Thanks Alexis, this seems like an accurate description to me. Strong-upvoted, partly because I want to reward people for doing these sorts of summary-and-distillation stuff.
As for your question, hmm, I’m not sure. I tentatively say yes, but my hesitations are (1) cases where 90% of the population dies are probably very rare, and (2) how would we measure power anyway? Presumably most civilizations that lose 90% of their population do end up conquered by someone else pretty quickly, since most civilizations aren’t 10x more powerful than all their neighbors.
I think the crux is this business about the chain of command. Cortez and Pizarro succeeded by getting Americans to ally with them and/or obey them. The crux is, would they have been able to do this as well or mostly as well without the disease? I think that reading a bunch of books on what happened might more or less answer this question.
For example, maybe the books will say that the general disarray caused by the disease created a sense of desperation and confusion in the people which led them to be open to the conquistador’s proposals when otherwise they would have dismissed them. In which case, I concede defeat in this disagreement. Or maybe the books will say that if only the conquistadors had been outnumbered even more, they would have lost.
But what I predict is that the books will say that, for the most part, the reasons why people allied with Cortes and Pizarro had more to do with non-disease considerations: “Here is this obviously powerful representative of an obviously powerful faraway empire, wielding intriguing technology that we could benefit from. There is our hated enemy, Tenochtitlan, who has been oppressing us for decades. Now is our chance to turn the tables on our oppressors!” Similarly, I predict that the reason why the emperors allowed the conquistadors to get close enough to ambush them have little to do with disease and more to do with, well, just not predicting that the conquistadors would have the will or capability to do that. Moreover I predict that adding even more native warriors (due to the disease not happening) wouldn’t have caused the conquistadors to lose. After all, roughly half of those warriors would be added to the conquistador’s side...
So I highly recommend that someone who doesn’t have a dog in this fight go read some books on Cortes and Pizarro and then report back!
Update: I do think it would be good to look at the Black Death in Europe and see whether there were similar political “upsets” where a small group of outsiders took over a large region in the turmoil. I predict that there mostly weren’t; if it turns out this did happen a fair amount, then I agree that is good evidence that disease was really important.
Thanks Alexis, this seems like an accurate description to me. Strong-upvoted, partly because I want to reward people for doing these sorts of summary-and-distillation stuff.
As for your question, hmm, I’m not sure. I tentatively say yes, but my hesitations are (1) cases where 90% of the population dies are probably very rare, and (2) how would we measure power anyway? Presumably most civilizations that lose 90% of their population do end up conquered by someone else pretty quickly, since most civilizations aren’t 10x more powerful than all their neighbors.
I think the crux is this business about the chain of command. Cortez and Pizarro succeeded by getting Americans to ally with them and/or obey them. The crux is, would they have been able to do this as well or mostly as well without the disease? I think that reading a bunch of books on what happened might more or less answer this question.
For example, maybe the books will say that the general disarray caused by the disease created a sense of desperation and confusion in the people which led them to be open to the conquistador’s proposals when otherwise they would have dismissed them. In which case, I concede defeat in this disagreement. Or maybe the books will say that if only the conquistadors had been outnumbered even more, they would have lost.
But what I predict is that the books will say that, for the most part, the reasons why people allied with Cortes and Pizarro had more to do with non-disease considerations: “Here is this obviously powerful representative of an obviously powerful faraway empire, wielding intriguing technology that we could benefit from. There is our hated enemy, Tenochtitlan, who has been oppressing us for decades. Now is our chance to turn the tables on our oppressors!” Similarly, I predict that the reason why the emperors allowed the conquistadors to get close enough to ambush them have little to do with disease and more to do with, well, just not predicting that the conquistadors would have the will or capability to do that. Moreover I predict that adding even more native warriors (due to the disease not happening) wouldn’t have caused the conquistadors to lose. After all, roughly half of those warriors would be added to the conquistador’s side...
So I highly recommend that someone who doesn’t have a dog in this fight go read some books on Cortes and Pizarro and then report back!
Update: I do think it would be good to look at the Black Death in Europe and see whether there were similar political “upsets” where a small group of outsiders took over a large region in the turmoil. I predict that there mostly weren’t; if it turns out this did happen a fair amount, then I agree that is good evidence that disease was really important.