Matthew Restall

Biography:

I am a Colonial Latin American Historian with areas of specialization in Yucatan and Mexico, Guatemala and Belize, Maya history, the Spanish Conquest, and Africans in Spanish America. I have received NEH and Guggenheim Fellowships to study Mexico's indigenous and African past.  My fifty odd articles & essays and sixteen books published since 1995 include The Maya World (1997), Maya Conquistador (1998), and Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest (2003).  More recent books include two edited volumes, Beyond Black and Red and Black Mexico (2005 and 2009), and two co-authored volumes—Mesoamerican Voices (2005) and Invading Guatemala(2007), the latter published in Penn State Press’ Latin American Originals series. I edit this series and am co-editor of Ethnohistory journal. My last monograph, The Black Middle: Africans, Mayas, and Spaniards in Colonial Yucatan (2009), won the Conference on Latin American History prize for best book on Mexican history. I co-authored four books published in 2011 and 2012: 2012 and the End of the World: The Western Roots of the Maya Apocalypse (with Amara Solari);The Riddle of Latin America and Latin America in Colonial Times (both with Kris Lane); and The Conquistadors (with Felipe Fernández-Armesto).  I am currently writing a book on early Belize and am also the editor of Ethnohistory journal as well as the series editor for Latin American Originals.

Recent Publications:

The Conquistadors: A Very Short Introduction (with Felipe Fernández-Armesto). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.

Latin America in Colonial Times (with Kris Lane).  Cambridge: Cambridge: University Press, 2011.

2012 and the End of the World: The Western Roots of the Maya Apocalypse (with Amara Solari).  Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2011.

The Black Middle: Africans, Mayas, and Spaniards in Colonial Yucatan.  Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009.