Camilla Townsend è specializzata nelle intricate relazioni tra i popoli indigeni e gli europei in tutte le Americhe. La sua opera approfondisce le complesse interazioni che hanno plasmato la storia del continente. Esplora gli scambi culturali, i conflitti e le continue rinegoziazioni di identità all'interno di questo periodo dinamico. Il suo lavoro illumina prospettive spesso emarginate nei resoconti storici tradizionali.
This study of colonial Mexico's Nahuatl-language annals brings the xiuhpohualli tradition to life. Author Camilla Townsend has deduced the authorship of most of the texts and thus is able to place the works in their rightful contexts and render the stories more accessible to modern ears than they have been before.
Fifth Sun offers a comprehensive history of the Aztecs, spanning the period before conquest to a century after the conquest, based on rarely-used Nahuatl- language sources written by the indigenous people.
Race and Economic Culture in Early Republican North and South America
Focusing on the economic divergence between the United States and Latin America in the nineteenth century, this study by Camilla Townsend challenges the notion that the Protestant work ethic was the key to American success. Instead, it posits that differing attitudes towards workers, rooted in colonial practices, played a crucial role in shaping economic outcomes. Townsend's innovative analysis offers a fresh perspective on the historical factors influencing development in these regions.
Camilla Townsend's stunning book differs from all previous biographies of Pocahontas in capturing how similar seventeenth-century Native Americans were--in the way they saw, understood, and struggled to control their world--not only to the invading English but to ourselves. Neither naïve nor innocent, Indians like Pocahontas and her father, the powerful king Powhatan, confronted the vast might of the English with sophistication, diplomacy, and violence. Indeed, Pocahontas's life is a testament to the subtle intelligence that Native Americans, always aware of their material disadvantages, brought against the military power of the colonizing English. Resistance, espionage, collaboration, deception: Pocahontas's life is shown as a road map to Native American strategies of defiance exercised in the face of overwhelming odds and in the hope for a semblance of independence worth the name.
This set includes Native America: A History (ISBN 978-1-4051-6057-5) and American Indian History: A Documentary Reader (ISBN 978-1-4051-5908-1).
The essential guide to the world of Aztec mythology, based on Nahuatl-language sources that challenge the colonial history passed down to us by the Spanish. How did the jaguar get his spots? What happened to the four suns that came before our own? Where was Aztlan, mythical homeland of the Aztecs? For decades, the popular image of the Mexica people - better known today as the Aztecs - has been defined by the Spaniards who conquered them. Their salacious stories of pet snakes, human sacrifice and towering skull racks have masked a complex world of religious belief. To reveal the rich mythic tapestry of the Aztecs, Camilla Townsend returns to the original tales, told at the fireside by generations of Indigenous Nahuatl-speakers. Through their voices we learn the contested histories of the Mexica and their neighbours in the Valley of Mexico - the foundations of great cities, the making and breaking of political alliances, the meddling of sometimes bloodthirsty gods - and understand more clearly how they saw their world and their place in it. The divine principle of Ipalnemoani connected humans with all of nature and spiritual beliefs were woven through the fabric of Aztec life, from the sacred ministrations of the ticitl, midwives whose rituals saw women through childbirth, to the inevitable passage to Mictlan, 'our place of disappearing together' - the land of the dead.
Examines a rare set of family documents from central Mexico, originally written in Nahuatl, from the seventeenth to the early nineteenth century. Illustrates a complex indigenous world, with the challenges and opportunities of life within the Spanish colonial system.
Eine neue Geschichte der Azteken
Im November 1519 begegnen sich Hernando Cortés und der Aztekenherrscher Moctezuma, ein Ereignis, das oft aus spanischer Sicht erzählt wurde. Camilla Townsend präsentiert in ihrem preisgekrönten Werk die vielschichtige Geschichte der Azteken aus deren eigener Perspektive. Während wir gelernt haben, dass Schrift den Europäern gehörte, nutzten die Azteken nach der Ankunft der Spanier das lateinische Alphabet, um ihre Geschichte in Nahuatl festzuhalten. Townsend korrigiert unsere Vorstellungen von der aztekischen Kultur erheblich und entlarvt die europäischen Stereotypen einer blutrünstigen Gesellschaft. Sie zeigt ein menschlicheres Bild der Indigenen, die sich selbst Mexica nannten, und verdeutlicht, dass die Eroberung durch die Spanier weder eine Apokalypse noch der Ursprung der Mexikaner war. Das Volk der Mexica kapitulierte nicht einfach, sondern passte seine politischen Loyalitäten an, übernahm neue Technologien und hielt durch. Dieses glänzend erzählte Buch erkundet die Erfahrungen eines einst mächtigen Volkes, das mit dem Trauma der Eroberung konfrontiert war und Wege fand, zu überleben. Townsend bietet eine neue Sichtweise auf die Azteken und korrigiert jahrhundertealte europäische Stereotype. Ausgezeichnet mit dem Cundill History Prize, dem bestdotierten Sachbuchpreis weltweit.
