Until the Aztecs revolted and the Spanish had to flee the city on July 1, The Spanish regrouped and laid siege to the city on May 22, Its capture was the first big European victory over native peoples during the Age of Discovery and heralded the start of European colonialism.
Her most recent book, Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs , presents Aztec history in the language of the people themselves by drawing on sources in Nahuatl, their own tongue. She turns many long-persisting theories derived from Spanish-language sources on their head. The book won the Cundhill History Prize for history. Edited excerpts:. Rajat Ghai: Did the fall of Tenochtitlan set the template for European-native interactions throughout the Americas and the rest of the planet?
Camilla Townsend: I tend to think that the pattern was established when Christopher Columbus landed in Hispaniola in Of course, some specific elements emerged for the first time in the war against Tenochtitlan. This was because it was a large and complex city with a standing army. But the basic pattern was established in the Caribbean. He has shown that there were people in Europe, among them Columbus, who had begun to realise that their knowledge of the world gleaned from ancient Greek and Roman texts was wrong.
There were people far to the south of Europe. The stories brought back by the Portuguese from the coast of Africa proved this. Columbus was sailing to find India and China. But he was also sailing not just to trade but also to conquer. They did not think they would conquer India or China. But they thought they could at least conquer native people. Conquest was on top of their minds. CT: Tenochtitlan made it easier for Europeans to make such an accusation.
Europeans had long said the people they wanted to conquer were probably cannibals, that they were low, undeveloped and uncivilised. But the Mexica or the Aztecs made this easier because they really did practice human sacrifice.
The priests really did touch the blood of victims to their lips. There is a great deal of exaggeration. The Aztecs did not begin by sacrificing many people. They did what most ancient peoples did around the world.
They sacrificed an occasional prisoner of war. This was very normal. Archaeology shows that happening in most places around the world. But as they gained power, they wanted to terrify their neighbours so that they could keep this power.
So, they turned this element of their religion into a power play. This was done so that such people would go home and tell others that they should just join the empire and not fight.
In when it joined the first world war on Germany's side the Incan armies were soundly defeated at the Battle of Chichen Itza in what once was the Mayan empire. After the war, the Incas were made to pay reparations, which shattered what was left of the national currency. When the great depression hit in the Incan empire was hit bad and almost collapsed.
Unemployment soared, especially in the larger cities, and the political system veered toward extremism. This helped the Fascist Jaguar party gain power.
The Jaguar Party was named after the big feline hunter that lived in the jungle, and was modeled on its ferociousness. Once the jaguar party came to power and Huasac became chancellor, he wasted no time. New road works were implemented, the silver mines near Quito reopened, and reparations suspended.
The Incas created a youth movement called the Jaguar Cubs, designed to indoctrinate them into the Jaguar Party's system. In the Incas voted Huasac Chancellor for life, the Emperor became a virtual puppet, and Parliament reduced to a rubber stamp. Huasac reintroduced conscription and increased the army to , men. Although the Incans signed a pact with the other axis nations, the Incans did not take part in WWII when it broke out in Soon Germany launched a surprise attack and Poland, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg and France fell within the first half of due to the Blitzkrieg tactics.
Now only Britain was left to hold the Axis storm. Portugal soon felt threatened by the Spanish and retracted its treaties with Britain.
The British looking for aid in their war, sent emissaries to the Aztecs to persuade them and the US to send aid to their struggling war effort. The Aztec not willing to pass up a chance to settle a score with the Spanish soon started sending aid along with limited support from the US. The Germans not to be out done soon began getting support from the Incans such as beef, grain and copper.
A cold war soon started between the Aztecs and Incans with large. The Aztecs soon sent a mechanized cavalry force to Africa to aid the British. Due to German armor supremacy the British were pushed back to a line 5 miles from the Suez Canal. After too many Aztec ships were sunk, the Aztecs finally declared war against the Axis. Soon they sent an expeditionary force to aid the British. The Aztec forces fought with distinction against the Axis forces until they were forced to retreat after an Axis break through.
They were repositioned to East Africa. Their troop ship was one of the last to leave the canal. Allied forces were soon able to contain the advance. On the way they aided the defense and evacuation of Gibraltar.
Soon Allied forces in the Mediterranean were isolated and the only way into Africa was with long and dangerous train trips with Lisbon under siege or through a Middle East crawling with wolf packs. At first, they were thrown back by the Inca Empire, but in , they made a last stand in an old stomping ground, Chichen Itza. The battle lasted for 6 months with Chichen Itza in ruins, but the Incas were defeated, and put on the defensive.
The Spaniards were driven out of Tenochtitlan and nearly wiped out, but they ultimately returned and laid siege to the city. Particularly strategic were communities which had been subject to the Aztecs, who had heavily taxed the people and practiced human sacrifice. What happened next is unclear.
He returned with thousands of Indian allies, who opposed the Aztecs. After a four month siege, during which time Aztec defenders succumbed as much to disease and starvation as to the force of arms, the new Aztec king Cuautemoc surrendered. By , most of central Mexico was integrated under Spanish control in the kingdom of New Spain. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, , — The strange end of the Aztec nation remains one of the most fascinating events in the annals of human societies.
Why did a strong people defending its own territory succumb so quickly to a handful of Spaniards fighting in dangerous and completely unfamiliar circumstances? The answers to these questions lie in the fact that at the time of the Spanish arrival, the Aztec and Inca Empires faced grave internal difficulties brought on by their religious ideologies; by the Spaniards' boldness, timing, and technology; and by Aztec and Inca psychology and attitudes toward war.
The Spaniards arrived in late summer, when the Aztecs were preoccupied with harvesting their crops and not thinking of war. From the Spaniards' perspective, their timing was ideal. A series of natural phenomena, signs, and portents seemed to augur disaster for the Aztecs. A comet was seen in daytime, a column of fire had appeared every midnight for a year, and two temples were suddenly destroyed, one by lightning unaccompanied by thunder. These and other apparently inexplicable events seemed to presage the return of the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl and had an unnerving effect on the Aztecs.
They looked on the Europeans riding "wild beasts" as extraterrestrial forces coming to establish a new social order. Defeatism swept the nation and paralyzed its will. The Aztec state religion, the sacred cult of Huitzilopochtli, necessitated constant warfare against neighboring peoples to secure captives for religious sacrifice and laborers for agricultural and infrastructure work.
Lacking an effective method of governing subject peoples, the Aztecs controlled thirty-eight provinces in central Mexico through terror. When the Spaniards appeared, the Totonacs greeted them as liberators, and other subject peoples joined them against the Aztecs. Montezuma faced terrible external and internal difficulties.
Historians have often condemned the Aztec ruler for vacillation and weakness. But he relied on the advice of his state council, itself divided, and on the dubious loyalty of tributary communities. The major explanation for the collapse of the Aztec Empire to six hundred Spaniards lies in the Aztecs' notion of warfare and their level of technology.
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