Matthew Restall’s Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest certainly acknowledges the importance of germs and steel. However, Restall’s account reveals other crucial ingredients of Spanish conquest–the fact that both the Aztec and the Incas were relatively recent and loosely consolidated empires. A key factor was political alliance.
The European movement into the Caribbean and the Americas is crucial to understanding how Europe became the West, part of an intertwined geography of management and geography of imagination. This was an historical process, at every moment contingent, with uncertain outcome, but with nevertheless powerful effects.
The Spanish conquest was also crucial in forming a geography of imagination.