The Conquest That Never Was

The Conquest That Never Was uncovers one of the most ambitious but disastrous campaigns of the early colonial period. Pedro de Alvarado—best known as Cortés’s lieutenant in Mexico and later as the conqueror of Guatemala—sought to extend his fame and fortune by seizing Quito in the northern Inca Empire. Instead, his massive fleet and army met ruin in the high Andes, leaving Alvarado humiliated and forcing him to transfer his forces to rival conquistadors.

This volume traces Alvarado’s career after Guatemala, focusing on the ill-fated expedition of 1534 as well as his unrealized license to conquer the Spice Islands, his involvement in the Spanish conquest of Ecuador, and his eventual death in battle in Mexico. Drawing on transatlantic correspondence, legal testimony, Spanish chronicles, and a Maya-authored history, Lovell reconstructs both the trajectory of Alvarado’s campaigns and the mind of a conquistador driven by greed and glory. Vivid descriptions carry readers from Guatemala’s jungles to the snowbound passes of the Andes, revealing how fragile imperial ambitions could be in practice.

By documenting Alvarado’s failed bid to join Pizarro in Peru, The Conquest That Never Was complicates the triumphalist narrative of Spanish expansion. It illuminates the contradictions, rivalries, and violence at the heart of the colonial project, while foregrounding Indigenous labor and suffering in conquest. Designed for upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses, the book also offers scholars of Latin American history, historical geography, and the Andes a gripping case study of imperial aspiration and collapse.

“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 Potosí: 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

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 Cuchumatán Highlands, 1500–1821, and Strike Fear in the Land: Pedro de Alvarado and the Conquest of Guatemala, 1520–1541.

History

           Early Modern

           Latin American

Latin American Studies

           History

Medieval and Early Modern Studies

           Early Modern History