It is fascinating that a large percentage of modern Americans believe (taught in school or through Disney movies) that prior to the arrival of Europeans; native American tribes were peaceful to each other.
They often think that the land was inhabited by loving tribes that just wanted to be left alone to live in harmony with nature.
The truth is that barbarism was common as tribes routinely slaughtered each other in numerous wars. Slavery, rape and human sacrifice were here far before the White man arrived.
I am not saying that the conquerers from Europe didn't do some horrible things too; just that the narrative often taught in schools is inaccurate.
> It’s almost kind of more impressive that the Incan empire of maybe 10 million people got by on the barter system.
In _Debt_, Graeber argues that it is largely a myth that pre modern civilizations relied on barter, and instead used different systems for tracking debt between individuals and entities.
He says this of the Incas knotted strings in a footnote:
> I note in passing that a study of the Inca khipu system itself would itself be quite fascinating in this regard; the strings were used to record both obligations we would consider financial, and others we would consider ritual, since as in so many Eurasian languages, the words “debt” and “sin” were the same in Quechua as well
Quipu cord research is difficult, because their Rosetta Stone is a Gordian Knot.
If you enjoyed the article, consider listening to the Fall of civilisations podcast. Episode 12 spends 3 hours on the whole chilling saga.
Is this article typical of the analysis style of the podcast? Because it was awesome, direct without too many asides.
His style is quite unique, but not in an in your face kind of way.
He always starts with geographical context, and this thread is never lost through the study. The constraints and characteristics of geography are always respected as key inputs into the civilization.
He is also very narrative-driven, while staying within historical fact. This is probably the key strength of the podcast. I had read so much about Egypt, but until listening to the Egypt episode, I never "got it". All of the strengths have synergy as well. For example, in the Egypt episode, North and South isn't used. Instead, upriver and downriver (Nile) is used, reflecting how they saw the world. Parlaying from there, the experience of how it would have been to live in the world is constantly revisited. In the recent Ghengis Khan episode, we take a walk with him through one of his conquered towns before it was razed, exploring how he likely felt disdain for settled civilization and always had a strong connection to his nomad way of life. But these leaps aren't just hot air. It is used as a window to do some further exploration of his religious views that we can confirm through sources.
Lastly, the production value is quite nice. He has a community that really loves his content now. There are voice actors, and most important to me, there is a very well crafted background soundscape that pulls you in. For example, in the recent episode, you can hear the throat singing subtly swell up in the background When the war machine is about to activate, much like how in Full Metal Jacket, Kubrick switches the music to Vietnamese percussion once the groups leaves "their" territory. Very effective - sometimes gives me chills or can bring immense emotional responses, such as the sounds of wind blowing through the razed city of Carthage while listening to a voice actor read a source about a visit to the now abandoned ruins (drew a tear that one did. Didn't expect that" from a three-hour history podcast!)
I'd recommend checking out the podcast if those characteristics appeal to you. It's not purely" analytical, though. There is an inspired artistic element that wants to explore the human condition, and some sort of underlying thesis that states that exploring history is a window into this. If pure analysis is what you are looking for, there are probably books better suited to that.
Thank you!
Absolutely! And he has gone from strength to strength with each new episode. His pacing is perfect as he really takes his time but just barely touches on the intense brutality that was certainly epidemic in the times. He thus avoids the salacious details like, for example, Dan Carlin (who does his research well, but is less my taste now after discovering FoC). Just outstanding.
The real next-level excellence is that he is really tracing the history of technology along the way, going into significant detail about how the conquerors developed and utilized new tech to effect their victories.
From horses to the Mongols' bows to gunpowder, it is really the history of civilization and how the uncivilized were the energy that pushed change to the next level-up. I first learned of these sorts of systems in Gleick's "Chaos" (IIRC), where it looks like nothing is advancing, but, in reality, a kindof pressure is building to the point where a drastic leap is made suddenly and unexpectedly.
Did the Incas not fish much? Seems like they would have done well with Retarius with net and spear.
If you had 100000 people and had to defeat 100 well armed soldiers, what would you do? Well, wait for them to get tired, ideally. Try to restrict their movement. Take away or disable their weapons. Withdraw to advantageous terrain. Heavier projectiles. Poison darts. Harassment. Long ropes and nets that you try to snag them in. Wait until they are mostly sleep and attack at night. Invite them to dinner and poison their food, or jump them then. Tough to coordinate this with 100000 people, I think that's the main issue.
I don't know if it boils down to military power or absolute capability. There's always a lot of soft power that goes hand in hand with hard power.
"Wait until they are mostly sleep and attack at night."
The Incas apparently did not fight at night.
And why they did not managed to kill the horses, were likely because they were too afraid of them and they were not used to killing large animals as none existed there.
Otherwise all it takes to stop a knight on a horse is to kill the horse. Or just hurt its legs enough, or make it stumble.
European militaries had to train the fear of horses out of their infantry. The normal human reaction to being swarmed by galloping cavalry is to flee. Keeping formation under such conditions is hard.
What would help the Incas would be pikes. Lots of pikes. Hard to know why they didn't copy them from the Spaniards.
> The normal human reaction to being swarmed by galloping cavalry is to flee
Yes, and that's why crowd control with mounted police is still very effective today.
I thought pikes when I was reading the article. My wild guess was maybe a materials science problem and that for some reason they couldn't mass-produce them with the tolerances they needed to fight cavalry.
A wooden stick rammed into the ground alone is enough to stop a charging horse. The faster it charges, the quicker it would penetrate itself.
But this was a lesson long known in europe, but not in the Andes. Still, kind of baffling. I suppose religious motives played a role as well in not trying out those simple solutions.
I think they only had stone-tipped wooden spears.
The Incas had bronze, but didn't take full advantage of its use in weapons because they didn't have metal armor or shields, which are uncommon in Bronze Age cultures because copper is much less plentiful than iron. There was no time to redesign their weapons to fight armor in the middle of an invasion.
Sure, bronze pikes would have stopped the cavalry, but you need years if not centuries of mounted warfare to figure that out.
Thanks. I guess bronze verses steel and horses was just not enough.
The Spanish conquistadors in Pizarro's original force, as well as his reinforcements, were really quite unique.
We tend to think of the period as being characterized by monarchs and royal armies. Pizarro and his men were anything but a royal army. The bulk of them came from Extremadura: a remote, mountainous, and relatively poor area of Spain renowned for producing soldiers. Pizarro is, famously, Cortez's second cousin once removed, from this same region. If you were a young man of Extremadura during this period, soldiering was pretty much your best prospect for advancement, and Cortez was your hero. The reconquista and other conflicts had supplied several centuries of constant warfare that honed Spanish cavalry into the very best of Europe. The Extemadurans were the best of the Spanish. The stock that Pizarro's conquistadors were drawn from was elite.
Now, consider how that stock was drawn. As I mentioned above, Pizarro's force was no "royal army". No agents of the crown went to Extremadura and mustered up an army to send to Peru. These men paid their own way to the new world as an investment. With the reconquista finished and fabulous tales of conquest coming from Cortez's campaign, many soldiers willingly went to the new world to make a fortune for themselves. The men in Pizarro's company had already been on a difficult path before they set foot in Peru, but they were not just servants of the crown loyally following orders. They were entrepreneurs desperate to make good on their investment. Pizarro basically had his pick of the most ambitious men available.
One thing that made Spanish cavalry of this period so dangerous was pure reckless courage. If you put an overwhelming force in front of them they would charge directly into it while screaming, "Santiago!". The notion was that the enemy would not expect such insanity, and God would see them through anyways. The crazy thing is that this worked almost all the time in Peru. Pizarro's men were evil, greedy men, but they routinely routed enemy forces many times their size with reckless charges. On flat open ground, mounted conquistadors were virtually untouchable. The Incas learned this far too late.
The kidnapping and ransom of Atahualpa was an insane feat that typified the conquest of Peru. Pizarro's force was billeted in guest quarters that consisted of several long buildings with many doors facing a central square. They were surrounded by a royal Inca army dozens of times their size. They were too far from the coast to retreat if things turned violent, and they were convinced the Inca meant to turn things violent. For his part, the Inca saw the Spanish as a distraction from the more important task of mopping up the civil war that had just happened. The Spanish were too small a force to offer any serious resistance. After some scheming and diplomatic back and forth, Atahualpa and several thousand of his soldiers walked right into Pizarro's trap. They entered that courtyard and Pizarro's men rode out of every door of those long buildings, screaming. The expedition's cannons were fired for added psychological impact. The Inca's were compressed from all sides and panicked. Atahualpa was snatched from his litter and taken captive. The Spanish massacred thousands in the square and then continued riding down the Inca soldiers who hadn't been able to fit in the square for hours after Atahualpa's capture. With their command decapitated, there was little resistance.
As the conquest slowly progressed, the Inca resistance was typified by brilliant logistics, massive numbers, and flawed command that just couldn't seem to come to grips with what elite Spanish cavalry could do. The Spanish were taken by surprise and surrounded in Cusco by an absolutely massive army that appeared seemingly from nowhere... and didn't attack. The Inca commanders wanted to ensure they had an absolutely overwhelming force, so they continued to amass forces instead of attacking when surprise was on their side. They initially controlled the fortress of Saqsaywaman, but the Spanish were able to take it back due to the long delay in attack. That gave them a position to endure a long siege, which they did.
Some Inca generals did have success once they knew what they were dealing with. They learned to ambush the conquistadors in mountain passes, rolling boulders down on them from above. They learned to attack on rough ground that the Spanish horses couldn't be useful on. However, the Inca rulers seemed unable to comprehend that such a tiny force could offer resistance, so they still ordered their generals to offer pitched battles on flat open ground, which went against the Inca every time. These battles, such as at Lima, were tragically expensive for the Inca because their generals led from the front and often went into battle resolved to win or die.
Naked military force wasn't the only reason the Inca lost. The Spanish were adept at turning factions against the Inca's. The Inca empire was young and had been rapidly expanding. A lot of the people they had so recently conquered were only too happy to join the Spanish, not dissimilar to how the Aztec's enemies were eager to join forces with Cortez. The Inca empire was also predicated on worship of the Inca ruler as a living god. That became a serious flaw when the Spanish set up their own puppet Incas. However, while Cortez had a massive native army at his back by the time he reached Tenochtitlan, Pizarro's forces were often shockingly outnumbered but still managed to pull off seemingly impossible victories. Spanish cavalry really was that good if you fought them on their own terms, and the Inca chose to do that more often than they were ultimately able to afford. There were also other factors, like plague, that should not be underestimated.
"With their command decapitated, there was little resistance."
This happened over and over again, and indicates that the strictly top-down structure of the Incan empire, while probably very advantageous during their conquest of smaller neighbouring polities, was ultimately a huge weakness.
The cavalry point reminds of one of David Brin's Uplift books: on a far away planet the humans agree to give up their horses as it is an unfair advantage over the other alien races they are trying to cooperate with. But there is a statue of a horse that human teenagers climb upon to remember this powerful synergy.
I've got a copy of The Conquest of Mexico by Hugh Thomas on my book shelf and I tell myself I will eventually finish reading the tome!
This article might help me reinspire myself with this history.
I sometimes like to wonder what if, and wonder how vastly different world history could have been. If the Catholic conquistadors had managed to overcome superstition and fear of the devil to try Teonanácatl, Peyotl, Cohoba and Ayahuasca.
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There were formal debates about how to treat the natives, with Bartolemé de las Casas taking your side: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valladolid_debate The main opposition was the eloquent Sepulveda.
I always find myself referencing the Grand Inquisitor chapter from the Brothers Karamazov.
Does institutionalization always breed corruption? If it can breed corruption in the teachings of God then it can breed corruption anywhere.
We are born with the corruption inside of us; we must use God's teachings of love to cleanse and purify our souls so that it becomes enlightened like the spirit.
> But does the process of institutionalizing those teachings not go against those exact teachings themselves?
Not so long as we keep our moral compass as we are taught, in that we are to love God with all our being and then love our neighbors as ourself. That Great(est) Command(ment) could and should be carried by all the members (or at least a majority) of any group to guide their ideals, attitudes, and behaviors, if they are trying or claiming to act on behalf of God's Will. It's just that so very few human beings are willing to put aside their personal selfish desires to "be the servant of all".
> At least for Christianity?
That Great(est) Command(ment) is for all human beings since Adam, which includes Islam whose adherents should be using it as their guiding principle as well, because the Quran says that the Gospels were sent by the same Authority that sent it. That command is the real "Sharia Law" that we all live under, however religious we are or not: that we will reap what we sow, so we better use our free will to sow loving service to others' happiness with our life's energy.
The pack mentality of our baseline mammalian body and brain exists in all human groups, religious or not. Jesus was specifically referring to out-groups of any and every kind when he said, "That which you do to the least of my brothers and sisters, that you have done unto me." That, of course, encompasses other ethnicities, forms of religion (including atheists), sexual preference, and gender identity. We must love them, but also not let innocents be harmed. It's a tightrope, for sure.
Put another way, the most important way we should share the Word is in how we manifest our ideals, attitudes, and behaviors in alignment with God's teachings of love. Without such a true commitment to living the truth, our speaking the words of a holy book mean little. That's why Rumi says, "You have no idea how little we care about what a person says."
It's also why the Quran says that "You will know those who believe in the entire Quran because they return bad treatment with love." One can pick any verse from any book to justify any kind of ill treatment. If one is truly guided by God's Love, we will apply stern rebuke and/or kind mercy at the proper moment for the proper reason and will create a cascade of positive societal effect, without any measure whatsoever of either selfishness, pride, oppression, hatred, or cruelty. The glory does not come from us nor go to us; it goes to the Father.
> the idea that Jesus was exactly the type of individual that the church would have been willing to purge during that time
Surely, though I'd guess "willing and determined" would be more accurate.
Nothing is more powerful on Earth than a religious organization, no matter how crooked and misguided, so long as they can convince their members that their dominance of others is based upon an inherent superiority, as the CC have long since cultivated, irrespective of Jesus' beneficient teachings of love and selfless, patient service to all humanity. (It is also evident here in America, though they be cruel hypocrites, the entire lot of them.)
This is because the primary purpose of ALL power structures is to maintain their power. Acting on behalf of God's Love, we must give all the glory back to Its grace in humble gratitude and act merely as footsoldiers, not as ruling kings. No, we are to lift others up, not further downpress them.
And Jesus is crystal clear about those who harm children.
Peace be with you, my friend.
If you're into this stuff, Conquest of Peru (1847) by William Prescott is surprisingly readable and vivid. In case you worry that an old book won't be accurate, basically paragraph is backed up with a footnote giving long primary source quotes in the original Spanish. If you just read the footnotes it's like you're getting a well-paced spliced together first-hand account.
Some things I remember from the book that don't make it into this article:
- The Inca empire was essentially a top-down command economy. Everything down to individual people's jobs was managed centrally from Cuzco.
- Pizarro's translator was from a native tribe that was recently conquered by the Inca, and he hated the Inca himself. It's possible that he translated things in an intentionally adversarial way at crucial junctures, like when the Spanish were deciding to execute Atahualpa.
- The official reason for executing Atahualpa was that, while in captivity, he had sent orders to have his brother Huáscar executed.
- Apparently Atahualpa was amazed to discover that he could write marks on a piece of paper, show it to to Spaniards like de Soto, and they would all be able to read out exactly the same words. He tried the trick with Pizarro but, being illiterate, Pizarro couldn't read out the text. This didn't help with the Pizarro-Atahualpa relationship.
- The account of how the battle at Cajamarca started is a little different. The Spanish sent out a priest who gave a long confusing monologue to Atahualpa about the death of Jesus, the nature of the Trinity, the immaculate conception of Mary, and other deep-cut theology, then handed him a Bible. Atahualpa was basically like "why would you worship a guy who was executed as a criminal" and didn't have any idea what to do with the Bible (or any book). Then the Spanish ambushed him.
It's nice to see this book referenced! I am proud to have two old copies of the book in my personal library, one from 1880 and the other with no date on it. Prescott was an ancestor of mine, and the copies were passed down.
One interesting thing is how the Incan organizational capability mostly vanished. The original empire was really extremely well organized, but today's Bolivia and Peru don't show any particular aptitude in this direction.
There is an interesting contrast to Persia, which, having been conquered by Muslims in the 7th century, was subjugated and converted to a new religion as well - and yet within a few decades the Persian bureaucracy and professional class was very influential within the Caliphate.
The difference might be in total mortality. Too many Amerindians died from Old World diseases and their know-how was lost.
BTW: " In lieu of taxes, every able-bodied adult male in the Incan Empire was legally required to work for the state for three months per year"
Taxes in form of labour are harder to steal or siphon away, even if local tax authorities are corrupt. This might have been the best tax system in pre-modern era, in this regard at least.
> One interesting thing is how the Incan organizational capability mostly vanished. The original empire was really extremely well organized, but today's Bolivia and Peru don't show any particular aptitude in this direction.
All Iberian colonies follow this trajectory. This stems from a Mediterranean attitude towards wealth and work which privileges politics over industry as a means of personal enrichment; politics here encompassing both the clientelism that characterizes these societies as well as the military adventurism and propensity to revolution that this region is famous for.
> One interesting thing is how the Incan organizational capability mostly vanished. The original empire was really extremely well organized, but today's Bolivia and Peru don't show any particular aptitude in this direction.
They were relatively well organized compared to neighboring people, but they weren't particularly well organized compared to many other places in the world at the time.
The administration of modern Bolivia and Peru is far more advanced than that of the Incan Empire.
> They were relatively well organized compared to neighboring people, but they weren't particularly well organized compared to many other places in the world at the time.
This isn’t true at all. The Inca were not as technically sophisticated as the Europeans (or the Chinese for that matter), sure, but they were doing things on a scale comparable to the late Roman Republic. The extent of their territory was far larger than anything that existed in Europe at the time.
> The administration of modern Bolivia and Peru is far more advanced than that of the Incan Empire.
You are making this assertion based on the emergence of technical capacities that had nothing to do with these societies. Haiti is not more organized today than it was 200 years ago just because the government has computers now.
> This isn’t true at all. The Inca were not as technically sophisticated as the Europeans (or the Chinese for that matter)
I'm not sure how it isn't true at all when we agree that other governments at the time had much more sophisticated administration. And it wasn't just Europe and China - many areas of the Middle East, Central Asia, and East Asia had much more sophisticated administrative states at the time.
> You will need to cite specific examples for this argument to hold any water
Statements like these makes me realize that many people don't really have a grasp of the state of things at the time. The Incan Empire didn't have a judiciary, didn't have codified law, didn't have currency. They didn't have a written language, but used a system of knots for record keeping.
Most places in Europe and Asia at the time had currency, written language, codified laws, etc. in the 1500's. I'm not sure it's worth listing them all anymore than it is to list every place that had agriculture. If someone is unaware that these were ubiquitous, they have no understanding of the time period.
> but this has no real bearing on their merits as organizers
Not having ledger or any complex/efficient system of writing or recording data at all did, though. But it's true that no state in Europe was as centralized however that had various societal and political reasons.
> better organized
Size/scale doesn't necessarily mean much either, e.g. nobody would say that the Soviet economy and administrative system was more efficient and "better organized" than the much more decentralized systems in capitalist countries.
"they weren't particularly well organized compared to many other places in the world at the time."
They were able to introduce a common imperial language (Quechua), build up a very good network of roads and runners, and rule several dozen smaller ethnicities without triggering too many rebellions. They extracted taxes from the population quite efficiently without impoverishing it, and were able to build up massive uniformed armies.
I think this counts as extraordinary level of governance for that time. Certainly in the contemporary global top five, especially when taking into account just how big the empire was.
The same places aren't even in the global top fifty today.
Your list proves the point. All of those things were common for governments in Europe and Asia at the time. When people bring up the Safavids or the Timurids, for example, you don't hear people saying "they were able to extract taxes, build roads, and they had an imperial language, they were the top administrators in the world!" These things were considered to be an extremely low baseline for being a functional government.
> even if local tax authorities are corrupt
Considering that generally taxes in pre-modern stats were primarily used to fund warfare or fund the lifestyle of the local elite that's not necessarily worth much (the Inca empire was not different) i.e. whether the transfer of wealth is done according to the established law or not might not matter much if the system is inherently unjust)
I would guess the difference is in survival of institutions and institutional knowledge, and similarity of institutions.
The Persian bureaucracy were equipped to work for the conquerors, and the empire would have needed them to run the new conquests.
The Arab empires were motivated to rule, and to spread their religion, but seem to have been quite happy to adopt local structures and institutions that were consistent with that AFAIK.
A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies (1551) slightly later leaves out the lionization and describes the atrocities and abuse of natives and imported slaves. It should be required reading as it was driven by greed without morality on multiple continents, eventually consuming c. 150M human beings under all colonial powers.
I’m enjoying the whole “why didn’t the Incas just…” discussion going on here.
It’s peak HN.
I mean, when hundred and eighty men conquer millions you have to wonder. Surely there must have been a way for Incas to crush them.
An interesting read which tempts me to put up an essay assignment:
Compare the conduct of Trump and his acolytes to Cortez, the Pizzaros and other conquistadors.
I spent 20 minutes skimming this for some reason. The conquest of the Incas might be most famous through Guns, Germs and Steel which isn’t mentioned here.[1] But the article seems to put a similar emphasis on the conquistadors being severely outnumbered, glazing their exceptional fortitude and skill etc. That narrative (from Guns, although the article uses The Last Days of the Incas as the source) has been critiqued in Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest[2] which among other things points out how Germs doesn’t mention or properly contextualize the native allies that Pizzaro had.
Again I just skimmed it (for a mere 20 minutes) but I didn’t find much mention of the allies. Before the civil war among the Spanish (after the conquest) there only seems to be things like
> The Siege of Cusco began on May 6, 1535, and the Spanish believed they were well and truly fucked. Discounting their native allies, they were probably outnumbered at least 500-to-1, and were completely cut off from reinforcements.
What I’ve read on the matter says that Pizarro et al were always severely outnumbered by their allies as well. Why “discounting their native allies”? Were they so few that they didn’t matter?
Yeah they had many native allies for some reason. This is mentioned for Cortes (Aztecs) but I didn’t find this for the Inca case.
On the glazing:
> In the case of Hernan Cortes, about 400 Spanish soldiers (later increased to over 1,000) subjugated the Mexican Empire of about 6 million inhabitants. In the case of Francisco Pizarro, about 180 Spanish soldiers (eventually rising to over 1,000, but with rarely more than 500 ever concentrated in one place) conquered the Inca Empire of maybe 10 million inhabitants. In both cases, the Spanish invaders had almost no understanding of the local politics, geography, culture, religion, or people they were invading. In both cases, the expedition leaders deserve a ton of credit for extraordinary leadership and competence while leveraging a technological imbalance to achieve a staggering military force and diplomatic multiplier.
We don’t have to wonder why the conquistadors in modern day Mexico were so amazing.
> All of this happened in, like, 15 pages of Conquest of New Spain. Note that the author, Bernal Dias, was a member of Cortes’s expedition and an outright loyalist of Cortes to the point of siding with him closely during the multiple stages of the Spanish expedition civil war between Cortes and the Cuban Governor. So Dias might have some incentive to portray Cortes well, but he still portrays Cortes as constantly lying to basically everyone, including his closest advisors, and sometimes for the sake of embezzling expedition funds at the expense of his own men. It’s wild.
But someone is wrong on the Internet?
> It might seem obvious that the Spanish leveraged their technology to achieve incredible military victories over the Incas and Aztecs, but I’ve actually seen some pushback against this point. Often, it’s pointed out that the Spanish didn’t have that many pieces of their most advanced technology (guns and cannons), and most of their foot soldiers didn’t have close to full plate armor. On the BadHistory subreddit,[3] there is a highly up voted and often referenced nine-part series on Cortes’s conquest of the Aztecs which argues, among many other things, that Spanish military superiority is highly overrated. And yes, that post is one of the reasons I’m writing this whole essay, because someone is wrong on the internet.
That “someone is wrong” link[3] is an introduction (nine-part series) where the introduction polemically critiques Terminal Narrative. So it’s Historiography (I guess). The first part[4] critiques the narrative that the Spaniards in modern day Mexico conquered their foe, the Aztecs, which were “500 times more numerous”.[5]
So what is the author’s refutation of that? On the one hand we have an anonymous redditor who either is a historian or has, with the help of other people, managed to create a cosplay environment of pretend-historians. (This is to say that I trust that they are in actual fact historians.) The author here has a book by one of Cortes’ men who had every incentive to embellish the tale for the audience of the Spanish Crown. Well he does not get into the Aztec side of things and instead goes back to the Incas:
> MacQuarrie does a better job of describing how the Spanish trounced the Incas than Bernal Dias does with the Aztecs, and by MacQuarrie’s telling, the single most impactful element of Spanish military technology was cavalry.
So no epic feat of disproving “someone is wrong on the Internet” happens here. Just telling us again what one man named MacQuarrie thinks.[6]
My understanding from both the Reddit post as well as what I’ve heard indirectly about Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest[7] is that the conquest of the Americas by the conquistadors was first made into history in the predictably chauvinist way (winners writing history) as superior civilization or breed of men vanquishing the inferiors. Obviously that would be too much for a modern audience. So Germs from the 90’s tried a different tack. That book explicitly says that it is not a racist or chauvinistic history of how Europe became so successful. But critics claim that it still manages to be chauvinistic in how it wrongly claims that the conquistadors vanquished their enemies while being comically outnumbered.[8] And that they overemphasize planning and tactics and downplay being at the right place at the right time through no foresight of their own. Another point is that the failed conquistadors are given little consideration. Naturally, in popular history, it’s more exciting to only consider the expeditions and conquests that were successful, while contextualizing them with the failed attempts would perhaps ruin the flow of the story.[9]
[1] I have not read it
[2] ditto
[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/2vf565/myths_of...
[4] https://np.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/2qn5us/myths_of_...
[5] In [4] that is quoted from “Voldemort”, ostensibly Guns, Germs and Steel
[6] I would think that quoting someone being wrong would prompt them to engage with any of their specific points, not just saying that they disagree with the narrative of severely outnumbered Spaniards conquering the natives and then going back to their Inca source.
[7] And the first link in [4] cites that book as “wonderful”. For what it’s worth, good or bad.
[8] Moreover with books like Guns the historiography used is Environmental Determinism. Which might be correct or wrong but it needs to be interrogated as well since it is not obviously correct. And that approach to history might just as well end up concluding that Europe was destined to win out under any contingency (see the introduction to the critique of Terminal Narrative in [3]).
[9] PS: On second thought the expedition of Francisco Hernández de Córdoba into Yucatán is famous, and the Maya defeated them.
> That “someone is wrong” link[3] is an introduction (nine-part series) where the introduction polemically critiques Terminal Narrative.
I read these posts years ago and they are even worse than I remember them being. If these rebellions could have occurred without the Spanish, they would have.
The whole motivation behind the post is silly, too:
> The Terminal Narrative […] replaces discussion of agency and autonomy with notions of superiority or condescending pity for a people vanishing from the earth.
His belief in agency never made any sense to me; how is it possible for a chain of historical events to have occurred differently from how they did? When did the laws of physics change?
The central question is whether or not the Iberians had some quality about them that allowed them to win. It’s conceivable (albeit unlikely) that they simply won as the result of a series of historical accidents; one is then left to wonder why it was the Iberians who came out on top of the coincidence each and every time. In this narrative, we have to assume they just arrived in the right place and the right time, all over South America, and then just happened (through sheer dumb luck) to be the ones who ended up in power afterwards. The simpler explanation is that the Spaniards had better models than the people they conquered.
> What I’ve read on the matter says that Pizarro et al were always severely outnumbered by their allies as well. Why “discounting their native allies”? Were they so few that they didn’t matter?
When your allies massively outnumber you, it's not such good news as you might imagine. At war most of the time your allies turn on you as soon as they feel they don't need you to win (and almost certainly after you win). Who wants to share a victory with losers.
The ability of conquistadors to first make local allies so effectively (without any prior knowledge of language, culture or local politics) is insane, their ability to keep their "allies" in check even more so.
When people write "look how outnumbered they were" they don't mean Zack Snyder's "300", it's more of a Machiavelli thing I'd say.
It does seem that native allies were critical (they are mentioned several times) and parts of the article downplay that.
I have also found the same thing in popular perceptions of the British Empire - it was heavily reliant on native allies to expand, and native soldiers and police to maintain itself (at least in South Asia, which is the bit I know the most about).
I don't know what you imagine perceptions of the British empire to be but most people don't think the UK sent 10000 ships to India to zerg rush the existing power structures.
Not to that extreme, but I do not think people realise the extent to which the empire relied on local support and structures.
I recently read the second volume (Seven Years in Ceylon) of Leonard Woolf's autobiography and he talks about how an entire country was British run with no military outside a small number in the capital city (and many of the provinces were remote, requiring days of difficult travel back them). There were small numbers (single figures in some) of civil servants in each province, but entire districts were run by a single official.
He mentioned native allies at several points actually, though he doesn’t emphasise them and their purported numbers are still like 100x lower than the forces they are facing.
> And that they overemphasize planning and tactics and downplay being at the right place at the right time through no foresight of their own.
Mentioned by the author
> Another point is that the failed conquistadors are given little consideration.
Also addressed by the article.
> That book explicitly says that it is not a racist or chauvinistic history of how Europe became so successful. But critics claim that it still manages to be chauvinistic in how it wrongly claims that the conquistadors vanquished their enemies while being comically outnumbered.
I feel modern academia (and also Guns Germs and Steel FWIW) desperately try to do the opposite these days - to claim that the natives where not militarily, technologically or logistically inferior to Europeans despite getting conquered by Europeans in what look like very lopsided battles. I feel that is just as dishonest as the opposite. Nobody does this to the Mongols or Huns or whatever. Their superiority is accepted at face value.
> He mentioned native allies at several points actually, though he doesn’t emphasise them
I also quoted the author about allies: “Discounting their native allies, they were probably outnumbered ...”
So that qualifies as mentioning native allies. It mentions the allies as being so inconsequential that they can be discounted when considering the forces they were up against.
> and their purported numbers are still like 100x lower than the forces they are facing.
Source?
> Also addressed by the article.
That part of my comment was not about the article.
> I feel modern academia (and also Guns Germs and Steel FWIW) desperately try to do the opposite these days - to claim that the natives where not militarily, technologically or logistically inferior to Europeans despite getting conquered by Europeans in what look like very lopsided battles.
First of all popular understanding (which is what I was talking about) seems to like narratives of dominating conquest. That goes both for Mongols and conquistadors.
Secondly they have arguments for their theories. That they are “desperate” speaks to their motivation and not the end result of their theories. So you would have to engage with their counter-arguments instead of falling back on saying that it looked lopsided. (Are you critiquing their history or their motivations? Different things.)
> I feel that is just as dishonest as the opposite. Nobody does this to the Mongols or Huns or whatever. Their superiority is accepted at face value.
I would hope that historians try their best to figure out why the Mongols or the Ottomans and whoever won, using a variety of approaches, arriving at the most empirically solid theory whether that is tech/logistical superiority or whatever else. But that is not known to me.
> the expedition leaders deserve a ton of credit for extraordinary leadership and competence while leveraging a technological imbalance to achieve a staggering military force and diplomatic multiplier
They deserve a tonne of shame for being the starters of a 500 year, 100 million people genocide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_of_indigenous_peoples
I think the idea of shaming people for being successful conquerers is ironically very western. Ask what the Mongols think about their conquests or the Han or what the Turks think about the Ottomans or the Russians about their history…
Yes it is very Western. That national chauvinists think differently doesn’t make it wrong.
"100 million"? That's really overinflated.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_the_Indi... - pre-Columbian population figures are highly disputed. And the majority of the population decline happened before 1600-s, mostly from diseases.
None of the Spanish conquistadors were nice people, but neither they plan mass genocides.
What's striking to me is that despite the Spanish conquistador's well-earned reputation for brutality, the Americas south of the Mexican border is genetically extremely native. The average American who says they have native ancestry, maybe has something like 3-5% precolumbian American ancestry I would guess... but if a Mexican says they have no native ancestry, they may well have ~50% native ancestry and just don't know it.
I haven't read a good explanation for why it is so.
Emigration from Spain to their new world was relatively low. The estimate seems to be that only around 0.42 million people moved from Spain to the Americas between 1492 and 1820. Considering the massive amount of territory they controlled that's very low. In contrast over 1.2 million people from Great Britain emigrated to their colonies which were many times smaller geographically.
Also before modern medicine and other stuff the climate outside of mountainous areas (which besides some exceptions weren't necessarily able to sustain high population density) wasn't great. e.g New England was a much nicer place to live and therefore natural population growth was relatively low.
Combine those things with there being way less Native Americans in the North (due to various reasons) to begin with, very different colonial policies and treatment of the native people and the result is not that surprising.
Isn't it fairly obvious? The Spanish were conquering advanced urbanized civilizations. Seizing the cities and their people was the goal of the entire enterprise. The land was an afterthought.
The British/Americans were settling the territory of primitive tribal nations. Taking over the land was the goal of the entire enterprise. The people were an afterthought.
The native populations that were put to work survived?
> When Florida was captured some were lucky enough to be evacuated to Cuba and other Spanish colonies
Interesting. Do you have any further reading on this topic? I had never heard about it.
> I haven't read a good explanation for why it is so.
Iberians bred with the people they conquered. The Spanish in particular practiced an intentional policy of breeding a caste of illegitimate mixed-race offspring that would mediate between the Spaniards proper and the aboriginals they had enslaved.
In the Spanish colonies, there emerged a project to “Mejorar La Raza” (literally: to better the race) by encouraging breeding with those of a fairer complexion than oneself. I suspect (though have never confirmed) that this attitude was primarily fostered to encourage women to more readily breed with Iberian men, but in the present day the attitude is quite prevalent among both Latino men and Latina women; Latinos fetishize white features, which are associated with being not only high-status and wealthy, but also simply beautiful in their own right.
The Americans largely arrived after small pox had substantially reduced the native population, and subsequently followed a comparatively genocidal path of historical development. They did not tend to breed with the natives they encountered, so they have a far lower proportion of aboriginal ancestry. At some point between the late 1800s and early 1900s, they developed a romantic appreciation for Native Americans, which later leads to the common trope of every American family claiming to have a Cherokee great great grandmother on their mother’s side. Since the 2000s, the common trope is that all the growth in these tribes has been from white-passing people looking to cash in on affirmative action; this is not an undeserved stereotype.
The Americans really needed something like the "Americaness" (the American law it's over any race), kinda like the Hispanidad with the Hispanic people does. It doesn't matter where you come from, but where you all as a whole are heading to.
Segregation and White Power/Black Power/Native Power should be dealt as something totally obsolete, kinda backwards. "Mi tribe it's the best one, and the rest of the worlds sucks".
As a Spaniard I always hated the concept of reservations and idiots like Jim Crow. The point of America should have been to leave out your tribe behind to be something else.
And, finally, yes, I hate the term 'cultural appropiation'. Civilization means basically 'culture appropiation'... and enhancements.
If not, tell these people to stop using the Roman alphabet while posting under an iPhone at Starbucks, and try to write everything with runes.
I'm from Iberia. We were invaded from zillions of tribes. Spanish itself it's twisted Latin, with some loanwords from French, Basque, Celt, German (and Germanic), Italians and who knows more. We assimilated tons of words from former Iberian dialects, such as Galician-Portuguese, Catalan... and thanks to that we can talk with millions of Spanish speakers, and get understood pretty well from the Portuguese, French and Italian at least in written form.
Ditto with English with Romance terms. Ironically, the higher education you get in English, the more low class Hispanic and Lusophone people in South America will understand you.
And the reverse it's true, too. Use Germanic words in English as the average Joe and only the high class non-native English speakers will get something from your speech.
Also, on races/cultures, at first the Gypsies in Spain hated Camarón (now THE god-like Flamenco singer composer for the Gypsies) because he mixed some progressive music from the 70's with Flamenco and even kind of prototype for Techno. And tons of Blues from the US, too.
They were more Ethnicist than some staunch American WASP belonging to KKK. Kinda like Blacks in the US calling another one "Oreo".
They said what Camarón did was "Heresy" to Flamenco music, that his album was not flamenco at all. Heresy with capital letters for them.
10-20 years passed, and, guess why? The gypsies said that Camarón now was "the greatest (Gypsy) one/ever), as it were the Jesus for Gypsies.
The Mediterranean civilization and the further Enlightenment was due to sharing knowledge and goods back and forth, not by keeping the countries and tribes isolated.
Rock music it's a mix between Black and White cultures, creating something else, but better. In Spain we had groups like Triana in the 70's who mixed American Folk and Rock like Jethro Tull (the first two albums are almost a Jethro Tull wannabe, really good) with some Flamenco music. And Flamenco itself it's a mix of Arabic, Gypsy and -who knows- more roots...
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> Estimates have varied widely from as low as 8 million to as many as 100 million, though many scholars gravitated toward an estimate of around 50 million by the end of the 20th century.
At least check the articles you link yourself, ffs.
Not sure why the apologism here, genocide was done through and through, intentionally by outright murder and slavery and unintentionally via diseases (but even that was spread with intent once found out their immunity is weak against old continent diseases)
>ffs
Doing this is the equivalent of throwing a small piece of litter in an otherwise clean alley. Humans being what they are, the alley will soon be a trash heap.
"but even that was spread with intent once found out their immunity is weak against old continent diseases"
This is somewhat unsure. First, if we are talking about the Spanish conquest, that is deep 16th century, with all its magical thinking. God, the Devil and witches were all plausible explanations for epidemics, and holy processions, pilgrimages and carrying of medailons dedicated to saint X were considered reasonable treatment methods. It is a mistake to look at the 16th century with 21st century eyes; it is a different world resting on very different mental foundations.
Second, at least in the Spanish territories, losing your workforce was economically disadvantageous.
> At least check the articles you link yourself, ffs.
Yeah, and as you see, the 100 million is a highly questionable value. Just try to read past the first paragraph, maybe?
> but even that was spread with intent once found out their immunity is weak against old continent diseases
Nope. The germ theory of disease was not formed until 1800-s, the invention of vaccination was in 1796. There were some inklings that smallpox can be spread through contaminated items even before that time, but not much earlier.
Isn’t that awesome?
> The Spanish conquest of the Aztecs was terrible. It was a prolonged period of pestilence, famine, torture, rape, plunder, destruction, conquest, cultural eradication, and general misery, with a short term death toll of something like 600,000 (including military and civilian casualties), and a long term death toll in the millions.
> And yet part of me thinks it was totally awesome.
https://mattlakeman.org/2020/06/25/polygamy-human-sacrifices...
> And yet part of me thinks it was totally awesome. That portion of my brain that grew up on Total War and Civilization games thinks the concept of a small number of hyper-technologically sophisticated foreigners led by a verified psychopath waging war on an empire of pyramid-dwelling, polygamist, slave-owning, human sacrificing pagans with the fate of a largely uncharted landmass at stake is incredibly cool. And no one can convince me otherwise.
Oh of course I omitted the “in a video game” part, sorry.
It reads differently how? Maybe that the “context” shifts from being about the misery induced by the conquest to being fascinated by the feat of the conquest, not about the misery induced by it per se. Okay. I can see that.
Then my comment could have been misleading. And I’m sorry.
> , so I’m not sure why you felt it appropriate to post it without that context.
Sure, let’s talk about appropriateness.
> He continues:
And?
The Aztecs were hated from the rest of the tribes. The rest of the Natives joined the Spaniards against them. Guess why.
Hint: human sacrifices and slavery.
For the rest of the Natives, they were like the Nazi Germany, or, a better comparison, the Imperial Japan in Asia.
Relevance to my comment?
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I think it's less that they're taught that the native Americans were peaceful and more that they aren't really taught anything about the history of the native population. It usually starts when European settlers come here.
As an aside; I went to the Smithsonian museum of native Americans or whatever it's called. I was MASSIVELY disappointed that it focused almost solely on post-European settlement. I was really hoping for history and information about the tribes before that. They're fascinating, and it seems a little backhanded to just focus on our impact on them (important obviously, but very dismissive of their long history).
>focused almost solely on post-European settlement
That is because the pre-European natives in North America did not write anything down. The only information we have not from European writers is material remains like arrowheads, pottery and the bones of the animals they butchered.
> I was really hoping for history and information about the tribes before that
How much of that is known?
We can tell a lot about their food sources, trade partners, economics, size of communities and civic centers, (material culture) but not much about politics, religion, folklore and class conflict. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeological_culture
I have no idea. And that's kind of the point. I'm assuming somebody can fill in some of the blanks for me.
Apocalypto by Mel Gibson did a great job of imprinting a visual image of pre-Columbian Aztecs. The tribe of villagers in the movie was depicted as peaceful, but I think it's only through limited observation time and in contrast with the brutal Aztecs. Otherwise I bet even those villagers were more like we observe the Papua New Guinea tribes of today, routinely mounting some expedition of murdering and pillaging the neighbouring village.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_rejhUV0A0
There are a lot of myths about the way humans used to be, especially Native Americans. Were they utopian nature-lovers? Were they barbaric human-sacrificers?
A good book on this topic is The Dawn of Everything, written by an anthropologist and an archaeologist. A YouTube video from one of the authors is here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SJi0sHrEI4
I disagree with the idea that "barbarism was common" in Native American societies. I don't think you can generalize from the Incas so directly like this
I think it varies by geographical zones. While the Incas were a violent empire, it seems the Caribbeans were indeed populated with peaceful communities?
Oh yeah… The Aztecs were sweethearts.
‘Caribbean’, by the way, is derived from the ‘Canib’ Indians, from which we get another sweet and gentle word: Cannibal.
Idealizing these cultures would be similar to some revisionist historian in 2525 waxing poetic about the Nazis in the mid-20th century.
The peaceful native Americans view is about the pre-Columbian natives of present-day US. Not about the Aztecs (are you kidding?) or the Incas.
Since native Americans were not known for their writing of historical records; much of their history must be surmised from archeological digs. Enough is known that we can conclude that many tribes conducted warfare against their neighbors.
I don’t know why you are restating your point to me.
I guess I took your last comment to mean that you believe that the tribes in North America were much more peaceful than those in Central and South America. While that could be true, I don't know that it is.
Right, but the point still stands. Go read “Empire of the Summer Moon” and tell me that the pre-Columbian natives were peaceful.
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