马修·雷斯托尔

马修·雷斯托尔（英语：Matthew Restall，1964年3月17日—）是一位美国玛雅学家和民族史家，宾夕法尼亚州立大学拉丁美洲史和人类学教授，主要作品有入选牛津通识读本的《西班牙殖民者》（The Conquistadors，与费利佩·费尔南德斯-阿尔梅斯特合著）和《玛雅文明》（The Maya，与阿马拉·索拉里合著）、《西班牙征服的七个神话》（Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest）、《殖民时代的拉丁美洲》（Latin America in Colonial Times，与克里斯·莱恩合著）等。

Matthew B. Restall (born 1964) is a historian and author of over forty books. His work focuses on six areas of specialization: the Spanish Conquest era in America; Aztec (Mexica) and Maya history; the history of colonial Mesoamerica, primarily Yucatán but including Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize; the historical African diaspora in the Americas; the history of Christopher Columbus and what he calls Columbiana; and the history of popular music.

As a prominent ethnohistorian, he is a member of the New Philology school of colonial Mexican history and the founder of a related school, the New Conquest History. He is the Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Latin American History and Anthropology, and Director of Latin American Studies at the Pennsylvania State University. He is a former president of the American Society for Ethnohistory (2017–18), a former editor of the Ethnohistory journal (2007–17) and of The Hispanic American Historical Review (2017–22), and editor of the book series Latin American Originals, and co-editor of the Cambridge Latin American Studies book series.

Biography

Restall was born in a suburb of London, England, in 1964. He grew up in Copenhagen, Madrid, Caracas, Chicago, Tokyo, and Hong Kong, but was schooled in England from the age of eight, spending a decade in the English boarding school system (at Marsh Court in Hampshire and then at Wellington College), before going on to receive a BA degree, First Class with Honors, in Modern History from Oxford University in 1986. After a brief stint working in the art business in Los Angeles, he enrolled in the University of California, Los Angeles, earning an MA in 1989 and a PhD in 1992, both in Latin American History, studying under James Lockhart. After holding teaching positions in Texas and in Boston, he took up a tenured post at Penn State University in 1998.

In the last thirty years, Restall has published 24 books (41, counting revised and translated editions) and almost a hundred essays and articles. His books have been published in seven languages. Seven are available as audiobooks. His best-known books include Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest—listed as one of the twelve Best History Books of 2003 by The Economist, available in five languages, and published in an updated edition in 2021—and When Montezuma met Cortés: The True Story of the Meeting That Changed History (HarperCollins, 2018), which won the 2019 Conference on Latin American History's Howard F. Cline Memorial Prize for best book or article "judged to make the most significant contribution to the history of Indians in Latin America."

His other books include The Maya World: Yucatec Culture and Society, 1550-1850 (1997), Maya Conquistador (1998), Invading Guatemala (with Florine Asselbergs, 2007), Latin America in Colonial Times (with Kris Lane, 2011; 2nd edition, 2018), The Conquistadors (with Felipe Fernández-Armesto, 2012), and Return to Ixil: Maya Society in an Eighteenth-Century Yucatec Town (with Mark Christensen, 2019). 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. Restall has written three books with art historian Amara Solari: The Maya (2020, in Oxford’s Very Short Introductions series), The Maya Apocalypse and its Western Roots (2021), and The Friar and the Maya: Diego de Landa and the Account of the Things of Yucatan (with Solari as well as John F. Chuchiak and Traci Ardren, 2023), which also won the Conference on Latin American History prize for best book on Mexican history.