The following links are designed to help you discover more about Mexico and its people. If you have any suggestions on useful and interesting resources for us to add to the list, please feel free to email chairman@britishmexicansociety.org
History Resources
By Bernal Diaz Del Castillo
Vivid, powerful and absorbing, this is a first-person account of one of the most startling military episodes in history: the overthrow of Montezuma’s doomed Aztec Empire by the ruthless Hernan Cortes and his band of adventurers.
Bernal Díaz del Castillo, himself a soldier under Cortes, presents a fascinatingly detailed description of the Spanish landing in Mexico in 1520 and their amazement at the city, the exploitation of the natives for gold and other treasures, the expulsion and flight of the Spaniards, their regrouping and eventual capture of the Aztec capital.
Podcast Series: The Conquest of New Spain
By Daniele Bolelli
Author and university professor Daniele Bolelli has created a fascinating, detailed and absorbing four-part podcast series that outlines how two highly militaristic peoples fuelled by religious ideologies requiring bloodshed clashed with one another. This is the tale of what happened when a band of Spaniards run into the Mexica (Aztec) empire. By the time the dust settles out of 25 million indigenous inhabitants of Mexica, little over a million will be left standing.
By Frank McLynn
The Mexican Revolution (1910-19) was the first seismic social convulsion of the twentieth century, superseded in historical importance only by the Russian and Chinese revolutions. Tierra y Libertad (Land and Liberty) was the watchword of the revolutionaries who fought a succession of autocrats in Mexico City. But the revolution was fired by a confusing multiplicity of issues: local, national, international, cultural, racial and economic. The two greatest rebel leaders were Francisco (Pancho) Villa and Emiliano Zapata, and Frank McLynn here tells the story of the Revolution through a dual biography of these legendary heroes.
Conquest of Mexico by Hugh Thomas
Thomas’ account of the collapse of Montezuma’s great Aztec empire under the onslaughts of Cortes’ conquistadors is one of the great historical works of our times. A thrilling and sweeping narrative, it also bristles with moral and political issues.
A personal selection of Books on Mexican History
From the Olmecs to the Mexican war with the United States, a personal selection from historian Christopher Minster.