I’ve recently been delving into many of r/AskHistorians rebuttals to Jarred Diamond’s Guns, Germs & Steal and have come to realize how flawed Diamond’s methods are after having taken his work as truth for a long time. In particular I found u/Tlahuizcalpantecutli and u/CommodoreCoCo’s critiques extremely interesting and informative in regards to how simply incorrect Diamond is regarding the facts of the Spanish conflicts with Aztec and Inca empires. I understand, from the analysis of the above mods/users, that there really wasn’t a significant military/technological advantage herald by the conquistadors and that much of their success was due to the Europeans being able to successfully make use of native alliances and internal political squabbles of the American Empires. That being said, u/Tlahuizcalpantecutl in particular posits that the Aztecs actually had more reliable food sources, and that the Aztec Empire may have even had a larger population that 16th century Spain. Coupled with both cementers assertions that, with the exception of fire arms and horses, the technology of the Americans was not ultimately that dissimilar to the Spaniards and I find myself returning to two of Diamond’s original questions: Why wasn’t it the Aztecs invading Spain rather than the other way around? And why where the Europeans able to eventually conquer?
I was originally attracted to GG&S because Diamond makes a point to demonstrate that colonization was not the fault of American or Africa civilizations, and makes an attempt to disprove racist euro-centric arguments, yet I see know that his methodology was so broad, and his grasp on the historical events so flawed, that he managed to fall into a determinist, Euro-centric narrative. Yet the fact remains that, regardless of the individual circumstances and possible outcomes, the Spanish colonial empire emerged from the 16th century while the Aztec and Inca empires did not. So how did this happen?
Thank you!
Sources for comment/responses/critiques I referred to:
u/CommodoreCoCo: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2xjnwr/how_much_of_guns_germs_and_steel_is_historically/?st=ji9v66y1&sh=2206248f
u/Tlahuizcalpantecutl: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8nr7xd/thoughts_on_guns_germs_and_steel_by_jared_diamond/?st=ji9vca2i&sh=6c7f1a8b
Why wasn’t it the Aztecs invading Spain rather than the other way around? And why where the Europeans able to eventually conquer?
Good Questions, the first has largely to do with sailing technology. Native Americans had vessels capable of coastal travel but not deep water travel. Why did Europeans have vessels capable of deep sea travel. One of Diamond's claims, holds some truth Europeans benefited from not only from their local technological development, but from technological development from across all of Eurasia. Europeans craft also originated from designs developed over millennia in the Mediterranean which represents a relatively safe place for the development of new technology. You might mess up with your innovation, but if you can make it back to shore you can probably get back to where you started. Many other parts of the world have much less favorable conditions for developing new technology. This helps explain why neither sub-Saharan Africans or Native Americans reached Europe first.
Second, Spaniards didn't conquer the Aztecs on their own. They had tens of thousands of Tlaxcalan allies and early victories swayed dozens of other Aztec subject states to join their campaign. This pattern explains much of the success of Spanish conquest wherever they went. Similar patterns began in the 1490s on Hispaniola and throughout the Caribbean. The strategy of gaining native allies and exploiting antagonisms worked in Peru and much of Central America.
When one looks at where Spaniards were successful vs where they did not succeed for centuries the biggest factor is native population size and indigenous socio-political structures. Spaniards targeted places with large populations and stratified agriculturally dependent societies. These societies were susceptible to the strategies of alliance building that the Spanish used, and were fixed in place so they could be targeted. Less stratified societies, ones that tended to more mobility (semi-sedentary), and those less reliant on agriculture proved to be very difficult. Most importantly, they moved around and could sustain themselves from foraging and hunting, even if they also practiced forms of agriculture and horticulture. The Spanish wanted to conquer settled communities to exploit the existing political economy and resident labor. The semi-sedentary peoples of the lowland tropics proved illusive to find. Moreover, even though these groups certainly had antagonisms with their neighbors their mobility and lack of 'permanent' communities made conquest only marginally profitable.