A few things complicate this question. For starters how to define a “more advanced” society, and in relation to what? This connects to big scholarly discussions, with schools like postcolonial studies arguing that we shouldn’t see Western countries as a gold standard and most advanced, & also not judge all other societies as more or less advanced in relation to Western Europe. These are still very important debates to consider and expand on, but I think stray a bit from your question which looks more to then contemporary, European views of other societies.

Turning to the early modern period, we could see China as one such an example of a surely highly developed society, in certain respects probably more so than European states at the time (I’ll leave this to our Asia experts). While there were plans made in the Spanish Philippines for an invasion of China in the late 16th c., the Spanish monarch Philipp II decided against them. The odds were clearly not in favour of such an invasion attempt. This is not exactly a reaction of fear but rather a calculated response in face of a very strong, non-European power. Again though, China had been known in Europe in different ways for centuries.

So let’s turn to a related case which seems like a good case study for what you’re asking about, previously unknown societies: early Spanish colonisation in the Americas, a part of the world (mostly) unknown to Europe until the 15th century. This is not an attempt to give a global answer to your question, but to show one context and to hopefully extrapolate from there. My focus is less on the question of a possible “fear” of specific conquistadors, which is a bit hard to argue for or against, but rather on their goals and reactions. I’ll first look at general Spanish motivations and legitimations and then at some perceptions of native societies.

 

I.

How could Europeans coming to the Americas perceive the native American societies? Would it even fit their worldview that other societies could be more advanced than their own? I’d see one major argument against this: religion. For people like Columbus or Cortés, their superiority to the indigenous people they encountered was pretty clear from the start in that they were not Christian. And bringing Christianity to these parts was after all the Iberian powers’ main legitimation for American expansion. Starting with the treaty of Tordesillas 1495, the pope basically divided the world into Portuguese and Spanish spheres of influence, meaning that their colonisation was based on Christianisation. There were other precursors for how to perceive non-Europeans for the Spanish: many studies show how the Spaniards would transpose racially charged, stereotypical views of Muslims on native Americans and their societies. These views had been shaped the centuries of wars between medieval Iberian Christian and Muslim states. As Anthony Pagden argues, Europeans did not see the new people, nature and customs they encountered in the Americas from a blank slate – rather they perceived them in terms of what they knew from back home, a process we can notice in most other contexts of first contact.

 

We can add to Christian legitimisation the major motivations for conquest, which were economic - as usual with European colonial expansion. The early conquistadors’ aimed to gain the rights of rule over certain areas, with the main focus on rights of native labour. This encomienda system meant that the first motivation was less on finding specific land to cultivate (as in British America), but rather on attaining rights over native communities that would than have to work for the encomenderos. The major resource for the Spanish would become American silver as the motor of their economy, mined in horrible conditions by native and later African forced laborers. I mention these Spanish motivations to show again were European perceptions came from in the 16th c. The large and impressive societies they encountered were not so much seen in terms of being more or less advanced – even though certain advances were recognized. Rather, the native population was mainly seen in terms of

a) being heathen and having to be converted to Christianity (as the base of Spanish rule); and b) as a central labor force, with native and later African people and people of mixed descent massively outnumbering Europeans in Spanish America.

 

II.

Let’s look more closely now at how early conquistadors reacted to native societies. Remember, the two largest empires in central and south America, the Incas and Aztecs, were clearly well developed with their own social structures, major cultural production and technologies. These were all often recognized by the first Europeans. Spanish sources early on remark on the similarities between Spanish and Aztec societies, with their hierarchical structures (rulers, nobles, commoners), importance of genearlogy etc. Accounts by Hernan Cortés and another Spanish conquistador in Mexico, Díaz de Castillo, show the respect and even awe they felt for Aztec societies. When first entering Tenochtitlan, in the early 16th c., for them the Aztec capital is comparable to the most important Spanish cities that they knew. Actually with its probably somewhere between 200-250.000 inhabitans, Tenochtitlan was bigger than most European cities at the time. The accounts describe its massive market as being larger than any European one. They are impressed by the Aztec ruler Moctezuma and his court. And overall impressed by the sight of a massive city built on top of a lake (Lake Tezcoco), which included a complicated array of moats, canals and even agriculture. In the end, the Spaniards’ reaction here is one of certain admiration of this culture, but not one of fear. As I’ve described elsewhere in more detail, Cortés would after a first defeat end up destroying these complicated structures on the lake since they hindered his siege of the city. Buildings like the palace and temple were destroyed as symbols of state and religion, despite their clearly very advanced architecture. So from this example we can note more of a strategical approach, were the Spanish recognized advances but would then often either destroy them or sometimes try to turn them to their advantage since they did not fit their intentions and worldview.

 

This is not to say that Europeans were cunningly exploiting native societies, which only stood by passively. Far from it. Probably the most important factor for Cortés and most other Spanish conquest campaigns, apart from diseases brought from Europe, were native allies. Around 200.000 such allies aided Cortés in the siege of Tenochtitlan together with a few hundred or maybe thousand Spaniards – a victory would have been impossible without them. Native allies were central to all later campaigns, like those against the Incas, were the Spanish would similarly exploit divisions between different indigenous groups. After all, Pizarro in Peru and other conquistadors had studies Cortés’ tactics. But these alliances also profited many native groups involved. In central Mexico, various native groups were angered by the Aztec tributes seen as too excessive, and so hoped to and often did gain advances from siding with the Spanish. Similarly, local interests played a role in the power struggles between different factions of the ruling Inca in Peru. Seeing all this only from the European perspective makes us blind to native participation in the conquest campaigns, and to their native groups’ own, often very differing interests. Looking briefly over the colonial period, it is clear that native groups continued to conserve their own, often highly local interests, but also their own cultures. They could even use Spanish law to their advantage since they were legally under the Spanish king's protection. So that again, asking about the European views of “advanced” societies is I think a very relevant question, but also leaves out the multiple, equally important indigenous viewpoints. Many of those have not been listened to for centuries, in contrast to European sources, and some are only being rediscovered now.

 

III.

From my example of the early Spanish colonisation, I’ve tried to turn the question around. Was it actually possible for Europeans to see other societies as equal or even advanced? Probably not, since Christianity and European “civilisation” were seen as innately superior to others – which holds true for many (most?) other, later colonial empires as well. And while native Americans had to convert in order for their rights to be recognized, and while this gave them a protected judicial status, they still remained in an inferior social positions to Europeans and their descendants (not to mention Africans and Asians in Spanish America, who held even lower positions). We now know and can recognize how very developed many indigenous societies were before first contact with Europeans. However, for Europeans it was far from evident to recognize these developments – and even when they were recognized they often were destroyed for military or religious reasons.

Mayan mathematics were in many ways more developed than European counterparts, and knew the use of zero before its use overseas: still most of the codices containing them were destroyed by European priests and administrators, for their supposedly "heathen" influence. Incan quipus are an information system that was used to transport infos over large distances through a massive road system: and again, most knowledge of how they were used was destroyed or lost.

It is one thing to recognize the advances of a different society. It is a whole ‘nother thing to be afraid of it, when the whole point of traveling there was to convert its members and profit from their labor.

do we have any early journals/writings about what these people where expecting before heading out ?

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