I just listened to a podcast on the fall of the Inca. Two points stood out that seem relevant.
One is that the Inca themselves conquered the area through a combination of force and diplomacy. Not, I think, as thoroughly? Not sure how I’d operationalize that, and I’m not entirely sure why I think it deserves emphasis. Perhaps… this makes it clearer to me that in one more sense, the Spanish weren’t “playing on easy mode”; the Inca rose to the top of the local power game, and then the Spanish beat them.
Another is that the Incan emperor wasn’t entirely helpless. He pointed the Spanish at Cuzco because he already wanted it out of his way; he wanted to relocate the capital (and maybe already had done, as far as the people he commanded were concerned?) and was happy for the Spanish to destroy it. They didn’t find his own capital (until much later?). In general he used his captivity to take out a lot of his political opponents, and was capable of sending and receiving messages through the people who went to fetch tribute. It went bad for him when his opponents convinced the Spanish he had an army coming to attack, and they executed him. Even if that hadn’t happened, I’m not convinced he had a path to victory at that point, much less the Inca as a people. Seems relevant for the same reason as above (it’s not like the emperor didn’t know how to play the game). But there’s also a point in favor of “if the Inca had had less internal strife, maybe things would have gone very differently for the Spanish”.
(The same podcast (Fall of Civilizations, which in general I really like, caveat I don’t have the background to speak to its accuracy) also had an episode on the fall of the Aztecs. I’d listened to it a few months before I first read this post, and didn’t have any similar remarks at the time, though maybe I would have if it had been more fresh.)
Yeah, Inca and Aztec were both apex predators, so to speak, in their respective worlds. Both were still on the rise too, showing no signs IMO of decay.
The thing about internal strife though is that it’s the default condition. The situation after the cold war, where the USA was the global hegemon, was notable precisely because of how unusual it was for there to be only one power—and even then, it’s not like the whole world was united behind the USA; instead, there were big parts of the world (China, for example) that were technically at peace and militarily inferior but would have been happy to see the USA taken down a peg. So yeah, the Incas had just finished up a civil war and the emperor had scores to settle with various rivals and insubordinates, and there were people willing to betray him, etc. but this seems like the standard state of human affairs to me. The Aztecs were as unified as they ever were when Cortez attacked.
Fair enough. But if Pizarro had arrived just a bit earlier, the civil war would have been still ongoing, and had he arrived a bit earlier than that, the Inca would be still trying to pacify the Quito empire and integrate it into their empire, and before that the situation would have been even more multipolar...
I just listened to a podcast on the fall of the Inca. Two points stood out that seem relevant.
One is that the Inca themselves conquered the area through a combination of force and diplomacy. Not, I think, as thoroughly? Not sure how I’d operationalize that, and I’m not entirely sure why I think it deserves emphasis. Perhaps… this makes it clearer to me that in one more sense, the Spanish weren’t “playing on easy mode”; the Inca rose to the top of the local power game, and then the Spanish beat them.
Another is that the Incan emperor wasn’t entirely helpless. He pointed the Spanish at Cuzco because he already wanted it out of his way; he wanted to relocate the capital (and maybe already had done, as far as the people he commanded were concerned?) and was happy for the Spanish to destroy it. They didn’t find his own capital (until much later?). In general he used his captivity to take out a lot of his political opponents, and was capable of sending and receiving messages through the people who went to fetch tribute. It went bad for him when his opponents convinced the Spanish he had an army coming to attack, and they executed him. Even if that hadn’t happened, I’m not convinced he had a path to victory at that point, much less the Inca as a people. Seems relevant for the same reason as above (it’s not like the emperor didn’t know how to play the game). But there’s also a point in favor of “if the Inca had had less internal strife, maybe things would have gone very differently for the Spanish”.
(The same podcast (Fall of Civilizations, which in general I really like, caveat I don’t have the background to speak to its accuracy) also had an episode on the fall of the Aztecs. I’d listened to it a few months before I first read this post, and didn’t have any similar remarks at the time, though maybe I would have if it had been more fresh.)
Yeah, Inca and Aztec were both apex predators, so to speak, in their respective worlds. Both were still on the rise too, showing no signs IMO of decay.
The thing about internal strife though is that it’s the default condition. The situation after the cold war, where the USA was the global hegemon, was notable precisely because of how unusual it was for there to be only one power—and even then, it’s not like the whole world was united behind the USA; instead, there were big parts of the world (China, for example) that were technically at peace and militarily inferior but would have been happy to see the USA taken down a peg. So yeah, the Incas had just finished up a civil war and the emperor had scores to settle with various rivals and insubordinates, and there were people willing to betray him, etc. but this seems like the standard state of human affairs to me. The Aztecs were as unified as they ever were when Cortez attacked.
I did get the sense that the Inca were more internal-strifey than normal at the time, but yeah. Even if true in their case, it’s not much consolation.
Fair enough. But if Pizarro had arrived just a bit earlier, the civil war would have been still ongoing, and had he arrived a bit earlier than that, the Inca would be still trying to pacify the Quito empire and integrate it into their empire, and before that the situation would have been even more multipolar...