We left our story in 1518. Diego Velasquez de Cuellar is the governor of Cuba and de facto the most powerful man in Spain’s New World colonies, and he’s brought the business of conquest under his control. He’s set his sights on the Yucatan, a peninsula to the west of Cuba which, unbeknownst to him, is just the tip of iceberg. But Velazquez has a problem. He needs people who are capable, experienced, and wealthy to lead a series of expeditions he hopes will end with him at the head of a new phase of conquest and expansion. He also needs men who are loyal to him to stick to the plan. With one expedition ending in disaster and another underway, he goes against the advice of his closest lieutenants and picks Hernan Cortés to lead the third expedition, a decision he would soon regret. Meanwhile, in Tenochtitlan, Moctezuma learns of these mysterious strangers from beyond the the great ocean probing the eastern coast of Mexico, and he begins taking steps to engage them.

This is the first side bar episode, and the goal for these is exactly what the name suggests: to pull out of the main narrative so we can focus on one very important aspect of the story. For this first sidebar, we’re going to dig into the source material we have for the Conquest. In History, sources are everything, and they come in many forms. There are primary sources, of course, accounts of people who witnessed events. There’s also archeology, of which there has been an abundance in recent decades. And there’s the body of scholarship including complete historical narratives in English as old as 175 years and as recent as 2023. We’ll cover all the source materials that fall into each of these categories, including all the important books in publication today.

In Episode 5, we explore the rise of the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon as they emerge from the Reconquista as the most powerful political force in Europe. We'll explore how an Italian sailor based in Portugal devised a plan to sail west to Asia and corner the lucrative spice market, convinced Queen Isabella of Castile to fund and equip him with three ships to make the voyage, and how those events led to the birth of the Spanish empire in the Americas almost by accident. Lastly, we'll meet Hernan Cortéz, a notary from a minor noble family from Extremadura in western Castile, who arrives in the new Spanish Caribbean colonies in his early 20s and quickly makes a name for himself.