Good point. Maybe obsidian and jade could also be traded alongside wine? That would definitely boost trade.
What technologies could be invented to ensure the most technologically and scientifically adavanced Mesoamerica?
- Thread starter HyperMuscularDemon
- Start date
Regular exposure to eurasian germs and viruses.
The big problem for the Americans was that up to 90+ % of their population could die after even a friendly contact. All the other issues pale in commparison to that.
As for the opening question, I'd say better shipping tech and an ocean trading practice. Blend and mix the inventions.
European military technology had not yet diverged a great deal from the Eurasian standard. Iron metallurgy, dense formation warfare and cavalry were their main advantages over the natives, and these three they shared with the Japanese. The gap of quality between European and Japanese armies was much narrower, so that the decisive factor would have to be quantity. And since Japan regularily fielded armies in the hundreds of thousands, you'd need to actually move hundreds of thousands of soldiers across the world to conquer them. Which was not really possible in this age.
Basically, any Eurasian army could have replicated the Spanish successes, not even from this period. A Neo-Assyrian army, Roman Legion or Zulu Warband could probably have replicated their successes against the Mesoamericans just as well.
Obsidian and jade were already part of quite extensive indigenous trade networks.
This is outright wrong.
The Spanish conquest of the Aztecs and Mesoamerica more broadly are very contingent on the actors involved. As stated upthread, the Spanish lost during the Night of Tears against the OTL Aztecs, and Cortez's army was made largely of natives armed and organized similarly to the Aztecs. The Spanish only numbered in the hundreds and had they just tried to brute force their way to conquest, they would have been slaughtered because steel and horses don't make you invincible.
Hell, the Purépecha were actually using arsenic-based bronze and they were only conquered because resistance wasn't organized fast enough to a later conquistador who didn't care that the Purépecha were technically vassals/tributaries to the Spanish.
The last independent Mayan state didn't fall until the 1600s, long after the introduction of Eurasian diseases and the disaster that happened because of them + colonization not allowing a native recovery. The Inca only fell after an invasion (again supported by native allies) that occurred after a massive civil war.
So no, the conquest of America could not have been recreated with just a Neo-Assyrian army, Roman legion, or Zulu warband. It's extremely reductive to reduce the sophistication of Mesoamerica down to something that could have been conquered at any time past the Afro-Eurasian Iron Age. It denies all involved in the Conquest the agency that made it possible.
If you're interested in Mesoamerica (or the pre-Columbian Americas in general) I'd recommend 1491 by Charles C. Mann over Guns, Germs, and Steel. It delves into how ccomplex pre-Columbian America was and that it wasn't some place that could just be easily destroyed by the first people to show up with metal weapons.
This is true but not actually a counter to the thesis I presented. The Noche Triste was only possible because the Spanish really fucked up their hasty retreat and were trapped by the water. And even then, very few Spaniards actually died when you consider that the battle also resulted in the deaths of 20,000 Mexica to a few hundred of their own. The greatest military success ever enjoyed by any native force throughout Cortéz expedition against the Spaniards, was a battle in which they took two orders of magnitude more casualties than their opponents. Crucially, the Mexica weren't even able to stop the Spanish advance, in spite of their massive superiority in numbers.
A set of steel armor and steel weapons doesn't make an individual invulnerable, that's true enough, but a thousand men with steel gear in tight formation are pretty much invincible to a thousand men with obsidian weapons and cloth armor in loose formation. Obsidian and copper, no matter how strong the blow, will never penetrate steel, and no kind of cloth armor can stop a properly maintained and wielded steel blade. Which is why Eurasian heavy infantry pretty much cannot be defeated by American heavy infantry in a straight fight, unless they are outnumbered by a factor of dozens.
Note that the peoples who resisted colonialism the best were those which used the terrain to their advantage, which adopted Eurasian firearms and mastered guerillia warfare. The Mayans especially are still fighting the Mexican government in the present century, and they will likely continue to do so until the Europeans have been driven back into the sea (or at least off their land).
I agree with this sentiment, but unfortunately 15th century Eurasian metallurgy is about as far removed from the copper and bronze weaponry employed in the Americas as a firelance is from a flintlock musket. And unfortunately, history has shown that the Eurasian military systems were simply better than the American ones.
Don't get me wrong; I'm not invested in hyping the Europeans up by showing how cool and awesome they were at murdering their colonial victims. In fact I want to remark that the Conquistadors were no-one special, not exceptionally brave or clever or advanced, but that pretty much anyone with the proper means and motivation from across the Atlantic could have done what they did. But we can counter Eurocentric historical narratives much better by comparing them to their peers than their victims.
Yes, but a wheelbarrow would allow for more obsidian and jade to be transported, and thus boost trade further.
Uh, about 20,000 Mexica warriors participated in La Noche Triste. If the Spanish had killed 20,000 Mexica, they would have won the battle handily and not have had to flee. Also, thousands of Tlaxcaltecan allies were also killed by the Mexica alongside the hundreds of Spainards.
The Spanish were the ones with the numerical advantage by the time they had recovered enough to start another offensive. At the fall of Tenochtitlan, there were 200,000 native allies and 80,000 defenders. Even Tetzcoco, one of the former members of the Triple Alliance, had joined on the dogpile against their two other Aztec city-states.
Now, I will give Otumba to the Spainards, but that battle was won by shock cavalry charges that decapitated the Aztec leadership, not by armored infantry or gunpowder.
Wheelbarrows aren't useful over long distances. Carts and wagons would be more appropriate, but then you run into the problem of needing paved roads first.
Remind me never to read Wikipedia articles at ten in the evening again. You're obviously quite right.
This is also true. It doesn't change the fact that the Spaniards did manage to force the bridges during the Noche Triste.
It's still instructive that Spanish casualties ranged in the dozens. The battle clearly shows that the Mesoamerican style of warfare was incapable of resisting a cavalry charge. And almost the exact same scenario would have played out if you took, say, a Roman legion and its cavalry complement.
And I will add that the Spanish conquest of the Triple Alliance is not an isolated event. The conquests of the Inca and the rest of Mesoamerica demonstrate that, while specific events were important, in the Longue durée, the military advanatages enjoyed by the Eurasians were significant enough that symetrical military opposition to them was not actually feazible for a force relying on a purely American system of warfare.
Yes, native allies were invaluable, but it's not like the idea of making allies from the opressed peoples of an empire was a novel idea that the Spanish had an exclusive claim on. We can see the exact same idea pop up pretty much everywhere, as far back as the first wars between the Sumerian city-states.
Forced is a bit of a strong word, given that the causeway was initially unguarded, and the Aztecs were not anticipating an escape, due to Cortez sending envoys regarding a ceasefire. The 20,000 Aztecs weren't lined up in formation at the causeways; they were often in their homes and haphazardly ran to chase to the Spainards.
Pre-modern night retreats were often successful, regardless of the parity of the combatants. Washington was able to escape unscathed from Brooklyn Heights, for instance, and his army was woefully inferior to the British, as the battles right before his retreat can attest to.
Note that when the Aztecs were prepared at the Fall of Tenochtitlan, the Spanish had significant issues forcing the causeways in the initial phase, when most of their allies had not yet arrived and the defenders were not weakened by food/water shortages.
Otumba was a confluence of a lot of factors that benefitted cavalry. The Aztecs were looking for prisoners instead of kills, were overconfident due to their numerical superiority and their success during La Noche Triste, had never encountered cavalry in battle before, and met the Spainards on an open plain. When Pedro de Alvarado made a cavalry charge across a causeway at Tenochtitlan, he and 8 others were wounded, and 5 men were dragged off and later sacrificed.
A similar story with the Inca, where after initial battles where cavalry proved decisive, Incan remnants were able to neutralize cavalry in subsequent battles through the use of missiles and traps with technologies that are available to the Aztecs.
The Inca were decimated by disease and had just wrapped up a civil war. I would argue that Cajarmaca was closer to a massacre than a battle, given that the Incans were largely unarmed bar ceremonial weapons and expecting a diplomatic meeting. After Cajarmaca, Atahualpa ordered his forces to stand down and the two succesive Sapa Inca after Atahualpa under mobilized their soldiers to aid the Spanish, causing mass confusion among the soldiery elsewhere that resulted in the Spanish victories from late 1533 to 1535. After that, the Spanish employed plenty of native auxiliaries.
As for the conquest of the Yucatan and Central America, those regions were far less centralized and populous, and the Spanish continued to use plenty of native auxiliaries. Something to note is that many of the states that allied with the Spanish received many benefits and retained a lot of their autonomy. Tlaxaca for instance retained much of their territory, were granted hidalgo status, and even led settler-colonization efforts in Chichimeca. As a result, they continued to send forces to aid Spanish conquistadors, not only out of obligation, but also to conduct their own form of expansion.
I do agree that the Europeans had a military advantage in a 1:1 fight, but that was offset by their ability to project force across the Atlantic in the 16th century.
That's true, although I will note that a brand new power arriving/emerging upsets the diplomatic status quo and allows for the new power to leverage alliances to achieve dominance. It's a similar reason as to how previous "backwaters" can suddenly become great powers seemingly out of nowhere, like the Rashidun Caliphate, the Vikings, and various steppe nomads. However, diplomatic maneuvering isn't the same as military superiority.
I refer you to the battle of Vilcaconga, which neatly demonstrates the ability of Eurasian heavy infantry to shrugg off the efforts of a much greater force of American oppponents who enjoyed pretty much every conceivable advantage. Simply put, if the former stood strong, the latter had no effective means of breaking their formation or restricting their movement.
Strategic considerations should not be ignored, but when we look at the actual engagements, we find the Inca basically incapable of winning field battles.
We should distinguish between the low-density societies the Spanish faced from the huge, dense agricultural empires whose conquest is most famous. The former actually did much better when you look at overall military results. If we look at conflicts like King Phillip's war, we see that the Americans got pretty good at smoking Eurasian forces. In fact, native auxilliaries tended to perform much better in these conflicts than the Europeans themselves.
Something to note about Vilcaconga is that we only have Spanish sources about the battle (at least based on the citations of the secondary sources I could find). Based on Cortes' letters and the records of other conquistadors, they have a universally common habit of downplaying the role of native auxiliaries in the conquest of the Americas.
I think the strategic situation is more important than you give credit for. The Inca were exhausted after their civil war combined with a concurrent smallpox epidemic, and much of their leadership was with Atahualpa. Plus, Atahualpa's captivity and the orders he sent resulted in the blooded armies of the civil war demobilizing before his death, so Quizquiz likely is fielding new levies given the nature of Incan recruitment. As a result, the Incas likely have demoralized, sick, and green soldiers present at the battle, which isn't a recipe for success.
Even at the tactical level, Vilcaconga is a mountain pass, a location that is ideal for a small group of heavy infantry given that the Incas are incapable of flanking the Spanish infantry in any meaningful capacity.
Plus, the Inca did win in the field of handful of times, despite their handicaps. At the Siege of Cusco, virtually all the relief expeditions from Lima were annihilated, resulting in the deaths of a couple hundred conquistadors. At Ollantaytambo, the Incas didn't even have numerical superiority, yet they warded off several Spanish assaults and even captured some Spanish equipment.
I agree that they were more effective, but a large part of that success is that these "low-density societies" did not have to fight the Spanish first. Their societies had years to stabilize and recover from the epidemics that hit them, they heard secondhand the capabilities (and perfidy) of the Europeans, and in the case of King Philip's War, they were able to trade for European arms. There also was the advantage of decentralization, so new Conquistadors couldn't exactly cripple an entire region by waltzing into the capital under a peaceful guise and then holding the ruler hostage.
That is certainly true, and indeed presents the main challenge to the early history of Spanish colonialism as I see it. There is ultimately no real way of confirming the exact historicity of Spanish accounts. But I think it's important to note that their account broadly matches other historical descriptions of a large number of light infantry attacking a smaller number of heavy infantry. The Battle of Watling Street presents a comparable scenario, although we again run into the problem of source reliability.
Personally, I think the Spaniards are way overstating the number of enemies they actually killed, and I doubt they actually new the enemy's strength beyond "a lot more than we have", when you consider that it was dark, in difficult terrain, and completely out of nowhere. But I still think that the Spaniards generally report their own casualties plausibly.
Still, the Spanish generally need to field a fraction of the forces that their opponents muster, and the power scaling is exponentially on their side. It's difficult to say how a healthy Inca Empire would have dealt with the Spanish, but probably a lot better than the Triple Alliance, since at least their state had generated considerable buy-in from many of its subjects. At the same time, I find it instructive that the Incan military kept loosing battles that by all rights they should have won. So on at least a tactical level, the Spanish military system was still so superior that it nullified many operational and strategic disadvantages. (Conquistadors were pretty bad at those parts of war that went beyond "sword go chop" imo).
I agree that the Spanish casualties are right, but the part I'm disputing regarding the Spanish sources is the presence of native auxiliaries in the battle, which may have been more important that Spanish chroniclers may have given them credit for.
Watling Street is a bit different, because there were enough Romans to form a cohesive formation (one and a half legions, plus auxiliaries) by themselves.
All of that is true, but the Spanish could only field a fraction of their forces due to the logistical difficulties of supply a force in the Americas. I'm not questioning that a Spanish tercio would absolutely stomp a "prime" Incan/Aztec army if given their chance, but the conquests were made with so few Spainards that they couldn't really leverage their military edge except in some very specific circumstances that I would argue were one-off scenarios unlikely to be replicated.
At the same time, the Spanish also lost battles that they should have won. The aforementioned Ollaytambo and the relief expeditions from Lima to Cusco all had various tactical advantages that the Spanish did not have at Vilcaconga (better geographic knowledge, large numbers of native auxiliaries, more legitimacy), yet they resulted in defeat for the Spanish.
The Spaniards do generally mention the presence of native auxilliaries though, even if they aren't particularily interested in what those were up to. And I suspect that at Vilcaconga, native allies would never have made the mistake the Spanish did, which was to blunder headlong into an ambush due to not deploying any scouts whatsoever. I attribute this particular stupidity to the Conquistadors' unfamiliarity with alpine terrain - the Bebers that they fought in Spain certainly didn't fight like the Incans did.
You touch on an important issue - Conquistadors were basically mercenaries, and far from the cream of the crop as far as European soldiers were concerned. But to me this suggests rather that their technological base was able to make up for these deficiences, suggesting its efficiency. Basically, the Conquistadors were exchangable stooges, who mainly won because they had better arms and armor and knew how to use them.
Like, I've basically zero experience handling firearms, but if someone showed me the ropes I could probably decimate a Napoleonic infantry company with an AR-15. I wouldn't be invulnerable, but the difference in gear is significant enough that my general lack of aptitude will not really factor into the outcome if you scale the experiment up sufficiently.
I guess what we're really arguing about is wether the Spanish Conquest of Mesoamerica and the Andes constitutes a sample of sufficient size to be representative.
Definitely. As I said above, Conquistadors weren't exactly military geniuses. They weren't amateurs either, but still far from Spain's A-Team. There was a big battle in Morocco whose name I can't recall where the Spanish basically tried to pull a Cortez against the Muslims and got absolutely curbstomped for their trouble.
I'm inclined to believe that the Spainards did have auxiliaries (or at least guides) for one major reason: their advanced was perfectly timed with the dry season. Ollaytambo showed how badly an advance when the Andean rivers were inundated with water could result. Prior to the battle, the Conquistadors were able to ford the Apurimac despite the Inca having destroyed the bridges, something that requires both knowledge of the river and weather so that a fording party isn't swept away by a flash flood or founders in deep water.
Also, there was a scouting party. De Soto's initial 40 cavalrymen were the vanguard of the Spanish force and were the ones that suffered 5 deaths. It was only when the main body of the force arrived in the early morning did they push through the Inca.
John Hemming's The Conquest of the Incas also mentions that despite the uphill nature of the pass and the well-timed nature of the ambush, there were a lot of better places that Quizquiz could have defended that may have resulted in the annihilation of the Spanish vanguard (likely the same places where the relief columns heading to Cusco were annihilated several years later), which suggests that the Spanish had local knowledge allowing them to somewhat outmaneuver Quizquiz.
I agree wholeheartedly that conquistadors were effectively mercenaries, but professional soldiers were the exception rather than the norm. Even the early tercios were still compromised of mercenaries, and the widespread usage of mercenaries into the 17th century was also why the 30 Years War had such a horrific death toll.
True, but I wouldn't really place the Conqs in the same league as say, French Gentes d'Arme or Swiss Guards. If you look at their careers, most of them left Europe precisely because they had little prospects in life, many hailing from the Extremadura of all places.
I don't doubt that they had guides with them, translators at least, but I'm not sure if we can actually assume a significant body of local allies in this battle at least. Presumably, you'd use people who actually knew the terrain to scout, rather than your irreplacable cavalry. Evidently, the horsemen did not do a terribly good job. Of course, the Conquistadors were in a rush, but I do wonder what they expected those 40 horsemen to actually do once they encountered the enemy and didn't have any infantry to support them.
EDIT: on a further note, the Conquistadors weren't terribly well motivated, since they seem to mutiny every time that they aren't being showered in gold and display more loyalty to their commanders than the actual Spanish crown which they notionally served.
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How about crossbows? If someone invents crossbows like say about 1045 AD in Mesoamerica, the Mesoamericans would have a better weapon to defend themselves. Also some other innovator could put metal into their crossbows, doubling its effectiveness in warfare as well as advancing metallurgy in general as other Mesoamerican states copy the innovation, perhaps even making metal armor and swords.