Learn how three Afro-Europeans became that most Spanish of individual types: the conquistador.  In this second session of the series Black Lives in European History, we’ll see how Juan Garrido in Mexico, Juan García in Peru and Juan Valiente in Chile gained status and contributed to the spread of European culture in the Americas.  We’ll continue our exploration of different types of documentation, such as Garrido’s extraordinary Probanza sent to Charles I of Spain, and our discussion of themes introduced in the first session on Black Lives in 16-18th century Iberia: race, identity, slavery and social mobility.  Building on our first session, we’ll also examine how the Reconquista of Spain influenced the actions of these black conquistadors, and we’ll briefly address why this topic is still so divisive in Spain today.

Here are some sources you might want to check, and which I’ve used for this session. I hope you’ll use them to continue your own explorations and discussions of Black Lives in European History.

Bibliography & Suggestions for further reading

Bishko, Charles Julian, The Spanish and Portuguese Reconquest, 1095–1492 in A History of the Crusades, vol.3: The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, edited by Harry W. Hazard.  Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1975. 

García-Sanjuán, Alejandro.  “Rejecting al-Andalus, exalting the Reconquista: historical memory in contemporary Spain.” Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies, volume 10, 2018.

Himmerich y Valencia, Robert. "The 1536 Siege of Cuzco: An Analysis of Inca and Spanish Warfare." Colonial Latin American Historical Review 7, 4 (1998): 387. [ Ссылка ]

Kamen, Henry.  Imagining Spain: Historical Myth and National Identity. 
New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008.

Lockhardt, James. The Men of Cajamarca, A Social and Biographical Study of the First Conquerors of Peru. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1972

Lomax, Derek William: The Reconquest of Spain. London: Longman, 1978.

Menocal, María Rosa.  The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain. New York: Back Bay Books, 2002.

Nicolle, David and Angus McBride. El Cid and the Reconquista 1050–1492 (Men-At-Arms, No 200).  Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 1988.

O´Callaghan, Joseph F.  Reconquest and crusade in Medieval Spain.  Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002.

O'Callaghan, Joseph F. The Last Crusade in the West: Castile and the Conquest of Granada. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014.

Restall, Matthew “Black Conquistadors: Armed Africans in Early Spanish America,” The Americas 57:2 October 2000, 171-205.

Wheat, David Atlantic Africa and the Spanish Caribbean, 1570-1640. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016.

On the Right & the Reconquest

“Vox reinvents history to claim ‘Reconquista’ of Spain,” November 17, 2019 [ Ссылка ]

“There was no Reconquest. No military campaign lasts eight centuries” El País, February 28, 2020.

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