No Classic Mesoamerican Collapse

You could have the POD be whatever was so disruptive around 1300-1400 (New Madrid Earthquake? Destabilizing decades long droughts? Epidemics?) that substantially disrupted the Mississippian Civilization, the Anasazi in the Southwest, the Mexica, the Mayans, etc.. Without it(s), everythings quite a bit more advanced by 1491-1519 as the post-apolcalypse invaders from the North (Ute-Aztec, Apache-Navaho, Comanche-Kiowa) aren't able to sweep in and take over the disrupted and scattering communities.

Trade networks across the continents would remain in place for faster innovation diffusion (and more reason for shipbuilding in the Gulf and Coasts.)

The corn/beans/squash/pumpkins or potatoes/tomatos/peppers/beans cultures were already well in place and about 50% or more productive than contemporary European crops and farming practices so able to support very dense populations, bigger cities, more specialists, and more warriors.

Their advanced mathematics, engineering, biology, botany, astronomy are all excellent building blocks to match Age of Exploration Europeans given these 2 or 3 additional uninterrupted centuries.

It's hard to figure a workaround on the Age of Exploration's disease epidemics though. The Americas' had considerably more sophisticated medical, surgical, and pharmaceutical knowledge (often up into 1950's levels by the 1400's) so having them develop germ theory to a point that they were able to vaccinate early in the European plagues as least for smallpox, measles, etc. but those swept through so fast even a 1500 AD Mayan equivalent to the Center for Disease Control would likely be overwhelmed rather than solve it and cure it with "only" 1 in 8 or 1 in 5 dying instead of what sounds more like 1 in 2 or 9 in 10 dying.
 
Umm, the Maya Collapse was in the 800's AD, and Teotihuacan fell a century and a half earlier. The 1300-1400's was actually a time of resurgence in Mesoamerica, with the creation of the Mexica state and the height of the League of Mayapan, along with the rise of the Quiche kingdom IIRC. The Aztecs/Mexica didn't exist as a political entity before this time and nothing disrupted them until the Spanish came, the Quiches were likewise on a roll until the arrival of Cortes' lieutenant Alvarado. Mayapan fell in the mid-1400's, but not from some mysterious circumstance, the reason regarding it's fall is recorded. Maybe these centuries were a bad time for the Anasazi and Mississippians, but not at all for Mesoamerica, unless you're unfortunate enough to be an enemy of the Mexica.
 

Hnau

Banned
Like I've said before, the success of the Cortes and Pizarro expeditions were ASB. I've done the necessary research on the two campaigns. Even though the Aztecs and Incas were suffering from deadly plagues and didn't have animals, the Spaniards got way lucky. With more tech and higher pop, a more stable political structure, Mesoamerica is almost certain to repel Spanish incursions in the 16th century. If Mesoamerica survives, it is unlikely that the Andean nations will fall.

Now, there are still going to be mega deaths and cataclysmic disruptions in these cultures, don't get me wrong, but it is my educated guess that they'd only fall to Europeans once industrialization takes off and if the Amerindians don't follow along, somewhat mirroring the colonization of Africa probably. I won't say the same of other regions in the New World though.
 
Yep, spot on.

Although I can see a native Mesoamerican or Andean nation surviving - but that may be just because I want them to. :p
 
Yep, spot on.

Although I can see a native Mesoamerican or Andean nation surviving - but that may be just because I want them to. :p

Who wouldn't want them to? Anything would be preferable to what ended up happening and those of indigenous descent still suffer to this day by the successor states of the Spanish colonial empire.
 
Your point about Cortes makes it sound as if you didn't read any of my posts
That's odd - that's how I feel about you. Here are my biggest and bestest points, again, edited to try to make them clearer.

Didn't Cortes' success have anything to with the huge social disorder and weakening from a massive population collapse? Plus, the inevitable rebellions against imperial oppression to take advantage of circumstances and rulerly plague deaths like the Inca

Didn't the same pattern sadly happen throughout the ENTIRE AMERICAS, two big continents? Why think the Maya would fare better, especially so much better they could beat the Europeans? Why think the Maya were so much specialler without Space Bat help?

There was one exception - the Chilean Mapuche, so far south that the plagues reached them well before the conquest, distinctly unlike the Maya. Better government, democracy, might've helped, too. Neither was remotely true of the Maya. And, even the Mapuche had more of a stalemate going than a your TL's win.
 
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Didn't the same pattern sadly happen throughout the ENTIRE AMERICAS, two big continents? Why think the Maya would fare better, especially so much better they could beat the Europeans? Why think the Maya were so much specialler without Space Bat help?

Yeah, I don't see how the Spanish got 'lucky' once or twice when conquering the great empires. They got lucky for a period of 300 years or so.
 
Yeah, I don't see how the Spanish got 'lucky' once or twice when conquering the great empires. They got lucky for a period of 300 years or so.

I'm not sure I'd say once or twice, but they certainly got lucky - and the idea that "Two big continents" were absorbed easily and quickly isn't even a myth, it's just a distortion of the historical reality.
 
I'm not sure I'd say once or twice, but they certainly got lucky

Yes, but they got lucky with biological wealth, which created a pattern that gave the Spanish an overwhelming advantage due to disease. A higher and more stably urban population of Mayans is not going to give them a special resistance to smallpox, if anything it will make them more vulnerable due to their denser population spreading disease faster.
 
Yes, but they got lucky with biological wealth, which created a pattern that gave the Spanish an overwhelming advantage due to disease. A higher and more stably urban population of Mayans is not going to give them a special resistance to smallpox, if anything it will make them more vulnerable due to their denser population spreading disease faster.

Let's say Cortez's expedition gets massacred, and the Mexica leadership can turn to dealing with the threats from their fellow Mesoamericans.

Is that going to be a problem? Yes. But it'll be a problem of which Mesoamericans are on top, not a Spanish conquest. Picking the Aztecs as Cortez failing will make a big impression on others. Risking your all when there's a chance that with skill, luck, and guts you can pull through is one thing. Doing it when people who have tried it think its hopeless takes a little more than mere ambition and greed.

And there are more factors to "higher and more stably urban" than vulnerable to disease.

I'm not saying the Mayans can resist all possible threats, but their chances do go up, not down, and it's not as if the chances of the Mesoamericans were merely theoretical.

At least you're not arguing that democracy would magically make things better because democracy and so we can have a serious conversation.

In my opinion, from what little I know, the most likely outcomes involve devastated native societies but no - any time soon at least - European conquests.
 

Hnau

Banned
All I'm saying is that if you look at the military campaign of Cortes and then the military campaign of Pizarro in detail you will find they were overmatched and by a fluke of chance they did just the right things at just the right times with just the right people in order to conquer the empires they did.

WI the Tlaxcalan leadership decided against helping Cortes? WI one of the mutinies among Cortes' men was successful? WI Cortes perished in La Noche Triste? WI Martin Lopez perished in La Noche Triste and couldn't build those brigantines that made invading Tenochtitlan possible? WI Cortes was killed during that invasion where multiple times he was almost killed? WI Vera Cruz was compromised by a faction disloyal to Cortes and he lost his resupply? WI smallpox didn't break out in Mesoamerica in 1520 but a year later?

WI Cortes didn't conquer the Aztec Empire? How would that affect Pizarro? What if the Inca wasn't on the frontier but in the capital. WI the Spanish didn't even hear about the Incas until later by random chance? What if the Incan Civil War was resolved differently?

I'm telling you, the likelihood of those two Spaniards having it so easy was ASB, or it was almost so because it did happen. Just like the rise of hitler, in some spots of OTL the most unlikely things happen.
 
The Spanish Conquest was far from a guaranteed event and had Cortes not succeeded it's not a sure thing that there will be more expeditions to replace him, especially not when even IOTL the Spanish didn't plan on going around on a conquest spree. As I've said numerous times, Diego Velazquez, governor of Cuba, intended on establishing trade relations with the native empires and Cortes was a renegade who got lucky. The subsequent waves of conquistadors were very much inspired by Cortes's success and without such an example to look to there will be far fewer men willing to go die in some godforsaken jungle, especially when ITTL Cortes is simply the third explorer to lead a doomed expedition, that his was the largest and still failed will only make them even less willing. So you have Spanish authorities who don't even want to conquer these places (from the governor to the King himself who at the very least detested the cruelty of the conquistadors and even the Church), a smaller pool of conquistadors who can actually do it (many of the later conquistadors were a part of the Cortes expedition), and native empires that are much more stable than the Aztecs and likely have leaders who aren't as retarded as Motecuzoma II. All this means the natives have a much better chance at survival than OTL.
 
I disagree that the conquests of the Spanish in the Americas are such an unlikely event, and I will outline why:

A failure on the part of Cortes will delay conquest of Mesoamerica by decades, perhaps, but it will not cut off Spanish contact with the coast. There were many failed Spanish expeditions in the New World, but these did not dissuade further exploration/conquest by the Spanish. As 9 Fanged Hummingbird has pointed out, Cortez was not dissuaded by 2 previous failures.

Diego Velazquez de Cuellar (the governor of Cuba) will try to open trade with the Mesoamerican civilizations. If the Spanish could force open trade in the Indian ocean, the could certainly do it on the Caribbean coast. So a potential ground zero for infection by European disease will exist in the New World.

Rebellions and secession will most likely increase in response to smallpox, creating political fractures against a unified resistance to the Spanish, and allow the Spanish to play different sides against each-other. Further plagues-typhus, measles, etc-will cause more turmoil and weaken any potential military resistance to the Spanish, while lowering the morale of the Native civilizations. The drop in population and lack of stability will work against Native attempts to copy Spanish technology. The Spanish will understand that there is gold, slaves, etc in Mesoamerica, and as these civilizations weaken, they will be tempted to conquer-and they will be able to launch some very impressive military campaigns from their base in Cuba against a disunited target. Voila, conquest!

I'm not saying it's impossible for the Mayans and Aztecs to resist Spanish conquest, but I believe that it's the Mayans who have to get extremely break the patterns of history lucky, not the Spanish who have to lose an ASB level of luck (which was not ASB, IMO).

As for Peru, Pizarro may not try his daring conquest without the example of Cortez, but to keep the Spanish from reaching Peru, you have to keep them out of Panama, not Mexico, since that was the launching off point for the invasion.

At least you're not arguing that democracy would magically make things better because democracy and

That was unnecessary, Elfwine. If you think that's a bad argument, you should answer it with why you think it's wrong, not imply that jkay is being childish.
 
All I'm saying is that if you look at the military campaign of Cortes and then the military campaign of Pizarro in detail you will find they were overmatched and by a fluke of chance they did just the right things at just the right times with just the right people in order to conquer the empires they did.

WI the Tlaxcalan leadership decided against helping Cortes? WI one of the mutinies among Cortes' men was successful? WI Cortes perished in La Noche Triste? WI Martin Lopez perished in La Noche Triste and couldn't build those brigantines that made invading Tenochtitlan possible? WI Cortes was killed during that invasion where multiple times he was almost killed? WI Vera Cruz was compromised by a faction disloyal to Cortes and he lost his resupply? WI smallpox didn't break out in Mesoamerica in 1520 but a year later?

WI Cortes didn't conquer the Aztec Empire? How would that affect Pizarro? What if the Inca wasn't on the frontier but in the capital. WI the Spanish didn't even hear about the Incas until later by random chance? What if the Incan Civil War was resolved differently?

I'm telling you, the likelihood of those two Spaniards having it so easy was ASB, or it was almost so because it did happen. Just like the rise of hitler, in some spots of OTL the most unlikely things happen.

Hitler's rise was more plausible than some make it out to be, he, after all,, benefited from not-so-minor things like the USSR directly intervening in German politics to favor him instead of Social Democracy.
 
I'm not saying it's impossible for the Mayans and Aztecs to resist Spanish conquest, but I believe that it's the Mayans who have to get extremely break the patterns of history lucky, not the Spanish who have to lose an ASB level of luck (which was not ASB, IMO).
And there's a world of difference between saying that the Maya would have to have some luck to resist the Spanish and saying that it would be completely impossible for them to. Cortes himself was lucky enough to have been able to get a hold of two translators, the first of whom was a shipwrecked Spaniard who spoke Mayan and the second being some random woman who spoke Nahuatl and Mayan. If Geronimo de Aguilar drowned or got sick and died or was bitten by a snake or simply got killed by natives, Cortes's whole campaign would've died several years before it began. Likewise if the slave Malinalli was not given to him as a gift. Or if the Aztecs did not happen to have their single worst king on the throne at the time who simply invited the Spanish into Tenochtitlan. Or if Cortes was unable to escape the trap during La Noche Triste. Or if he was beaten by Narvaez who outnumbered him. If the Maya (assuming a No-Collapse scenario) had just half his luck they could plausibly secure their land against Spanish encroachment.
 
In the long run, the disadvantages of the American Natives facing the Europeans are staggering. Europeans have a large and likely increasing (in the medium term; over the centuries the natives can catch up) edge as long as their presence in the Caribbean and coastal areas consolidates.
However, OTL had the Europeans extremely luck. It is likely that, out of a number of alternate worlds, the majority will be less Eurowankish than OTL, and only a minority has worse scenarios for the natives (that are possible, yeah, but OTL was nasty enough to them).
The Mesoamerican and Andean civilization had a decent chance at survival. Contact with the Europeans might change them deeply, as it did everywhere, but not destroy them as it mostly happened IOTL.
This would impact the following development of Europe very, very much.
The world as a whole would be likely less Westernized.
Cortes was incredibly lucky. Pizarro even more, and the fact that Peru remained under control of the spanish Crown was far from granted anyway.
There was a window of opportunity for Spain to do her conquest spree. After say, 1560 or so, it wouldn't be as much viable. If the main native states manage to go past that point relatively intact, they will be safer, recovering from the first waves of epidemics and adjusting to the contact shock. Spain will be massively busy elsewhere and with less reasources to commit to conquest in the Americas. Conquest happened because, from the Madrid PoV, it was cheap extra gold. In the scenario of this thread, it won't be cheap, so it won't be worthwhile. Spaniard could mount larger expeditions from Cuba in 1550 than Cortes', but the Mesoamericans would be ready by then I guess, so why bother.
 

The Sandman

Banned

There is a world of difference, however, between the sort of conquest that happened in India and the sort of conquest that happened to the OTL Americas. The former is still likely to occur even in a scenario where the collapse of the Classical Maya never occurs. The latter, however, becomes almost impossible.
 
In the long run, the disadvantages of the American Natives facing the Europeans are staggering. Europeans have a large and likely increasing (in the medium term; over the centuries the natives can catch up) edge as long as their presence in the Caribbean and coastal areas consolidates.
However, OTL had the Europeans extremely luck. It is likely that, out of a number of alternate worlds, the majority will be less Eurowankish than OTL, and only a minority has worse scenarios for the natives (that are possible, yeah, but OTL was nasty enough to them).
The Mesoamerican and Andean civilization had a decent chance at survival. Contact with the Europeans might change them deeply, as it did everywhere, but not destroy them as it mostly happened IOTL.
This would impact the following development of Europe very, very much.
The world as a whole would be likely less Westernized.
Cortes was incredibly lucky. Pizarro even more, and the fact that Peru remained under control of the spanish Crown was far from granted anyway.
There was a window of opportunity for Spain to do her conquest spree. After say, 1560 or so, it wouldn't be as much viable. If the main native states manage to go past that point relatively intact, they will be safer, recovering from the first waves of epidemics and adjusting to the contact shock. Spain will be massively busy elsewhere and with less reasources to commit to conquest in the Americas. Conquest happened because, from the Madrid PoV, it was cheap extra gold. In the scenario of this thread, it won't be cheap, so it won't be worthwhile. Spaniard could mount larger expeditions from Cuba in 1550 than Cortes', but the Mesoamericans would be ready by then I guess, so why bother.
Yeah, personally I think a failure of Cortes would simply validate what Velazquez already believed, that it's cheaper just to trade for some gold than it is to spend lots of money on ships, men, horses, weapons, etc and fight for it. Why do all of that when you can just give them some iron in exchange, after all trade guarantees returns and costs fewer lives. I imagine the Mesoamericans would also be interested in some other European products and animals, cows and oxen might even conceivably be more valued than horses. Likewise the Europeans would want some things beside gold, Mesoamerica may not have been technologically advanced but they didn't lack for things of great value, like corn. And yeah, another thing that I like about this whole idea is the fact that European colonization is likely to be more stunted across the entire world, not just in Central America.
There is a world of difference, however, between the sort of conquest that happened in India and the sort of conquest that happened to the OTL Americas. The former is still likely to occur even in a scenario where the collapse of the Classical Maya never occurs. The latter, however, becomes almost impossible.
I can't believe I forgot to bring this up earlier, thanks for mentioning it. No matter what happens, without the Collapse weakening Mesoamerica we will probably see their culture surviving at the very least. All the things the Spanish took from them and were lost to us will remain, their religion, their history, their way of life. And of course there's also the people themselves, who even if conquered will still survive in numbers much larger than OTL. Not just because there'll be more by the contact period, but also because it's less likely so many will be killed off. People on this site are far too fond of attributing almost every death in the conquest to disease, despite the abundance of contemporary Spanish writers expressing shock and horror at what their own people were doing to the natives. Diego de Landa even described extermination campaigns that were expressly meant to depopulate entire provinces that were resisting too well.
 
That was unnecessary, Elfwine. If you think that's a bad argument, you should answer it with why you think it's wrong, not imply that jkay is being childish.

"I think democracy is the best form of government no matter what and would automatically improve things" doesn't deserve being treated as a serious argument.

Thus my snarky comment. If Jkay had an actual argument instead of a prejudice against monarchy regardless of anything as inconvenient as evidence disproving that no, monarchy does not mean tech stagnation, I'd take him seriously.
 
What 9FH and others here are implying is that any combination of circumstances other than what happened in OTL in regards to the Aztec and Incan conquests would likely have been a better outcome for the people of those regions than what they got historically. Cortes dying, his expedition being cut to ribbons, and the Spanish deciding maybe they should just stick to trade and missionaries for a couple of decades probably in the long run is going to turn out better for the natives of Central Mexico than what wound up to them historically-Cortes dumb-lucking his way through an entire Empire and conquering a region twice the size of the country of his birth with a thousand men. Rinse and repeat with the Incans and Pizzaro. It's not difficult to get a different result than OTL with these events, and what 9FH is proposing is a pretty complicated series of divergences.
 
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