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Alchenar posted:I mostly agree with you but practical metal working is a pretty devastating checkpoint to miss if you encounter a society that has invented it. In a Darwinian 16th century sense where might makes right and the nation with the most guns prevails, yes. I'd like to think we have better ways to figure out who deserves to live today.
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May 14, 2021 17:35
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Cessna posted:That's a laughable statement. Aztec (better word: Triple Alliance or Mexica) agriculture was quite advanced. Right? And I was really perplexed when I heard it on the podcast because he had just spent like 10 minutes describing how great Mexica agriculture and/or subsistance strategies were. It stood out like a sore thumb becuase it wasn't even necessary for the argument he was making about the decline and fall of the Aztecs - the factors of diplomacy, disease, internal corruption, and external pressure as he framed it don't need some kind of "progress bar" argument about how wild teosinte had only been domesticated for 3000 years vs barley which had blah blah blah to explain how things turned out for them and the rest of the Americas.
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May 14, 2021 17:44
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Cessna posted:In a Darwinian 16th century sense where might makes right and the nation with the most guns prevails, yes. Why does the argument that Europeans had a technological advantage mean that they "deserved" to live?
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May 14, 2021 17:48
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Big Dick Cheney posted:Why does the argument that Europeans had a technological advantage mean that they "deserved" to live? In a vacuum? It doesn't. But historiography doesn't exist in a vacuum, and that specific argument was used for centuries to basically argue that a stronger, more vigorous civilization - as represented by both technological supremacy and having a "civilized" religion (see also the focus on human sacrifice in a lot of older writings on pre-Columbian Mesoamerica) - triumphed over a weaker one. Some writers argued this with a tinge of regret once the Noble Savage mythos gained traction in the 19th century, some writers argued it in an explicitly triumphalist tone, but the basic idea that the outcome was essentially pre-ordained and even "natural" when Europeans and Americans came into contact is a strong through-line in all of it. And, as has been pointed out, this formed the cornerstone of everything from 20th century policies of cultural genocide on through apologetics that tried to remove agency and responsibility from the equation as the scale of the human tragedies that unfolded in the centuries after European contact became clear.
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May 14, 2021 17:56
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Cyrano4747 posted:(see also the focus on human sacrifice in a lot of older writings on pre-Columbian Mesoamerica) Something to note here is that this particular argument is something that you'll see thrown around even today to highlight the "barbarity" of the Mexica in particular and pre-Columbian mesoamericans in general. What's interesting, however, is to compare that to contemporary Europeans' attitudes towards public displays of torture and killing. Europe at this time was a place where someone could be tortured to death publicly for political dissent, and where the spectacle of drawing and quartering was considered public entertainment. See also: burning religious dissenters at the stake, public flogging, and the fairly mundane executions for crimes. We can split hairs over the exact number of deaths, but at the end of the day a 16th century Spaniard standing at the steps of a pyramid and seeing a human sacrifice isn't going to think it's something alien and bizarre. He might misunderstand the context (assuming, for example, that it's a judicial punishment) but the idea of the state killing subjects publicly and with a ton of pomp and circumstance was something he'd be intimately familiar with.
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May 14, 2021 18:04
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Alchenar posted:I mostly agree with you but practical metal working is a pretty devastating checkpoint to miss if you encounter a society that has invented it. Counterpoint; it is not If your opponent is on the other side of the atlantic ocean and Were talking resupplying with 1500-1700 technology. Spanish alone couldnt take on the empires, they *had* to recruit the locals as seen in the above posts. In a gay black hitler world where European diseases dont start the apocalypse they did the spanish steel would have accounted much less; and note that easiest way to learn a technology is to copy it from someone else.
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May 14, 2021 18:06
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Bagheera posted:Can someone educate me about the Indian Wars, specifically the Comanches? Well for one thing the Pulitzer is for journalism not history. These are the people who call any tracked vehicle a tank.
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May 14, 2021 18:28
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Cyrano4747 posted:We can split hairs over the exact number of deaths, but at the end of the day a 16th century Spaniard standing at the steps of a pyramid and seeing a human sacrifice isn't going to think it's something alien and bizarre. He might misunderstand the context (assuming, for example, that it's a judicial punishment) but the idea of the state killing subjects publicly and with a ton of pomp and circumstance was something he'd be intimately familiar with. He is. He's not going to shocked by the idea of a public execution or the state killing its people, but the idea of a human sacrifice is going to. Even someone like Vitoria, who, in his writings condemned the conquest of the Americas, said that the only justification that was possibly valid was to end human sacrifice, saying that both cannibalism and human sacrifice, which he lumped together under "barbarity", was inherently violative of the inherent rights of man, and that war is justified to defend the victims, even if the victims are willing. (He went on to say that, having been conquered, it was Spain's obligation to respect their rights, so forcible conversion to Christianity was wrong, slavery was wrong, anything that treated them n any way inequal to those born in Spain was wrong, etc.)
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May 14, 2021 19:51
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Also technical sophistication is not such a factor in conquest/conflict that it necessarily follows from "Americas didn't have ~civilization~ for as long" to "they weren't as good at it" and "they never stood a chance". It just makes so many weird and unnecessary counterfactual assumptions, and in doing so ignores a far more interesting set of factors and details.
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May 14, 2021 20:15
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It's also the treatment of having better ability to kill people and being more 'advanced' as being the exact same thing, so by definition conquest is self-justifying. It's real nasty when you realize just how much innovation is getting ignored because the people who came up with it were wiped out.
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May 14, 2021 20:39
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Epicurius posted:He's not going to shocked by the idea of a public execution or the state killing its people, but the idea of a human sacrifice is going to. While the Europeans were shocked, shocked! at human sacrifice for religious reasons they were just coming off the Reconquista against Islam and the expulsion of Jews from Spain and were gearing up for the Wars of Religion and Thirty Years' War themselves. They were more than familiar with killing people for religious reasons. Apparently killing people on top of a pyramid was anathema, but burning them at the stake or torturing them to death in a dungeon was good practice. That said, there were dissenting views. There was a big debate in 1550 - the Valladolid debate - over how the peoples Spain had conquered should be treated. In VERY brief terms one side (de las Casas) argued that the locals should be treated as free people and, indeed, human beings. But the opposition (Sepulveda) argued that the locals should not only be enslaved, but punished for their past practices. Guess who has a main street in LA named after them?
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May 14, 2021 20:39
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What's the reason why the North American tribes were almost completely wiped out while the Central and South American tribes still make up a significant portion of population of the Latin American countries (in terms of genetic heritage)
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May 14, 2021 20:43
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Cessna posted:While the Europeans were shocked, shocked! at human sacrifice for religious reasons they were just coming off the Reconquista against Islam and the expulsion of Jews from Spain and were gearing up for the Wars of Religion and Thirty Years' War themselves. They were more than familiar with killing people for religious reasons. Apparently killing people on top of a pyramid was anathema, but burning them at the stake or torturing them to death in a dungeon was good practice. I agree with you that the Spanish were fine with killing people for religious reasons, but I still assert that in Christianity, human sacrifice is treated with a special kind of revulsion that goes beyond regular killing in the name of religion. Even in the Valladolid debate, de las Casas was forced to condemn human sacrifice as a moral evil, even though he asserted that it was rare among the Indians, and should have been eliminated by moral suasion rather than war, and, like I said, Vitoria had previously condemned it saying that war to prevent human sacrifice was just. In fact, the fact that Sepulveda focused so much on human sacrifice during the Valladolid debate as justification for the conquest and treated it as one of his strongest argument shows the level of revulsion that the Spanish had for it. He knew that argument worked. (and las Casas does have some streets named after him in Los Angeles, although none of them are as prominent as Sepulveda Boulevard. (which actually isn't named after Juan de Sepulvada. It's named after the Sepulvada family, which was a prominent Californio family who owned a whole lot of land in what's now Los Angeles, and who's members included a pre-US mayor of Los Angeles, a Los Angeles County supervisor, a member of the California State Assembly and US Ambassador to Mexico, plus a lot more. Generally streets and neighborhoods in Los Angeles that are named Sepulvada are named that because a Sepulvada owned that land at one point.)
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May 14, 2021 21:39
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We don't have exact numbers, but those regions had a lot more people to start with: Because they had more intensely developed agriculture: 
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May 14, 2021 21:41
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Epicurius posted:I agree with you that the Spanish were fine with killing people for religious reasons, but I still assert that in Christianity, human sacrifice is treated with a special kind of revulsion that goes beyond regular killing in the name of religion Look, I don't want to become known as the pro-human sacrifice guy here. I am only pointing out that it's pretty hypocritical for Europeans to be shocked at human sacrifice given their own record of killing people in the name of religion. Epicurius posted:(which actually isn't named after Juan de Sepulvada. I did not know that, thanks!
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May 14, 2021 21:45
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Cessna posted:Look, I don't want to become known as the pro-human sacrifice guy here. I am only pointing out that it's pretty hypocritical for Europeans to be shocked at human sacrifice given their own record of killing people in the name of religion. I'm just saying that every society makes distinctions about when and who it's ok to kill and when and who it's not, and even though it may seem hypocritical to somebody looking in from outside, these distinctions can be very important to the people who believe in them.
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May 14, 2021 21:53
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Cessna posted:Look, I don't want to become known as the pro-human sacrifice guy here. I am only pointing out that it's pretty hypocritical for Europeans to be shocked at human sacrifice given their own record of killing people in the name of religion. So what you're saying is that you want a big "ASK ME ABOUT MY PRO-HUMAN SACRIFICE BELIEFS" redtext, right?  I think you're right that religious violence wasn't some unknown thing, but I wonder if the real thing that bothered them was idea of doing it as a form of sacrifice to god(s). It seems like the kind of thing that would offend/unnerve a deeply devout Christian sort, where burning a witch at the stake is just business as usual. To me, that just sounds like arguing over the rationalizations instead of the fact of religiously-sanctioned murder- but it sounds like people at the time didn't think of it that way.
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May 14, 2021 22:11
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It's not exactly a hard concept to understand that intentionality of an action figures into the way people perceive it. If a person gives thousands to charity because they want to help people I would think highly of them. If bezos did it for another tax write off I'd think he's an rear end in a top hat.
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May 14, 2021 22:16
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The Spanish dunked on much larger meso american armies even without native allies. Whether it was armor, weapons or training/doctrine or a combination, they were clearly much, much better at fighting wars. And it's not like it was a fluke, they did this repeatedly for decades.
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May 15, 2021 03:44
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Really interesting to learn about some of the developments in the region. If anyone knows about cool Aztec inventions I'd love to know more.
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May 15, 2021 07:11
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OctaviusBeaver posted:The Spanish dunked on much larger meso american armies even without native allies. Whether it was armor, weapons or training/doctrine or a combination, they were clearly much, much better at fighting wars. And it's not like it was a fluke, they did this repeatedly for decades. A lot of those Spanish conquests occurred in the aftermath of horrifying disease epidemics that may have killed between 80-90% of the affected populations. Death on that scale shatters societies in ways that we struggle to comprehend and made the Spanish advances that much easier.
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May 15, 2021 07:32
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Mesoamericans figured out pretty quickly that the cannons the Spanish brought kind of sucked even if they seemed scary at first. The actually terrifying military "innovation" the Spanish brought was putting men on gently caress off sized and extremely quick domesticated animals, aka cavalry. By all accounts men on horseback scared the living poo poo out of them and they had no established tactics to deal with such a novel presence in battle. The Inca eventually came up with a large sort of bolas to trip up horses and the Maya dug punji traps but it was too late for both of them at that point. That said sheer balls, some pretty deft diplomacy (and/or trickery) and A LOT of luck is what drove most of the conquistador's successes. There was pretty much always existing internal tension that they, often skilfully it must be said, inserted themselves into before going for a ballsy decapitation strike at the head honcho(s) in the region. Many of the one sided "battles" were such strikes where the Spanish made a beeline for whatever sovereign/high nobles were on the field. Still impressive and requires serious discipline but it's not as simple as a bunch of Spaniards turning on Technological Godmode and racking up 100 K/D ratios.
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May 15, 2021 11:40
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The opening shot of the Spanish-Incan war was the Spanish essentially ambushing the Incan Emperor during a parley and shooting unarmed attendants. But otherwise, it's not like the conquistadors were inherently superior, they're just men who bleed, it just took the Americans a long time to work out the best way to make that happen. Manco Inca's rump Neo-Inca state did manage to inflict some losses on the conquistadors, ambushing relief columns as they were moving, but it just wasn't decisive as he couldn't dislodge the Spanish who were sitting on the heartland of his empire consolidating their rule. They started out fighting in the Incan tradition, but very quickly learnt how to fight in the European style. And they too knew how to take advantage of internal divisions of their enemies, the spaniards were such brutes that Francisco Pizarro was murdered by other conquistadors. Manco took them in as potential allies (but then they murdered him as well).
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May 15, 2021 14:07
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Phobophilia posted:The opening shot of the Spanish-Incan war was the Spanish essentially ambushing the Incan Emperor during a parley and shooting unarmed attendants. And there that's where the Spanish had tens of thousands of native allies. What are some specific examples of battles where the Spanish successfully dealt with huge numerical disadvantages?
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May 15, 2021 14:13
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There was probably some advantages from being a much smaller, nimbler force, supported by horse cavalry. Moving hundreds of thousands of men in a concerted manner is not a simple and quick exercise. Especially if enemy has horse scouts/messengers and you don't.
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May 15, 2021 16:42
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I think sometimes people focus too much on the Spanish having guns and not enough on how they had armor that obsidian blades would just chip on, or horses (at least, sometimes) to give individual men way more mobility than anyone in the New World had ever dealt with before. The technological advantage still wasn't the only thing the Spaniards had going for them, but what technological advantages they were.
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May 15, 2021 16:53
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SlothfulCobra posted:I think sometimes people focus too much on the Spanish having guns and not enough on how they had armor that obsidian blades would just chip on, or horses (at least, sometimes) to give individual men way more mobility than anyone in the New World had ever dealt with before. Right because we have descriptions of their obsidian blades decapitating horses but having a hard time piercing the armor unless they got into an exposed point. Also I would count crossbows as another advantage especially because presumably it would be easier to make new quarrels.
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May 15, 2021 17:23
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SlothfulCobra posted:I think sometimes people focus too much on the Spanish having guns and not enough on how they had armor that obsidian blades would just chip on, or horses (at least, sometimes) to give individual men way more mobility than anyone in the New World had ever dealt with before. What about metal tools more generally? Knives, axes, hammers, saws etc. I'd think these would be super handy at clearing brush, setting up fortifications, defeating enemy fortifications, and probably more things I'm not thinking of here.
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May 15, 2021 17:34
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Come to think of it, I've heard a lot about native Americans buying guns from colonists, but I don't think I've ever heard anything about natives buying iron goods or trying to learn about blacksmithing.
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May 15, 2021 18:09
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Guns were far more important to defend yourself from the other tribes getting guns who would gladly raid you if you were at a massive disadvantage, this was a pretty big issue of concern among tribes in the plains where it rapidly caused a case of having to get as many guns as possible so your neighbors won't raid you who they want to get a bunch of guns so they can raid you/YOU can't raid them.
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May 15, 2021 18:25
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SlothfulCobra posted:Come to think of it, I've heard a lot about native Americans buying guns from colonists, but I don't think I've ever heard anything about natives buying iron goods or trying to learn about blacksmithing. Natives bought huge amounts of iron tools. Knives and axes were two of the favored trade goods in North America in particular.
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May 15, 2021 19:06
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Lawman 0 posted:Right because we have descriptions of their obsidian blades decapitating horses but having a hard time piercing the armor unless they got into an exposed point. Also I would count crossbows as another advantage especially because presumably it would be easier to make new quarrels. Then again, wouldn't the same thing be true for steel weapons? As far as I know, at the time they were wearing metal plate cuirasses and helmets, augmented with mail. Even the well-made steel sideswords of the kind the Spanish themselves were using wouldn't be getting through that, and neither would spears or pikes. To my understanding, armoured combat in Europe at the time was also much more focused on attempting to hit less protected areas rather than trying to break through directly. Now, of course that still would be a significant adjustment to the native warriors who wouldn't be used to fighting people with such effective armour. But that'd be an issue of training and experience moreso than weaponry.
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May 15, 2021 19:28
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SlothfulCobra posted:Come to think of it, I've heard a lot about native Americans buying guns from colonists, but I don't think I've ever heard anything about natives buying iron goods or trying to learn about blacksmithing. Metal tools, weapons and decorations (jewelry, mirrors) were highly valued trade goods. Learning blacksmithing though, did any natives of the Americas pick this up? Did any already have metal working pre-contact with Europe?
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May 15, 2021 19:28
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Why would they learn metallurgy if they had no access to metal to smith? But native cultures learned how to shape naturally occurring metal deposits, some Inuits even picked up metallurgy of meteoric iron. steinrokkan fucked around with this message at 19:53 on May 15, 2021 |
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May 15, 2021 19:50
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Count Roland posted:Metal tools, weapons and decorations (jewelry, mirrors) were highly valued trade goods. Supposedly Sequoyah was a blacksmith before inventing the Cherokee alphabet. Also I remember that Lewis & Clark had to keep all their iron stuff under lock and key else it would be stolen... by the men of the expedition who were trading it for sex.
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May 15, 2021 20:22
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OctaviusBeaver posted:The Spanish dunked on much larger meso american armies even without native allies. Whether it was armor, weapons or training/doctrine or a combination, they were clearly much, much better at fighting wars. And it's not like it was a fluke, they did this repeatedly for decades. Give examples then. Otumba doesn't count because it was literally the first battlefield encounter between Spanish and Aztec. The ground combat was inconclusive, and the battle was only ended when the Spanish charged through the Aztec formation and killed their general. The mechanics of this were simple, the Aztecs literally did not ever fight cavalry before and their formations were too loose to protect their general. Also, the Spanish had just massacred a ton of the Aztec nobility during a dinner, so who knows who was even leading the Aztec army. That guy has been lost to history. Perestroika posted:Then again, wouldn't the same thing be true for steel weapons? As far as I know, at the time they were wearing metal plate cuirasses and helmets, augmented with mail. Even the well-made steel sideswords of the kind the Spanish themselves were using wouldn't be getting through that, and neither would spears or pikes. To my understanding, armoured combat in Europe at the time was also much more focused on attempting to hit less protected areas rather than trying to break through directly. What if, somebody hits you in the arm or leg? What if its loving hot, or you are a relatively poor foot soldier and you just aren't wearing a cuirass? Good steel armour was a privilege for a few dozen Spanish at most, the idea of these guys surviving a melee and slaughtering thousands and thousands of enemies is absurd.
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May 15, 2021 20:55
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Plus the spanish ditched their metal armor a lot in favor of native woven armor. Apparently wearing a bunch of steel all day in the tropics kinda sucks.
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May 15, 2021 23:19
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What's really impressive is that these dudes who are half a planet out of their element and for all intents and purposes just fell off a tree on mars and landed in Tenochtitlan managed to exploit all these internal divisions and poo poo. Like how do you even figure out that these divisions exist
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May 15, 2021 23:48
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aphid_licker posted:What's really impressive is that these dudes who are half a planet out of their element and for all intents and purposes just fell off a tree on mars and landed in Tenochtitlan managed to exploit all these internal divisions and poo poo. Like how do you even figure out that these divisions exist Malinche...
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May 15, 2021 23:54
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aphid_licker posted:What's really impressive is that these dudes who are half a planet out of their element and for all intents and purposes just fell off a tree on mars and landed in Tenochtitlan managed to exploit all these internal divisions and poo poo. Like how do you even figure out that these divisions exist Interpreters. La Malinche was famously one of Cortez's main interpreters, and as a Maya woman who (along with 20 others) were given to them as slaves after they won a minor battle on the coast. You also had people who had some contact with the natives before the big expeditions, especially shipwrecked sailors. The Spanish were screwing around in the region for close to 20 years before Cortez finally did his thing. Geronimo de Aguilar is another Cortez interpreter who learned Maya while living among them following a shipwreck. In cortez's case Aguilar spoke Spanish and Maya, and La Malinche spoke Nuahatal and Maya, so they had a linguistic chain there. Eventually she learned Spanish.
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May 15, 2021 23:59
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