About

EDUCATION

Matthew Restall was born in London, England, in 1964. He grew up in Spain, Venezuela, and East Asia, but was schooled in England, primarily at Wellington College, before going on to receive a BA degree in Modern History from Oxford University in 1986. He earned a PhD in Latin American History from UCLA in 1992, studying under James Lockhart, and has since held teaching positions at various universities in the United States.

PUBLICATION

Restall has published over twenty books and eighty essays and articles since 1995. His best-known book is Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest (2003), which has also been published in Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian.

His other books include The Maya World: Yucatec Culture and Society, 1550-1850 (1997), Maya Conquistador (1998), Invading Guatemala (with Florine Asselbergs, 2007), 2012 and the End of the World: The Western Roots of the Maya Apocalypse (with Amara Solari, 2011), Latin America in Colonial Times (with Kris Lane, 2011), and The Conquistadors (with Felipe Fernández-Armesto, 2012). His book The Black Middle: Africans, Mayas, and Spaniards in Colonial Yucatan won the Conference on Latin American History’s 2009 prize for best book on Mexican history; it was published in Spanish in 2020.

ACCOLADES

Restall is a member of the New Philology School of Colonial Mexican History, and a founder of a related school, the New Conquest History. He has won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, the John Carter Brown Library, the Library of Congress, and the Capitol Historical Society. He was President of the American Society for Ethnohistory (2017-18) and Greenleaf Distinguished Professor of Latin American Studies at Tulane University (2020). He is editor of book series for Cambridge and Penn State university presses, and of the Hispanic American Historical Review.

AWARDS

  • Richard Greenleaf Distinguished Chair in Latin American Studies, Tulane University, 2020
  • When Montezuma Met Cortés: The True Story of the Meeting that Changed History winner of the Conference on Latin American History Howard F. Cline Memorial Prize for Best Book on Indigenous History in 2018-19
  • When Montezuma Met Cortés Hudson News National Book of the Month (August 2018)
  • President, American Society for Ethnohistory, 2017-18
  • National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships, 2023-24, 2001-02, and 1997-98
  • Kislak Fellowship, Kluge Center, Library of Congress, 2017
  • Capitol Fellowship, US Capitol Historical Society, 2017
  • Leverhulme Visiting Professorship, School for Advanced Study, University of London, 2017-18
  • Membership (Fellowship), Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, 2013-14
  • Saunders Fellowship, John Carter Brown Library, Brown University, 2013-14
  • The Black Middle: Africans, Mayas, and Spaniards in Colonial Yucatan winner of the Conference on Latin American History Prize for Best Book on Mexican History in 2009
  • Faculty Scholar Award for Outstanding Achievement, Penn State, 2007
  • John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, 2003-04
  • Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest one of The Economist twelve Best History Books of 2003

UPCOMING

Restall is currently working on two books in the history of popular music, and one related to the history of the Atlantic world. 

  • Ghosts: Journeys to Post-Pop, will be published by Sonicbond UK, in the summer of 2024.
  • On Elton: An Opinionated Guide will be published by Oxford University Press in 2025.  
  • Christopher Columbus, to be published by W.W. Norton in the autumn of 2025.