Conquest and Reclamation in the Transatlantic Imagination

This book examines the imperial spectacles and startling reversals of fortune related in William H. Prescott's History of the Conquest of Mexico (1843) and History of the Conquest of Peru (1847), and investigates how these accounts inspired fictional adaptations by George A. Henty, H. Rider Haggard, and George Griffith. The revision of history in the Amerindian adventure both entertained young transatlantic audiences and was a vehicle to attract tourism and investment in countries such as Mexico and Peru. Henty, Haggard, and Griffith, moreover, used their tales of adventure as a platform to impart British values to their readers. Such values compel the characters and narrators of the novels discussed to act as cultural mediators, to acquire indigenous languages and adopt native ways of being, and, in several of the romance adventures under consideration, to marry Mexican or Incan noblewomen. Part I, Conquest, examines George Hentys By Right of Conquest: Or, With Cortez in Mexico (1891), H. Rider Haggards Montezumas Daughter (1893), and George Griffiths Virgin of the Sun: A Tale of the Conquest of Peru (1898). Part II, Reclamation, argues that English re-writings of history work to eclipse the Spanish in Haggards Virgin the Sun (1922), Hentys Treasure of the Incas (1902) and Griffiths Romance of Golden Star (1897).