Thanks for these questions. I think Restall’s and Thorton’s books will answer these adequately. But Sharman’s ‘Empires of the weak’ is even more forceful in this thesis.
However, Scott’s ‘Against the grain’ is also an important element. Essentially he argues against the conflation of the civilisations with buildings and recorded institutions with ‘nations’ in today’s sense. Most people were not controlled by them until much later. So while the ‘silver mines’ were indeed hell on Earth, they represented a sliver of the population. Cortes and Pizarro managed to destroy relatively new and hugely unpopular empires by relying on local allies (and they were learning from each other in that). They achieved nothing like the control the Nazis did in Poland or France. They were much less successful with the Mayas who were already more fragmented and therefore more resilient.
The Portuguese in India did the same but managed to just snag some edge disputed territory and became just one (very minor) of the many players in the region. Remember they achieved nothing of note in Japan and even less in China (until 300 years later). Yes, they got some port cities on the coast of East Africa but they very tenuous holdings. It is important to look at not just where they succeeded but also where they failed. If you’re looking for some successes, I think the Spice Islands are more in that vein but even there things did not always go all the well.
The reason why all these Europeans did this at the same time was as you describe: they were learning from each other and were exporting their competition abroad. Opportunities for growth in Europe were limited, the Ottomans were making trade with India more difficult; and the religious aspect was also important—Columbus was not just after trade but also opening up a westward route to Jerusalem (and finding the mythical Prester John). The people in the places they came to were not interested in exploration. The Aztecs had loads of space to look out to (and just try to hold on to what they had), India had lots of trade routes going in the other direction. China was building walls against the steppes and thinking it was already the center of the Universe. Etc.
When we think of Cortes and others as ‘conquerors’ we’re essentially just buying into their propaganda. Which is partly why I used the word tendentious in the first reply.
I think I agree with most of the object-level claims you made, but I still think the term “conqueror” is justified. If the Spanish didn’t conquer the Aztecs, then Alexander didn’t conquer Persia, Genghis Khan didn’t conquer China, etc. etc. More relevant comparisons would be the British East India Company conquering India, I think, and the Russian conquest of siberia, ukraine, and central asia, since those conquests lasted for a long time and allowed significant influence to be exerted on the locals. Anyhow, if AI has the potential to do to humans what Cortes and Pizarro did to the mesoamericans, I think we have good reason to be very worried. So for my purposes—drawing analogies to AI—I think it should count as conquest. The fact that it took a while for most Americans to be “actually controlled” by the Spanish doesn’t matter.*
It seems like you are saying that Europeans colonized the world (as opposed to Chinese, or Americans, or Africans, or Ottomans) because they had the will to do so whereas other regions were more inward-focused. This seems implausible to me, except maybe in the case of China. For example, the Portuguese took over the Indian Ocean fairly easily, it seems; I find it hard to believe that the Ottomans wouldn’t have done it first if they could. Or one of the Indian states. China, it seems, actually could have, and chose not to—their bureaucrats burned their treasure fleet etc. And anyhow it seems like the only people who had ships as long-ranged as those of the Europeans were the Chinese. Thoughts?
*Justification for this: I think what’s important is the “window of opportunity” for resistance by the conquered, before too many bad things happen to them. Even if it takes a century for the bad things to happen, if there isn’t a realistic opportunity to boot out the invaders after time T, then it seems like you’ve been conquered by time T, in the relevant sense of the word. (In the AI context, I’m worried about our “window of opportunity” to react to AI and make it safe for humans. As long as our window remains open, great. But once the window is closed—e.g. because there are already unsafe AIs running around with enough political, social, and military power that they can’t be ousted—then, well, then we’re screwed. If the window of opportunity lasts decades after the creation of the first human-level AI, great! That’s a decent amount of time. But what if the window lasts only a year? Then we’d better be prepared to act swiftly and judiciously during that time. By analogy, put yourself in position of a random American in 1492 who gets word of mysterious invaders across the sea. You might wonder: If and when they come to conquer us, how long will our window of opportunity for resistance be? Will it be a very gradual conquest, that takes many decades, so that we can learn about our enemies, adopt their technology and tactics, and unite our various quarreling principalities to fight them off? Or will events move too quickly for us to do those things? Turns out the answers were no and yes respectively, I claim, based on my current knowledge, which is admittedly small. One way I could be wrong is: Maybe the Spaniards actually didn’t make things much worse for the Americans, in which case maybe the reason they weren’t booted out wasn’t that they had a firm grip on power but rather that there wasn’t enough desire to do so.
Thanks for these questions. I think Restall’s and Thorton’s books will answer these adequately. But Sharman’s ‘Empires of the weak’ is even more forceful in this thesis.
However, Scott’s ‘Against the grain’ is also an important element. Essentially he argues against the conflation of the civilisations with buildings and recorded institutions with ‘nations’ in today’s sense. Most people were not controlled by them until much later. So while the ‘silver mines’ were indeed hell on Earth, they represented a sliver of the population. Cortes and Pizarro managed to destroy relatively new and hugely unpopular empires by relying on local allies (and they were learning from each other in that). They achieved nothing like the control the Nazis did in Poland or France. They were much less successful with the Mayas who were already more fragmented and therefore more resilient.
The Portuguese in India did the same but managed to just snag some edge disputed territory and became just one (very minor) of the many players in the region. Remember they achieved nothing of note in Japan and even less in China (until 300 years later). Yes, they got some port cities on the coast of East Africa but they very tenuous holdings. It is important to look at not just where they succeeded but also where they failed. If you’re looking for some successes, I think the Spice Islands are more in that vein but even there things did not always go all the well.
The reason why all these Europeans did this at the same time was as you describe: they were learning from each other and were exporting their competition abroad. Opportunities for growth in Europe were limited, the Ottomans were making trade with India more difficult; and the religious aspect was also important—Columbus was not just after trade but also opening up a westward route to Jerusalem (and finding the mythical Prester John). The people in the places they came to were not interested in exploration. The Aztecs had loads of space to look out to (and just try to hold on to what they had), India had lots of trade routes going in the other direction. China was building walls against the steppes and thinking it was already the center of the Universe. Etc.
When we think of Cortes and others as ‘conquerors’ we’re essentially just buying into their propaganda. Which is partly why I used the word tendentious in the first reply.
I think I agree with most of the object-level claims you made, but I still think the term “conqueror” is justified. If the Spanish didn’t conquer the Aztecs, then Alexander didn’t conquer Persia, Genghis Khan didn’t conquer China, etc. etc. More relevant comparisons would be the British East India Company conquering India, I think, and the Russian conquest of siberia, ukraine, and central asia, since those conquests lasted for a long time and allowed significant influence to be exerted on the locals. Anyhow, if AI has the potential to do to humans what Cortes and Pizarro did to the mesoamericans, I think we have good reason to be very worried. So for my purposes—drawing analogies to AI—I think it should count as conquest. The fact that it took a while for most Americans to be “actually controlled” by the Spanish doesn’t matter.*
It seems like you are saying that Europeans colonized the world (as opposed to Chinese, or Americans, or Africans, or Ottomans) because they had the will to do so whereas other regions were more inward-focused. This seems implausible to me, except maybe in the case of China. For example, the Portuguese took over the Indian Ocean fairly easily, it seems; I find it hard to believe that the Ottomans wouldn’t have done it first if they could. Or one of the Indian states. China, it seems, actually could have, and chose not to—their bureaucrats burned their treasure fleet etc. And anyhow it seems like the only people who had ships as long-ranged as those of the Europeans were the Chinese. Thoughts?
*Justification for this: I think what’s important is the “window of opportunity” for resistance by the conquered, before too many bad things happen to them. Even if it takes a century for the bad things to happen, if there isn’t a realistic opportunity to boot out the invaders after time T, then it seems like you’ve been conquered by time T, in the relevant sense of the word. (In the AI context, I’m worried about our “window of opportunity” to react to AI and make it safe for humans. As long as our window remains open, great. But once the window is closed—e.g. because there are already unsafe AIs running around with enough political, social, and military power that they can’t be ousted—then, well, then we’re screwed. If the window of opportunity lasts decades after the creation of the first human-level AI, great! That’s a decent amount of time. But what if the window lasts only a year? Then we’d better be prepared to act swiftly and judiciously during that time. By analogy, put yourself in position of a random American in 1492 who gets word of mysterious invaders across the sea. You might wonder: If and when they come to conquer us, how long will our window of opportunity for resistance be? Will it be a very gradual conquest, that takes many decades, so that we can learn about our enemies, adopt their technology and tactics, and unite our various quarreling principalities to fight them off? Or will events move too quickly for us to do those things? Turns out the answers were no and yes respectively, I claim, based on my current knowledge, which is admittedly small. One way I could be wrong is: Maybe the Spaniards actually didn’t make things much worse for the Americans, in which case maybe the reason they weren’t booted out wasn’t that they had a firm grip on power but rather that there wasn’t enough desire to do so.