The Conquest That Never Was

W. George Lovell is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada; Professor of Geography at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario; and Visiting Professor in Latin American History at the Universidad Pablo de Olavide in Seville, Spain. Among his many publications are Death in the Snow: Pedro de Alvarado and the Illusive Conquest of Peru, Conquest and Survival in Colonial Guatemala: A Historical Geography of the Cuchumatan Highlands, 1500-1821, and (with Christopher H. Lutz and Wendy Kramer) Strike Fear in the Land: Pedro de Alvarado and the Conquest of Guatemala, 1520-1541.

"George Lovell's The Conquest That Never Was traces the rise and demise of a Spanish American tyrant, Pedro de Alvarado. Lovell brings this dramatic story of hubris and abuse of power to life in documents and without prejudice. We are allowed to play historian and make sense of seeming madness, rash choices, desperate competition. Readers will not soon forget the scenes depicted here in original materials and illustrated with excellent maps." -Kris Lane, author of Pandemic in Potosi: Fear, Loathing, and Public Piety in a Colonial Mining Metropolis "Pedro de Alvarado's military successes among the Nahuas and Mayas of Mesoamerica are well known, but his activity in Peru, full of missteps and failures, is rarely noted in historical narratives. Here, Lovell vividly and engagingly recounts the rather pathetic end to Alvarado's otherwise impressive career, and, in the process, highlights the intense intrahemispheric contact and exchange characteristic of Spanish and Indigenous pursuits in the early sixteenth century." -Bradley Benton, author of The Lords of Tetzcoco: The Transformation of Indigenous Rule in Postconquest Central Mexico