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The argument that contact with and spreading knowledge about Indian (as Mann settles on calling them, after evidently being repeatedly dressed down by actual in

The argument that contact with and spreading knowledge about Indian (as Mann settles on calling them, after evidently being repeatedly dressed down by actual indigenous folks for trying to use more currently-PC terms) societies and systems of government played a major role in kicking off enlightenment political thinking isn't so far fetched. I don't recall his claiming that they had military tech that was anywhere near as developed as Europeans, and most of his coverage of thriving, complex, urbanized (by the global standards of the time) societies in the Precolumbian Americas is focused south of the Rio, for the simple reason that that's where most of those seem to have been (though he does cover Cahokia and related sites in the modern US, as well) The closest I recall him coming to claiming Native Americans were more advanced than Europeans was that Europeans simply failed to recognize some patterns and practices as deliberate and well-considered, as was the case with certain crop management patterns in the Eastern forests and heavy use of fire-as-a-land-management-tool all over the continent. But that's not exactly a claim that they were more advanced. Oh, and he does mention repeated contemporary reports that the natives seemed remarkably tall and able-bodied compared to Europeans, and makes some efforts to figure out why that might have been (and some of that does tie back into government and social structures) I'm fairly sensitive to bullshit revisionism of the "noble savage" and/or "ackshually Europeans were the backwards primitives" sort, and didn't get either vibe at all from Mann's 1491 or 1493. In fact he explicitly counters the former in a lot of ways, similar to what you see in anti-noble-savage works like War Before Civilization.

chrchr 4y ago
Regarding military power, Mann does argue, IIRC, that the gap wasn’t as large as might be supposed. He also argues that the conquest of the Aztecs and the Incas by small forces of Spanish conquistadors was not enabled by military superiority but rather by upsetting existing political balance. In both cases, the conquistadors aligned with subjugated factions within the existing imperial systems to overthrow the dominant power. E.g., in Mexico, Moctezuma had captured and imprisoned Cortez and his forces and could have easily wiped them out. The emperor’s delay ultimately allowed Cortez to align with vassal states, and that alliance overthrew the empire. That’s not to say that the Aztec empire’s military was the equal of Spain’s, but Cortez’s small band of conquistadors would not have defeated the Aztecs head-to-head.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  Right. It's not that the military tech wasn't better, it's that, given the massive logistical advantages of indigenous Americans (consider what a supply chain looked like for even a tiny European force in the Americas!), the role of disease-induced chaos putting much of indigenous society & politics into something resembling death convulsions before many of them even saw Europeans, plus some straight realpolitik "heads I win, tails you lose" moves from the Europeans, it was a pretty minor factor in the whole thing. Just the weapon-tech advantage wouldn't have been anywhere near enough for the conquest to go even as smoothly as it did, thanks largely to the logistics disadvantage of the Europeans (and the conquest wasn't terribly smooth, anyway—Europeans lost plenty of battles over a span of centuries before mostly subjugating the Americas).
  - YeGoblynQueenne 4y ago
    There is a great account of the conquest of Mexico in "Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España" by one Bernal Díaz del Castillo, who was a member of Cortés' troop of conquistadores: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historia_verdadera_de_la_conquista_de_la_Nueva_Espa%C3%B1a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historia_verdadera_de_la_conqu... I think this is probably recounted by other sources but he talks also about the "noche triste", the night that the conquistadores had to run for their lives from Tenochtitlan, pursued by a mob driven to rage after the murder of the emperor Moctezuma: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Noche_Triste https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Noche_Triste Although on that night the conquistadores were probably at a disadvantage, for being weighed down with all the gold they tried to take with them as they ran. Encumberance is a bitch. In general, it seems true that the Spanish survived by the skin of their teeth, driven by their lust for richess and mainly thanks to the support of the local vassal states like the Tlaxcalans. Military superiority is not just who has the best weapons and even in the Old World battles are not always won by the most technologically advanced society. For example, see the Battle of Isandlwana: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Isandlwana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Isandlwana

chrchr 4y ago

Regarding military power, Mann does argue, IIRC, that the gap wasn’t as large as might be supposed. He also argues that the conquest of the Aztecs and the Incas by small forces of Spanish conquistadors was not enabled by military superiority but rather by upsetting existing political balance. In both cases, the conquistadors aligned with subjugated factions within the existing imperial systems to overthrow the dominant power. E.g., in Mexico, Moctezuma had captured and imprisoned Cortez and his forces and could have easily wiped them out. The emperor’s delay ultimately allowed Cortez to align with vassal states, and that alliance overthrew the empire. That’s not to say that the Aztec empire’s military was the equal of Spain’s, but Cortez’s small band of conquistadors would not have defeated the Aztecs head-to-head.

yamtaddle 4y ago
Right. It's not that the military tech wasn't better, it's that, given the massive logistical advantages of indigenous Americans (consider what a supply chain looked like for even a tiny European force in the Americas!), the role of disease-induced chaos putting much of indigenous society & politics into something resembling death convulsions before many of them even saw Europeans, plus some straight realpolitik "heads I win, tails you lose" moves from the Europeans, it was a pretty minor factor in the whole thing. Just the weapon-tech advantage wouldn't have been anywhere near enough for the conquest to go even as smoothly as it did, thanks largely to the logistics disadvantage of the Europeans (and the conquest wasn't terribly smooth, anyway—Europeans lost plenty of battles over a span of centuries before mostly subjugating the Americas).
- YeGoblynQueenne 4y ago
  There is a great account of the conquest of Mexico in "Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España" by one Bernal Díaz del Castillo, who was a member of Cortés' troop of conquistadores: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historia_verdadera_de_la_conquista_de_la_Nueva_Espa%C3%B1a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historia_verdadera_de_la_conqu... I think this is probably recounted by other sources but he talks also about the "noche triste", the night that the conquistadores had to run for their lives from Tenochtitlan, pursued by a mob driven to rage after the murder of the emperor Moctezuma: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Noche_Triste https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Noche_Triste Although on that night the conquistadores were probably at a disadvantage, for being weighed down with all the gold they tried to take with them as they ran. Encumberance is a bitch. In general, it seems true that the Spanish survived by the skin of their teeth, driven by their lust for richess and mainly thanks to the support of the local vassal states like the Tlaxcalans. Military superiority is not just who has the best weapons and even in the Old World battles are not always won by the most technologically advanced society. For example, see the Battle of Isandlwana: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Isandlwana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Isandlwana