AHC: Spaniards thoroughly 'go native'

How could the Spaniards arriving in the New World thoroughly be swayed by the new lands they've discovered, so much as to assimilate to the native cultures? If possible, even abandon their religion?

Mesoamerica and the Andes are rich and advanced, with Tenochtitlán being bigger than any European city (other than Istanbul?). While the rest of the Americas south of Georgia and north of the Rio de la Plata is harsh for people suited to a semiarid, temperate climate in Europe, making cooperation with the natives necessary.

The Spanish were in the most precarious position of all the colonizers, having the earliest technology and going to the most inhospitable part of the New World besides Amazonia, yet they were the most successful. Why was this?
 
Last edited:
How could the Spaniards arriving in the New World thoroughly be swayed by the new lands they've discovered, so much as to assimilate to the native cultures? If possible, even abandon their religion?

Mesoamerica and the Andes are rich and advanced, with Tenochtitlán being bigger than any European city (other than Istanbul?). While the rest of the Americas south of Georgia and north of the Rio de la Plata is harsh for people suited to a semiarid, temperate climate in Europe, making cooperation with the natives necessary.

The Spanish were in the most precarious position of all the colonizers, having the earliest technology and going to the most inhospitable part of the New World besides Amazonia, yet they were the most successful. Why was this?

The Spaniards need to be less successful--its hard to think that the natives have something to offer you when they're crumpling left and right--but most of all the Spaniards need to be cut off from Europe for a time, either by their own action or by some early assertion of independence. I don't see how either one could realistically happen.
 
The Spaniards need to be less successful--its hard to think that the natives have something to offer you when they're crumpling left and right--but most of all the Spaniards need to be cut off from Europe for a time, either by their own action or by some early assertion of independence. I don't see how either one could realistically happen.
Not necessarily.

The Crusaders loved Arabic culture.

Tupi became a lingua franca in Brazil.

The Macedonian Greeks adopted countless things from conquered territories.

The Mongols did too.

Paraguayan mestizos and whites have and do speak Guaraní.

All of those peoples were hegemons where they lived, yet adopted from their subject culture.
 
Not necessarily.

The Crusaders loved Arabic culture.

Tupi became a lingua franca in Brazil.

The Macedonian Greeks adopted countless things from conquered territories.

The Mongols did too.

Paraguayan mestizos and whites have and do speak Guaraní.

All of those peoples were hegemons where they lived, yet adopted from their subject culture.

We're not talking about them, we're talking about the Spaniards. If you don't change their circumstances from OTL, you get the same results as OTL. Anyway, a number of your counter-examples aren't.
 
We're not talking about them, we're talking about the Spaniards. If you don't change their circumstances from OTL, you get the same results as OTL. Anyway, a number of your counter-examples aren't.
All of those peoples were greater in number and in a more recognizable climate than the Spaniards were.
 
All of those peoples were greater in number and in a more recognizable climate than the Spaniards were.

And many of them didn't win quite as thoroughly as the Spaniards did at such ridiculously long odds, didn't provide over societies that were as thoroughly smashed as the meso-American ones were, and often became locally independent quite soon, which aided assimilation.

Two other factors to consider--(1) Christianity, which is fairly resistant to assimilation, especially by paganisms and (2) the Reconquista, which had given the Spaniards a fair amount of abasiya and resistance to the blandishments of a materially superior civilization.

P.S. Also, by your argument, the Spaniards should have assimilated. They didn't. So the facts don't seem to be in your favor.
 
I remember one story where Cortez was made king of the Aztecs, and converted them to Catholisism, leading to them becoming a superpower.
 
I remember one story where Cortez was made king of the Aztecs, and converted them to Catholisism, leading to them becoming a superpower.
Well it doesn't have to be a Nahuatlaca like scenario, unless that's the only way this could happen.
 
The Spanish went to the America's to conquer and spread their culture and Religion, viewing it as superior and the indigenous as Heathens whose ways needed to be Reformed (in the case they were close enough to European beliefs) or outright eradicated.

Ultimately, save for some groups getting cut off for a very long time, their is no real way to do what you want without fundamentally changing Spanish culture and also Christianity itself.
 
Paraguay is a good example - the question is how you spread the unique "Paraguayan path" to the Spanish empire at large.

It's really not, the only reason Paraguay speaks Guarani is because the vast majority of the Spanish speaking White population was killed off in the War of the Triple Alliance, and pretty much the only people left were the Indigenous peoples who spoke their own languages (including Guarani) and some of the Mestizo, who spoke Spanish and Guarani.
 
Top