Spanish conquest of Aztecs and Incas - a "Black Swan" event or "Overdetermined" ?

European conquest of Aztecs and Incas - a "Black Swan" event or "Overdetermined"?

  • Conquest of Aztecs and Incas was overdetermined

    Votes: 9 11.5%
  • Conquest of Aztecs and Incas was two amazing strokes of good luck

    Votes: 27 34.6%
  • Conquest of Aztecs was inevitable, but of Incas was wildly lucky

    Votes: 32 41.0%
  • Conquest of Aztecs was wildly lucky, but of Incas was inevitable once Spanish arrived

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Conquest of Aztecs and Incas was overdetermined, but only Spanish could pull it off

    Votes: 2 2.6%
  • Conquest of Aztecs and Incas was wildly lucky, other Europeans never could match that luck

    Votes: 8 10.3%

  • Total voters
    78

raharris1973

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Debate ebbs and flows on this question.

Were the outcomes in Peru or Mexico just par for the course because of European advantages in guns, germs and steel?

Or was this a fluke case of the perfect confluence of opportunities meeting up with people perfectly prepared for it, an them being lucky at crucial moments?
 
Both the Aztec, and Inca empires was not in the best shape when the Spanish drop by for gold, silver, territory, and slaves. Both was on a decline for some time.

Everyone hated the Aztecs for the years of raiding, conquest, human sacrifice of their taken subjects, and Aztec domination of the region.

The Incas had a civil war start when Pizarro and de Soto came back around, unrest among newly conquered territories, and smallpox. (It also help the Spanish was very good at siege warfare thanks to their wars with the Moors, and also had a ton of native allies who also wanted to bring down the Inca Empire.)

The Aztec days was number for sometime, but the Inca honesty could have made it.
 
Debate ebbs and flows on this question.

Were the outcomes in Peru or Mexico just par for the course because of European advantages in guns, germs and steel?

Or was this a fluke case of the perfect confluence of opportunities meeting up with people perfectly prepared for it, an them being lucky at crucial moments?

Neither.

The opportunity existed to defeat the Aztecs and the Inca, but success was neither almost certain nor so unlikely as to be a mere fluke.
 
The Aztecs were easy to topple; not inevitable, but certainly expected from the balance of power between the Aztecs and the Aztec-hating parts of Central America. Of course actually conquering the place rather than just toppling the Aztecs and creating a succession of Spain-aligned regimes in need of future conquering (like the Portuguese did in Asia, though they usually didn't get around to the conquering) required a bunch of fast thinking from the Conquistadors.

The Incas seem to have been more of a long shot, as the Spanish had much less innate Incan weakness to exploit and so even toppling the government required some luck. However, because it was so much more stable and centralized, toppling the government leading to conquest was less of a stretch goal (even if it took a whole lot of fighting to make that conquest stick).
 
The only thing the Inca had going against them was a major civil war. That was the real Spanish luck. The conquest of the Aztecs was a bit more determined considering how hated they were and how the initial conquistadors were pretty brilliant. Disease was very helpful as well in thinning the opposition and eliminating important figures (Cuitlahuac died of smallpox, Huayna Capac died of smallpox before the Spanish were even there, etc.).

Spain (or any European power as you sometimes see) conquering the Inca is insane luck which you wouldn't expect in some ATL (it's essentially a case of lightning striking twice), but the Aztec result is more reasonable. Maybe the Inca could be conquered later, but it would be in a way more comparable to Indonesia or India where European powers exploit cracks in the state to fragment it and move in to establish their own rule. But that isn't inevitable either, although I would think that would've been the most likely method how the Inca would've been colonised if they were to be colonised.
 
Given technological differences I suspect in both cases an eventual conquest (or at least vasselization) was inevitable. The Aztecs seemed to be a fairly precarious position, so a relatively rapid conquest ala OTL seems fairly likely. The Incas, on the other hand, I suspect should have taken several decades of serious campaigning to either conquer or bring irreversibly into the Spanish orbit (hell, OTL there was a rebellion that almost retook Cusco and after that the Neo-Inca state held on into the 1570s).
 
Given technological differences I suspect in both cases an eventual conquest (or at least vasselization) was inevitable. The Aztecs seemed to be a fairly precarious position, so a relatively rapid conquest ala OTL seems fairly likely. The Incas, on the other hand, I suspect should have taken several decades of serious campaigning to either conquer or bring irreversibly into the Spanish orbit (hell, OTL there was a rebellion that almost retook Cusco and after that the Neo-Inca state held on into the 1570s).

A revolt after the demands of the imperial overlord become apparent is not out of the ordinary. Happened in Roman Britain and Gaul, for instance.
 

raharris1973

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@everybody -

Could any other powers besides Spain have spawned a Cortez-like figure to claim Mexico for his home country? Is it implausible for anybody else to have his luck?

Or did the Spanish have "very special skills" like Liam Neeson in the "Taken" movies, that it would be a stretch to have someone from France, England, Portugal, Denmark or the HRE match?

Note obviously Spanish support of Columbus and his voyages in Cuba and Hispaniola give the Spanish a proximity advantage relative to Mexico, so a late PoD may be hard.

Be willing to consider PoDs as far back as 1400.
 
I think the Spanish got lucky with both the Aztecs and even more lucky with the Inca. The Spanish caught the Inca in the middle of a civil war and benefited from the chaos over who would become the next emperor. The conquest of the Aztecs was more probable, just because of how hated the Aztecs were and that the region was much less unified, so it would be easier to ally with various nations or play them off against each other.

@everybody -

Could any other powers besides Spain have spawned a Cortez-like figure to claim Mexico for his home country? Is it implausible for anybody else to have his luck?

Or did the Spanish have "very special skills" like Liam Neeson in the "Taken" movies, that it would be a stretch to have someone from France, England, Portugal, Denmark or the HRE match?

Note obviously Spanish support of Columbus and his voyages in Cuba and Hispaniola give the Spanish a proximity advantage relative to Mexico, so a late PoD may be hard.

Be willing to consider PoDs as far back as 1400.

I read that the fact that Spain had so many soldiers seasoned from the Reconquista was beneficial to their conquest of the Aztec and the Incas, but I think that most sufficiently motivated Western European nations would probably fare well in at least carving out colonies in the Americas. More than weapons, smallpox seriously hobbled the ability of native nations to fight back against the European invaders.
 
I read that the fact that Spain had so many soldiers seasoned from the Reconquista was beneficial to their conquest of the Aztec and the Incas, but I think that most sufficiently motivated Western European nations would probably fare well in at least carving out colonies in the Americas. More than weapons, smallpox seriously hobbled the ability of native nations to fight back against the European invaders.

Some writer once said Spanish military tactics were actually quite unique as it was a hybrid of European and Moorish. They combined European way of battle with Moorish trickery. Or what we would today call unconventional warfare. Where as Medieval European armies would typically lay seige to bring about submission, the Spaniards during Reconquista preferred to use guile, using such tactics as kidnapping an enemy leader for leverage and exploiting divisions in the enemy's alliances.
 
Some writer once said Spanish military tactics were actually quite unique as it was a hybrid of European and Moorish. They combined European way of battle with Moorish trickery. Or what we would today call unconventional warfare. Where as Medieval European armies would typically lay seige to bring about submission, the Spaniards during Reconquista preferred to use guile, using such tactics as kidnapping an enemy leader for leverage and exploiting divisions in the enemy's alliances.
That strikes me as just a combination of Orientalism with the Black Legend.
 
I would say a quick look over of the history of Iberian politics would seem to favor Richard’s explanation of rapidly changing alliances and manipulating personalities being part of the Spanish cultural experience. That’s how they kept off the reconquista for so long, after all. You could draw some interesting parallels between the rapid collapse of the Visigothic state at Arab hands to the rapid collapse of the new world societies as well.
 
I think its was luck in both cases, a prophety that white bearded men will come from east to conquest? 110 men killing and army of thousand, without a single dead?, 12 men and a woman conquer and empire of millions? The empire in his first battle against this new enemy of 170 men aprox send more than 20.000 men and his emperor to capture these bandits losse The battle and The emperor get captured? The spanish ask for a stupid large quantity of gold and silver as ramson and actually get paíd?
Come on if this was ficction would be regarded as bad fiction. If this is not luck i dont know what luck is.
That being said i belived that The spanish have a very especial set of skill, not The least a seassoned soldery, a good know how of siege and open land warfare, The best navy and marines of his time, a pretty diversified economy, a strong and centralized govermnet. And a often overlooked advsntage,nthe experience of figthing in tropical and hot climate, as part of his natal land. Try imagine s bunch of england soldiers recently arrrived from albion fighting The Méxica un middle of The jungle and winning? Nothing personal but i doubt The could put their armor to fight
 
This is just me reiterating a conclusion I reached a while ago, reexamined based on some helpful facts I learned right here on AH.com and reading some books subsequently, and re-arrived-at again. There were a few non-Eurasian states that could resist European/Eurasian conquest for a time provided the disease vector favoured them, but even with the vector in their favour they were few. This is an important argument: conquests being global means that any local specifics are less important than people think. The relative advantage in warfare, skillsets needed for exploration and diplomatic guile mattered; the disadvantage was the length of the logistic effort and the initial manpower mismatches. And the advantage in manpower by local nations is overcome with epidemics. So in the long term I don't think any American state could resist any Europeans (not just the Spanish) indefinitely. On the other hand, the specific circumstances of the conquest could rightly be seen as a total fluke and I wouldn't be surprised if in another timeline quite similar to ours but not the same, the Incas made it to the mid-17th c. like individual Maya states, or maybe even the early 18th c. like the North American confederations.

The Mexica, though, seem to have been quite brittle as a power.
 
Why exactly was finding the Incans in a civil war "luck" for the Spanish? Can one really expect such a big state to remain stable with the Old world diseases spreading through the population?
 
I think the Philippines has better chances of holding off invasion or retarding the Spanish invasion, a political change before the Spanish comes would prevent the Spanish from holding Luzon..since Lakandula was the one holding the strings.
 
Why? Orientalism is painting all of the other as the same. Do you have a specific objection to the discription of Moorish tactics?

I mean, Orientalism is a little more complicated than that, to be fair. But that's not really the point.

Western warfare has plenty of examples of treachery and the Kingdom of Grenada was not particularly known for clever military tactics. Nor did the "Moors" really fight with the type of steppe tactics that usually get the orientalist treatment as "cowardly" or "treacherous."

The main skill of the Spanish was exploiting the situations they found themselves in. They were great at that. But lest I seem to be advocating for any sort of great man view of history, let's be clear that any people adventurous and ambitious enough to lead the same sort of explorations across America would probably be equally cunning and capable of violence.
 
Why exactly was finding the Incans in a civil war "luck" for the Spanish? Can one really expect such a big state to remain stable with the Old world diseases spreading through the population?

I believe the Inca civil war was caused by old world diseases killing both the reigning Inca and his heir, leaving the succession in doubt. Then the Spanish fluked into capturing the winner of the civil war immediately after it was settled.
 
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