Bernal Diaz del Castillo: The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, 1517-1521

Ross, E. Denison & Eileen Power, Editors, Bernal Diaz del Castillo: The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, 1517-1521, London: George Routledge & Sons, Ltd., 1928.

Previewed online HERE.

Versions available online HERE and HERE.

A review in Foreign Affairs.

Bernal Díaz del Castillo (1492 to 1496, birth date is uncertain – 1584)[1] was a Spanish conquistador, who did not hold a leadership position in the conquest of Mexico, but participated as a soldier of fortune with Hernán Cortés. As an experienced soldier of fortune, he had already participated in expeditions to Tierra Firme, Cuba, and to Yucatán before joining Cortés. In his later years he was an encomendero and governor in Guatemala where he wrote his memoirs called "The True History of the Conquest of New Spain". He began his account of the conquest almost thirty years after the events and later revised and expanded it in response to the biography published by Cortes's chaplain Francisco López de Gómara, which he considered to be largely inaccurate in that it did not give due recognition to the efforts and sacrifices of others in the Spanish expedition.

About one of the Editors:

Eileen Edna LePoer Power (9 January 1889 – 8 August 1940) was a British economic historian and medievalist.
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Power was Director of Studies in History at Girton College (1913–21), Lecturer in Political Science at the London School of Economics (1921–24), and Reader of the University of London (1924–31). In 1931 she became Professor of Economic History at the London School of Economics (LSE), where she remained until 1938 when she became Professor of Economic History at Cambridge University. Her most famous book, Medieval People, was published in 1924. In 1927 Power founded the Economic History Review.