La istoria de las Indias. y Conquista de Mexico

The arrival of the Europeans in America coincided with the revival of antique models of historiography, a tradition that influenced the way European scholars wrote about these lands previously unknown to them. Francisco López de Gómara (1511–1564) was a humanist priest with close ties to the conquistador Hernán Cortés. As one of the first historians of the Americas, he described the “discovery” of the New World as the greatest event in world history since the birth of Christ. He constructed his chronicle as a heroic tale, culminating in the achievements of Cortés, who is glorified as a contemporary peer of Alexander the Great. Despite the Eurocentric bias, the work contains important descriptions of the indigenous peoples of Mexico. The JCB is one of the richest collections for early histories of the Americas, and holds many editions and translations of López de Gómara and other historians such as Pietro Martyre d’Anghiera and Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés.