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Reprint of New and Revised edition, (copyright 1873.) Hard cover, 8vo, in a contemporary fine unsigned binding, in three-quarter morocco over marble paper-covered boards, the spine with five raised bands gilt with decorations and titles in second and fourth compartments, marbled text block edges, matching endpapers, each with the engraved bookplate of a Massachusetts collector, and tissue-guarded frontispieces as below. Three volume set: (v.1) engraved frontis. of Hernando Cortés, xxxiv, 477pp. (v.2) Engraved frontis. of Montezuma II, xix, [one two-page map], 461pp. (v.3) Engraved frontis. Hernán Cortés, xviii, 522pp. Includes index and appendices of primary documents. CONDITION: Near Fine, with minor shelf wear to tips. Internal contents and illustrations are clean, binding is tight. Faint offset seen opposite frontispieces. Unwritten in. ** The three volumes are organized into seven books outlining the entire scope of Mexican history from pre-history to the beginning of the nineteenth century, utilising both colonial archival sources from Spain and Mexican documents. Primary source materials include works of 17th cent. Spanish Franciscan Fray Juan de Torquemada, the 18th century Spanish historian Don Juan Baptista Muñoz, Dominican priest and missionary Bartolomé de Las Casas, and early 19th cent. Prussian explorer, the naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, among many others in this heavily footnoted edition. Volume I shows how geography influenced in the development of the pre-Columbian Aztec and Toltec civilizations, with detail on government, judicial, military and religious beliefs, and the cultural golden age of the Tezcucans. A review of the first two streams of Spanish exploration to the Americas narrates the early 16th cent. Spanish colonization of Hispaniola, Cuba and "New Spain" by Columbus, Balboa, to Velazquez, de Cordova, Grijalva, and Alvarado. The consequences of exploitation of indigenous people as slaves in forced labor in both Mexican and Spanish contexts (the repartimiento system of forced labor,) is shown to have brought wealth and social hierarchy to the conquistadores, elevating the wealth and career of Hernando Cortés and in the process making him a thorn in the side of his one-time mentor, Don Diego Velásquez [de Cuéllar]. Prescott describes the parallel careers of Cortés and Montezuma II making for particularly dramatic reading of this popular work by one of the United States's preeminent historians of the nineteenth century. This "new and revised edition" contains extensive footnotes by editor John Foster Kirk (1824-1904), historian, journalist and secretary to the work's blind author, William Prescott. WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT, (1796-1859) has been recognized for" his meticulous use of archival documents and rare books as original sources, [and] he is often called America's first scientific historian." (LOC). Along with a staff of readers, including his wife Susan Amory Prescott, WHP produced a series of titles spanning Europe and the New World. Please see our related listing for Prescott's History of Charles V, in matching binding, our number 9733.
Ref: LATAM 9841
$275.00