The Nahuas After the Conquest: A Social and Cultural History of the Indians of Central Mexico, Sixteenth Through Eighteenth Centuries

by James Lockhart

A monumental achievement of scholarship, this volume on the Nahua Indians of Central Mexico (often called Aztecs) constitutes our best understanding of any New World indigenous society in the period following European contact. Simply put, the purpose of this book is to throw light on the history of Nahua society and culture through the use of records in Nahuatl, concentrating on the time when the bulk of the extant documents were written, between about 1540-50 and the late eighteenth century. At the same time, the earliest records are full of implications for the very first years after contact, and ultimately for the preconquest epoch as well, both of which are touched on here in ways that are more than introductory or ancillary.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Latin American History, Native American History, Historical

673 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Academic and historian specialising in colonial Latin America and Nahuatl sources

Reviews

[Charles Nicholas Saenz · Rating 5 out of 5]

A rough and dated portrayal of the Spanish conquest would tend to emphasize all that changed in Central Mexico with the arrival of the early conquistadors, perhaps extending so far as to cite a rag-tag band of European adventurers with sole credit for the fall of Tenochtitlán. Indeed, the fact that more recent historical interpretations of the Spanish conquest and subsequent postconquest period stress forms of continuity with the preconquest period relies heavily on the work of James Lockhart and fellow practicants of the so-called New Philology. Lockhart’s The Nahuas After the Conquest provides a panoptic overview of the social and cultural life of Mesoamerica from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. Drawing from a corpus of Nahuatl language source materials as varied as legal documents and ephemeral forms of artistic expression, Lockhart pieces together the world of New Spain’s indigenous inhabitants based on the internal consistency of both Nahua accounts and those produced by Spaniards. His findings uncover a wealth of understanding concerning not only the extent of New Spain’s similarity with the preceding Mexica regime, but also the means by which the Nahuas managed to maintain their traditional ways of life.

Lockhart’s examination uncovers a society for which only a few modern referents remain. Nahua society exhibited a sort of cellular-modular organization visible in the makeup of territorial entities known as altepetl units. This tendency, however, extended to practices as varied as religion and architecture, and appeared in such intellectual capacities as the inability to discern simple polarities. In contrast to such long-term trends, Lockhart does provide a general three stage schematic so as to identify a process of postconquest evolution. Though theorized from written sources, this process adheres in impressive fashion to a number of economic and demographic fluctuations supported by other scholarship.

For all of its many advantages, Lockhart’s approach does raise concern. His work relies heavily on the extent of surviving documents from the postconquest period, most of which have been separated by generations of collectors or lost entirely. Authorship also proves problematic, many Nahua notaries having interacted extensively with the Spanish. In addition, there remains a postmodern concern with the quality of modern attempts to interpret the words of persons that lived and wrote in a time now long since gone. To be fair, these appear to be a risks of which Lockhart is largely aware; the apparent gain and obvious restrictions imposed by available evidence seeming to displace the greatest worries. In all truth, given the option of equally flawed methodological alternatives, the New Philology offers an incisive analysis of a people and a period for which very little concrete information remains.

[Dr. Phoenix · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is not for the faint of heart. Lockhart, has an near insider grasp of early Nahuatl language and culture. He must eat breath and sleep the culture to have such an in-depth knowledge. This is primarily a reference work showcasing the continuity or Aztec culture from the pre to post conquest period. And while some concessions are made to conquest influence Lockhart emphasizes the strong character and independent nature of Nahuatl society itself. This monumental work covers various aspects of social and religious development and the associated linguistic correlations. Language and applied linguistics take pride of place in this work. Again this is serious hefty reading, particularly to the non initiated and it might be best to bone up with some lighter more easily digestible material prior to attacking such an erudite volume.

[Daniel Morgan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is THE book about Central Mexico in the Spanish Empire. In particular, 3 characteristics make this book stand out.

1) Organization. This book is organized into 10 chapters, which can both stand alone (if for some reason you are interested in only one section) but which also flow in a logical progression. Chapter 1 is the introduction giving the scope and sequence - the author is focusing specifically on Nahuas (not other groups) in Central Mexico (not other regions, in which they were certainly abundant), and is primarily focusing on how they saw themselves and their own world, rather than their relationship to outsiders. Chapters 2 - 5 focus on social and material culture - Alteptl, Household, Social Differentiation, and Land, proceeding from the broad and foundational to the mundane. Chapters 6 - 9 focus above all on texts, - religion, language, writing, and genre. Finally, Chapter 10 organizes all of these categories and changes into 3 broad time periods and provides demographic and labor explanations for how these are all connected.

2) Indigenous Worldview. The author’s stated purpose is to examine the world of the Nahuas of Central Mexico through their eyes and how they saw it. A major theme of the book is called “Double Mistaken Identity”, which is when Nahuas and Spanish would interpret the same referent in different ways, while also imagining that the other party had the same interpretation. What this means is that the author does not identify the Nahua altepetl with the Spanish city, the Nahua tlatoani with the Spanish king, the Nahua calli with the Spanish house, but instead explores the explicit and implicit differences between them. One of the reasons why the Spanish colonists were drawn to Mexico specifically (and one of the reasons why Central Mexico was relatively peaceful during the whole colonial period) is that the Spanish and the Nahuas shared many approximately similar cultural features. The author is careful to highlight the often subtle real and ideological differences in the Nahua worldview, and how this affected their lives and cultures.

3) Texts. To my recollection, the author did not directly quote a single Spanish text in the entire book. They were one of the first scholars to seriously focus on indigenous-language texts of the colonial period, especially the mundane ones, in search of evidence, data, and trends for how their world was evolving. The author was apparently the PhD mentor for Matthew Restall; after reading this book on the Nahuas, I can see how Restall became developed his analytical skills with thousands of Yucatec Maya texts. Returning to this book, what I love is that the author draws on literally hundreds of separate Nahuatl texts to explore how the Nahuas viewed themselves, their place in the world, their past, and how all of these views developed, changed, or contradicted with each other. Not only does this highlight the often-ignored indigenous literature, but it fleshes it out as a REAL literary tradition, with set legal spiels and common tropes, with specific purposes and audiences, with diverse genres, with dialectical variants an accents, even with unique alphabetical features.

To conclude - this is the strongest book I ever read about the Nahuas, and was also one of the first in a new scholarly project to seriously explore the indigenous texts of Latin America. If any of that sounds cool to you, read it.

[Valentín Serrano García · Rating 4 out of 5]

Estudio académico y positivista, muy concienzudo y, en general, destinado a un público universitario o investigador. Esto último ocasiona que la lectura sea lenta debido a un estilo un tanto grisáceo y normativo (algo que no supone, en este caso, una característica negativa per se), alejado por lo tanto de cualquier ánimo divulgativo. En suma, la falta de opúsculos que aborden este tipo de temáticas ocasionan que este libro sea una joya para el universitario, pese a que harían falta publicaciones similares con un estilo más divulgativo (que no superfluo)

La originalidad de Lockhart radica en que decidió acudir únicamente a los textos redactados en nahualt (debe recordarse que varios dialécticos nahualts siguen, todavía hoy, hablándose en México) lo que le permitió acceder a una comprensión de la vida, sociedad y religiosidad que difícilmente había sido anotada previamente. Ahora bien, una vez asumida la lección magistral de Lockhart, haría falta una ulterior profundización y síntesis en los aspectos mentales, filosóficos e históricos que más interesarían a un público amplio.

[Elizabeth Vilchis · Rating 4 out of 5]

What an excellent investigation into the aftermath of the conquest. Lockhart offers so many critical points for consideration in the text.

[AskHistorians]

Huge study of the Nahua (Aztecs) after the conquest.