distinguished professor of history at Rutgers University with a specialty in Early Native American and Latin American History; Early America.

Camilla Townsend

Camilla Townsend is interested in indigenous peoples—and in relations between natives and newcomers—throughout the Americas. Her publications have spanned Mexico, the Andean Region, and the Chesapeake.

Camilla Townsend is deeply immersed in the study of Nahuatl, the Aztec language, and my most intense focus is now on the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century writings left by Native American historians. Through the historical annals they produced, we catch a glimpse of indigenous conceptualizations of history as they existed at first contact.

Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs

Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs by Camilla Townsend

In November 1519, Hernando Cortes walked along a causeway leading to the capital of the Aztec kingdom and came face to face with Moctezuma. That story–and the story of what happened afterward–has been told many times, but always following the narrative offered by the Spaniards.

After all, we have been taught, it was the Europeans who held the pens. But the Native Americans were intrigued by the Roman alphabet and, unbeknownst to the newcomers, they used it to write detailed histories in their own language of Nahuatl. Until recently, these sources remained obscure, only partially
translated, and rarely consulted by scholars.

For the first time, in Fifth Sun, the history of the Aztecs is offered in all its complexity based solely on the texts written by the indigenous people themselves. Camilla Townsend presents an accessible and humanized depiction of these native Mexicans, rather than seeing them as the exotic, bloody
figures of European stereotypes.

The conquest, in this work, is neither an apocalyptic moment nor an origin story launching Mexicans into existence. The Mexica people had a history of their own long before the Europeans arrived and did not simply capitulate to Spanish culture and colonization. Instead, they realigned their political allegiances, accommodated new obligations, adopted new technologies, and endured.

This engaging revisionist history of the Aztecs, told through their own words, explores the experience of a once-powerful people facing the trauma of conquest and finding ways to survive, offering an empathetic interpretation for experts and non-specialists alike.

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