WI: Aztecs slaughter the Conquistadors?
- Thread starter MrNumbahOne
- Start date
Why? Why send in colonizers to conquer a hostile land that you've already failed multiple times to control, and which have thus far failed to provide a return on investment? There is no reason for Spain to keep 'sending people' across the Atlantic in wave after wave. The conquistadors were not zergs, they will find other things to do particularly when they hear that New World explorers are dying horribly.
Mookie
Banned
Gold. These arent armies, but small groups of few hundred people. All it takes is someone to survive and bring stories of gold and its over for Aztecs.
But kill Columbus and everyone will talk how the idiot got himself killed by falling off the edge of the world.
Lands were more of a motivation for conquistadores than the relativly lacking gold, at least in Mexico. Look at the contemporary accounts made by conquistadores : stories about gold, mines and stuff doesn't really that interest them; but they talk during entiere pages about how the land is farmed, how wealthy it is, etc.
And regarding Colombus, you may be not aware that almost everyone (and I say almost in order to be safe) knew that Earth was round-shaped. They would simply think that he sailed too far on the large and immense sea that separated Europe to Asia, as everyone told so.
That said, you'll have other discovering America pretty soon, as Atlantic was more and more sailed by the XVth century. Would it be only accidental, as Cabral's discovery; or using Portuguese and Basques accounts of fishing coasts, you'll have someone going west sooner or later, and more soon than late.
My one quibble here is that porting in "neolithic" from Europe to describe the various Mexica or Maya cultures in Central America is kind of an apples to oranges comparison. Europe tended to be metal happy, or at least metal driven, in its development, and one finds stone tools alongside clan passed polities and culture that's barely passed cave paintings. The contrast between your average European neolithic, or even some bronze age, cultures and Pre-Contact Mesoamerica is stark. Massive social organizations stretching across multiple cities, public works projects that made what's now infertile jungle fertile food producers. Systems of record keeping (sadly burned) that stack up well next to some of the late medieval states on example in Europe. My point is, this isn't the "they had a rich and beautiful culture" condescending undergrad horseshit - these are polities that could organize people and resources on a massive scale, and could and did fight wars of conquest with a great deal of efficiency.
Now, I think that the germs factor means there is a certain inevitability here. On the high end, due to an unfortunate protein coding that's common if one's ancestors came over the Bering Strait, smallpox is going to kill a ludicrous number of people. This was probably exacerbated by the urbanism of Central America. Still though, the Inca, similar heavyweights, had survived their initial smallpox epidemic with their government and social structures intact - they'd just finished off a civil war when Pizzaro shows up. If the Mexica had defeat Cortez, they have some potential to keep hitting, or at least face the next Spanish wave on their guard. Against this of course is the fact that they will keep having repeated virgin soil epidemics, and their sources of steel weapons are the people they are fighting - it's still a bit too early to get weapons from other Europeans.
So I'd say its a small chance, and not a foregone conclusion. Most likely, you have a Spanish New World that is more shaped by having to fight against far better organized indigenous people. Spanish expedition number five or six may well do the trick - almost certainly will - but you have a much more military Spanish New World. Not just pirate hunting and keeping order, but forces capable of facing what will seem like a peer power. Not a peer to the might of Spain, but certainly a peer to that part of it on this side of the ocean. This doesn't entirely disagree with TF, I still think the Mexica go down in the end - but Cortez was a bit of a natural 20, and a more gradual process might butterfly into a very different Spanish-speaking Americas.
Last edited:
This. Cortez was freakishly lucky, to the point where he seems more like an overpowered RPG character than a historical figure. I'd say his success veers pretty close to ASB-ness IRL. It would be very easy for the Spanish to have a much harder time conquering Mesoamerica than OTL.
How Not to Write a Novel has a funny section about this kind of thing called "Why Your Job is Harder Than God's", in the sense that real life is allowed to get away with anything, while the writer has to make their story seem "plausible".
TFSmith121
Banned
Okay, but...
It was an age where technology made all the difference, and flint, bone, and stone just didn't compete with steel.
So, yes, it is apples and nopales (?), but it serves a purpose ... I use neolithic because it makes it clear how much in common the western hemisphere "stone" empires had in common with the eastern hemisphere "stone" empires...but not with their descendents.
The Inca, Maya, and Mexica would have been right at home in 5000 BCE Eurasia; unfortunately for them, when the balloon went up, they were dealing with 1500 CE Europe.
Best,
It was an age where technology made all the difference, and flint, bone, and stone just didn't compete with steel.
So, yes, it is apples and nopales (?), but it serves a purpose ... I use neolithic because it makes it clear how much in common the western hemisphere "stone" empires had in common with the eastern hemisphere "stone" empires...but not with their descendents.
The Inca, Maya, and Mexica would have been right at home in 5000 BCE Eurasia; unfortunately for them, when the balloon went up, they were dealing with 1500 CE Europe.
Best,
Bronze is not stone. The inca, given a decade would be catching Europe up, with its huge manpower (due to compulsory civil cervace), gold and resources to trade.
Inca would stomp any civilisation upto the romans, which were advanced for their time, and some of its successors.
The Spaniards had a long run of "ASB" success; Mexico, the Caribbean, the Incas... After a while it sounds a lot less like ASB.
They also had a string of failures-see De Soto's expedition, the first conquest of the Pueblo (and the initial forays into their territories), the attempts to pacify the Apache (ended when the Apache basically played the Spaniards into serving as bait for the Comanche), the initial expeditions into the Mayan territories, etc. etc.
An Aztec empire which defeats the Spaniards is an empire which gets some breathing room. If they defeat the Tlaxcalans after they defeat the Spaniards (difficult, but possible) they will deny future Spanish invasions easy allies to use against them.
In the meantime, without the precedent set by the Aztecs, the Spanish may not even try to conquer the Inca empire-or if they do, their conquest will be delayed by long enough for the empire to stabilize from the civil war, allowing them to mount a resistance. And while the Inca don't have 'guns, germs, and steel', they have the Andes, extremely rough geography which will be hell for the Spanish to try to conquer without rebellious Inca nobles to aid them.
It took centuries IOTL, and decades with just the Aztec realms alone. While Tenochtitlan may have fallen pretty quickly, and the Triple Alliance's government was doomed, the people still put up quite a bit of fight.
This is a profound misunderstanding of both Pre-Columbian cultures, which cannot realistically be compared to Stone Age Europe and the Middle East, nor collapsed under the fate of technological or (usually) military forces, but rather under that of disease and increasing European populations.
Anyways, to answer OPs question, this almost happened on more than one occasion IOTL. Most obvious is that the Incan conquest is at least delayed, since it was inspired by OTL Cortez's success. Disease has still definitely made it to the Aztecs at this point, though, so population declines mean that a second attempt will probably make at least some progress, although we could see events go the way of the historical Maya, with populations having a more or less de facto independence and unrest rather than a complete conquest.
TFSmith121
Banned
Yeah, but...
there's a long way from using small amounts of bronze for jewelry and decorative purposes and industrial scale production for use in weapons, armor, and transportation, much less iron and steel.
The Western Hemisphere imperial cultures were amazing, and certainly are interesting examples of comparative cultural development with their neolithic peers in Eurasia and Africa...but the brutal reality is, given human nature, there were four continents that were going to be dominated by (for lack a better term) Europeans after 1500, and two of them were in the Western Hemisphere.
Best,
there's a long way from using small amounts of bronze for jewelry and decorative purposes and industrial scale production for use in weapons, armor, and transportation, much less iron and steel.
The Western Hemisphere imperial cultures were amazing, and certainly are interesting examples of comparative cultural development with their neolithic peers in Eurasia and Africa...but the brutal reality is, given human nature, there were four continents that were going to be dominated by (for lack a better term) Europeans after 1500, and two of them were in the Western Hemisphere.
Best,
TFSmith121
Banned
Where is there an example of...
Where is there an example of a Eurafasian society meeting a technologically disadvantaged population - to the extreme of steel on the one hand and insignificant metallurgy on the other - where the aforementioned Eurafasian society did not - to be brutal about it - roll over the "other" society?
Disease and population pressure was also very significant (never argued they weren't), but the technological differential is what doomed the Western Hemisphere and Australasian cultures...to the basic point that without it, there wouldn't have been a "Columbian exchange" or anything like it in the first place.
Best,
Where is there an example of a Eurafasian society meeting a technologically disadvantaged population - to the extreme of steel on the one hand and insignificant metallurgy on the other - where the aforementioned Eurafasian society did not - to be brutal about it - roll over the "other" society?
Disease and population pressure was also very significant (never argued they weren't), but the technological differential is what doomed the Western Hemisphere and Australasian cultures...to the basic point that without it, there wouldn't have been a "Columbian exchange" or anything like it in the first place.
Best,
Well, for starters, in the Americas. The Mayan put up a good fight for centuries, and then after conquest, kept putting up revolts until the early-mid 20th century. Large portions of the Americas were at least de facto native controlled until after the advent of modern rifles - the US West wasn't effectively conquered until at least the 1880s, and likely later in some regions. The Mapuche of South America were fighting against Spain, Chile, and/or Argentina up until around the same timeframe, and they were actually contacted much earlier.
Outside of the Americas, a lot of the world that is more remote or inhospitable by European standards remained more or less de facto independent until recent history, or even later in some cases, regardless of what sort of technologies were there.
Even moving beyond that, my comment was that comparing Pre-Columbian America to Neolithic Eurasia misunderstood the types of technologies used by the two regions, which were vastly different. Nevermind that technological superiority assumes that technology has some sort of direction to it, while we have plenty of examples of cultures developing vastly different technologies, or different technologies at different relative points in their histories.
In the Andes, the native population there has rebounded and in some cases (Bolivia) has even seized the reigns of power in modern times. The Spanish and their successor states were beset by rebellion from the Natives throughout their attempts to colonize them, and never succeeded in either wiping out their culture or demographically reducing them to the point where they could be pushed aside.
Nearly happened in the Yucatan, with the caste war only being stopped by Mexican influence. That nation itself NOT being a case of the Native society 'rolling over'-Mexico is a mestizo nation, with rather large pockets of 'pure' native culture and a dominant culture with strong linguistic and cultural Native influence.
And, of course, the tribal peoples of the Great Plains and Pampas who adapted to and resisted germs, steel, and several centuries of guns quite well. Eventually industrial technology beat them down, but mere steel by itself was not enough to defeat them.
TFSmith121
Banned
Putting up a good fight that still ended in
the absolute destruction of their societies.
Not exactly a win.
Best,
the absolute destruction of their societies.
Not exactly a win.
Best,
Except... that didn't happen? Many of the Mayan people still live in their traditional societies, the majority of the Yucatan peninsula is ethnically and linguistically Mayan, and even the Mayan religion survives with varying degrees of modifications.
TFSmith121
Banned
"Mestizo" by itself suggests the reality, true?
"Mestizo" by itself suggests the reality, true?
Best,
"Mestizo" by itself suggests the reality, true?
Best,
Lateknight
Banned
This the thing is south of the border natives did a lot better at resisting Europeans then is commonly believed in the u.s.