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Ethnohistory 47.3-4 (2000) 811-813



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Book Review

The Conquest of the Last Maya Kingdom


The Conquest of the Last Maya Kingdom. By Grant D. Jones. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998. xxvii + 568 pp., acknowledgments, introduction, maps, tables, glossary, bibliography, index. $55.00 cloth.)

This is the second of two volumes written by Grant D. Jones on the Itzá Maya, who remained unconquered by the Spaniards until the end of the seventeenth century. His first book, Maya Resistance to Spanish Rule: Time and History on a Colonial Frontier (1989), carried the story from the 1540s to the 1680s. This one covers the final years of Mayan independence, the conquest of 1697, and the first decade of the eighteenth century.

Jones combines Spanish sources with his knowledge of Mayan culture to present a broad view of his subject. To be sure, the documentation is overwhelmingly in Spanish, for the Maya did not keep written records. [End Page 811] Nevertheless, without an understanding of the Maya as a culture, the written record would have added little to historical knowledge. Indeed, shortly after the conquest Juan de Villagutierre Soto-Mayor, a Spaniard who had never even been in Yucatán, wrote a history of the conquest based on the very same sources that Jones uses; this was published in English translation in 1983. Jones’s book is different not simply because it is written three centuries later; it is also a very different rendering of the “facts” made possible by the author’s knowledge of the Mayan language and culture.

The major contribution that Jones makes is in what might be termed political ethnology. Contemporary Spaniards had a great deal of difficulty in understanding the nature of the Itzá state, for they naturally tried to fit facts into their own cultural framework. Jones demonstrates the existence of an Itzá confederacy headed by a “king” whose children did not inherit his position and whose power was restricted and shared with a first cousin. Succession depended on both maternal and paternal ancestry.

Particularly fascinating in the history of the Itzá is the importance of time. This was perceived as cyclical in nature, and therefore those with the proper knowledge could see the past as the future. Cyclical time meant that periodically the conquest of the Itzá became a domestic political issue: while no one doubted that there would eventually be a conquest, there was conflict over when—or better stated, at the beginning of which cycle—that would take place. Itzá rulers managed to delay what for them was the inevitable for a century and a half, but when the ruler of the 1690s concluded that the time of conquest was at hand, and therefore that the Maya should submit peacefully, he faced rebellion by his own people.

Because this book is primarily about politics, readers who seek to learn a great deal about Mayan culture will be somewhat disappointed, for The Conquest of the Last Maya Kingdom is almost entirely a narrative political history of the interaction between two different peoples. It is very good at what it seeks to do, however, and makes a significant contribution to our understanding of Mayan history. My criticisms are mostly at the level of quibbles, with one exception. Jones argues for an Itzá population in the 1690s of about sixty thousand. Since very few data are available, his guess is as good as mine. However, Jones’s estimate would mean a population about half that of northern Yucatán. I find that hard to believe, given the evidence for the considerable population density in the north and the lack thereof, as well as lots of wide open space, in the Petén.

As for quibbles, I found Jones’s spelling of Mayan names and place names (employing the system used in Guatemala) to be annoying, because it effectively renames practically everything in Yucatán. It is also confusing (Sahcabchén becomes Sajk’abch’en, Couoh becomes Kowoj, etc.). Since [End Page 812] practically all of the documentation originated in Yucatán, Jones has to rename an awful lot...

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