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I think it's a great example of daring and seizing the initiative, I don't think intimidating an unarmed court retinue with cannons, swords and horses is generally considered a great military victory.
Controversial Historical Opinions You Have
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Does vassal rule not equal control anymore? Because many colonial empires also exerted indirect vassalage, such as the Spanish and the Tlaxcala or Britain and the Princely States.
2 centuries also is basically the duration of the Ming Dynasty anyways, and the Jin are drastically different from the Mongols that the Ming conquered.
Okay, if the Jin adopted the Chinese agricultural package, why do they not "count" as a Chinese state?
Except that Ming gunpowder absolutely crushed Vietnamese resistance in the initial engagements that resulted in Ming ruling northern Vietnam for 20 years, and Vietnamese use of gunpowder increased drastically after they regained independence. Only selected elements of Dai Viet firearms were adopted by the Ming, and they pale in comparison to the quantity and quality of technologies introduced during the 4th Era of Northern Domination.
Chinese Gunpowder Technology and Dai Viet, ca. 1390–1497 : Sun Laichen : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
The Yali question is as follows:
The question as phrased isn't about technology or germs; it's a question about modern inequality and how it came to be. As Amartya Sen points out, the lowest rungs of many materially richer societies often fare worse than their counterparts in poor nations, and evidently, geographical answers relying on continental spanning factors such as axes of diffusion don't really work when examining inequality at a local level.
There are plenty of other explanations aside from geography alone that explain inequality too.
Genocide tends to do that. How well did the Dzungar's disease resistance and usage of gunpowder and steel help them in resisting Chinese rule after their conquest?
This also ignores the fact that natives did successfully resist the Spanish in centuries-long campaigns and even triumphed occassionaly by forcing Spanish diplomatic recognition, and that many natives were fine under Spanish rule and saw no need to revolt, like the Tlaxcala or the Incan nobility.
You're arguing that a Mongolian dynasty was kept out of Mongolia, and you're assuming the plague in China was the Black Death, when it may well have been another disease endemic to China proper. We have no clinical sources detailing symptoms of the 14th century epidemic despite the bubonic plague being very visible and obvious to even laymen, and the disease had a much slower rate of spread than later plague epidemics in 17th century China and the plague spread in Europe.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1052&context=lg_pubs
There was also a set of simultaneous natural disasters independent of the plague that were just as important in inciting the Red Turban Rebellion too.
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Is this account from Titu Cusi Yupanqui viewed as reliable? It seems utterly baffling to me to think that a ruler and their court would travel completely undefended to meet with anyone let alone a band of foreign raiders. Under what circumstances would the supreme ruler of country of millions travelling to meet a band of several hundred soldiers with anything less than an overwhelming force to defend themselves not be completely absurd? This is particularly the case since Atahuallpa had just won a civil war and should thus be prepared for treachery or civil disturbance that could pose a threat if his court travel without a large armed guard. The account seems like the type of fantasy Utopia encountering the real world fiction than anything I would characterize as a reliable historical record.
Also: I think it is best to consider the biased perspective that treats the account of Titu Cusi Yupanqui as an unequivocable truth while all of the Spanish testimony is a complete fabrication. Everyone involved in this conflict had a reason to record history in a way that glorifies their cause and condemns their enemy. Our recognition of the moral distinction between people defending themselves from conquest and the conquerors isn't relevant.
As a final note: If we take the testimony of Titu Cusi Yupanqui as reliable than doesn't it reinforce Diamond's point on there being a major difference in capability that can be blamed on literacy? Whether societal literacy and its lack thereof gave an advantage in preparation before the battle and the ransom negotiations or the bizarre decisions that led to Atahuallpa meet the Spanish band without overwhelming numbers doesn't matter. The key point is that Atahuallpa made a fatal miscalculation at some point. It is simply a far greater miscalculation if we treat Titu Cusi Yupanqui's testimony as superior to that of the Spanish.
I would not incline with Diamond that the poor decisions that repeatedly led to Spanish victory are based on the level of literacy but that is a separate topic from Diamond correctly pointing out that these poor decisions took place.
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man wouldn't it be great if there was some kind of critical grappling with sources in the text we were discussing, instead of people trying to do it live in this thread? the whole problem is that you'd never heard of this account 24 hours ago and now you've circled back around to dismissing it, which is whatever as a personal choice but is damning to the historical rigor of the original passage.
Yeah, I should definitely have done more research on the topic before contributing to the thread. I still think that I raise some good points over Diamond's take on the topic not being the "Complete Nonsense" that Chehrazad claims it is.
PS: On my end I would add that I have been greatly enjoying this discussion and learning more about this topic. I can still see that other people might be bothered so if that is the case send me a PM and I will move on.
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Cetashwayo
Lord of Ten Thousand Years
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Well, it was the account of someone who had been there on the Inca side and spoke the language and was in fact the nephew of the the man himself. This was as part of a letter to address the Spanish King by the Neo-Inca state in the highlands before its fall, when Yupanqui had made an effort to gain recognition as an equal to them. Yupanqui may be embellishing but there doesn't seem to be reason to think he is just outright lying? As the indigenous participant he had a far greater ideas of the intentions of his own side than the Spaniards did. He made little comment on the Spanish side, unlike the Spaniards who purported many things. Further, his writing aligns far more with Inca customs of hospitality than the Spanish account does. It was a parley.
I didn't bring up moral reasoning as to why we support Yupanqui more. We support him more than the Spanish accounts because he actually was in the Inca Court and knew the language, and therefore could speak with far greater confidence on their intentions and intent than the Spanish could, and because his description better matches what we know of Inca customs.
No, the Inca didn't expect the Spanish not to respect basic rules of hospitality. The Spanish had set the trap up near-immediately and then sprung it. It wasn't a battle because they were an unarmed court retinue. We agree, it's a miscalculation. But it's not a battle and it's not about "social illiteracy". The Spanish won by treachery in an unfamiliar situation. Would we say Muhammad Ali had superior "literacy" when he lured the Mamelukes into a meeting and then slaughtered them all? No, he won by daring, initiative, and treachery. This is a universal human behavior, not a technology.
Chloe Sullivan
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Imagine the obvious counterfactual diamond's claim suggests:
The indigenous people of central Mexico and South America have invented writing and have literacy rates comparable to the Spanish.
Does this forestall pizzaro? Does it thwart his treachery?
Frankly, I don't see it.
Spanish oceangoing ships mean that on a strategic scale, their expeditionary forces can literally outrun the hypothetical messengers Whether the messengers are carrying written letters or just memorized impressions.
Like I said earlier, this is a transportation issue far more than a literacy one.
Writing may have had something to do with why Europe was colonizing the Americas rather than vice versa, but it has no real explanatory power for Pizzarro ambushing an Inca royal.
The indigenous people of central Mexico and South America have invented writing and have literacy rates comparable to the Spanish.
Does this forestall pizzaro? Does it thwart his treachery?
Frankly, I don't see it.
Spanish oceangoing ships mean that on a strategic scale, their expeditionary forces can literally outrun the hypothetical messengers Whether the messengers are carrying written letters or just memorized impressions.
Like I said earlier, this is a transportation issue far more than a literacy one.
Writing may have had something to do with why Europe was colonizing the Americas rather than vice versa, but it has no real explanatory power for Pizzarro ambushing an Inca royal.
I would not dispute the idea that Titu Cusi Yupanqui has unique insight into the functioning of the Incan court and the intentions of the Inca than the Spanish. My point is that this does not matter as the only issue at dispute here is whether the Inca expedition led by Atahualpa was a military force numbering in the tens of thousands as the Spanish wrote or a small unarmed court as Titu Cusi Yupanqui wrote. This is something that the Spanish would have a direct insight into as they were quite literally there. Familiarity with the native language and culture is utterly irrelevant as all that would matter is their ability to tell the difference between an organized army and a court retinue that doesn't have enough guards to massively overwhelm a small band of around 168 people. I don't believe it is possible for such a fundamental difference to be the natural result of differing perspectives. One side must be lying in order to make their faction look good. I find it more credible that it is Titu Cusi Yupanqui given the aforementioned problems with the idea of a ruler of a nation of millions travel to meet a band of foreign soldiers without an overwhelming military force.
You seem to be misinterpreting my words in regards to your paraphrase of "sociel illiteracy". I said societal illiteracy in the meaning that the society was illiterate. This distinction was meaningful in this context because even though the Spanish were a literate society Pizzaro himself was illiterate. It thus isn't a comparison of the decision making capabilities of a literate vs a illiterate leader but rather the nature of the society that shaped them.
What you are saying about the Inca not expecting the Spanish to violate the rules of Court etiquette is another take on what Diamond is arguing. He says that "On a mundane level, the miscalculations by Atahuallpa, Chalcuchima, Montezuma, and countless other Native American leaders deceived by Europeans were due to the fact that no living inhabitants of the New World had been to the Old World, so of course they could have had no specific information about the Spaniards. Even so, we find it hard to avoid the conclusion that Atahuallpa "should" have been more suspicious, if only his society had experienced a broader range of human behavior. It is the same point save that Diamond focuses on the mistakes made by the Incans and other Indigenous people that allowed the Spanish to win by "daring, initiative, and treachery".
The summarized idea is that literacy made it easier for the Spanish to identify and exploit mistakes while a lack of literacy made it easier for the Incans and others to make mistakes.
I would dispute this by pointing out that there are many differing features (experience with war, the structure of civilization, collapsing society from disease and civil war, greater safety net to take risks) that could be considered as more significant in determining which side made or exploited mistakes. In the particular case of the Battle of Cajamarca, I would instead point to the nature of a society that required the supreme leader to personally lead forces in battle and would be seriously disrupted by his loss due the importance of personal loyalty and unstable methods of succession.
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A society where the leader was generally expected to be in the field? So... you mean Europe at the time?
Pizarro was right there as well, and if he'd died the expedition would have likely fallen apart.
Well after the early 1500s, monarchs were often keystones in European society, lol.
Pizarro was right there as well, and if he'd died the expedition would have likely fallen apart.
Well after the early 1500s, monarchs were often keystones in European society, lol.
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Have you even read Titu Cusi Yupanqui's account? At no point does he claim that it was a small court, merely that it was unarmed. In fact, he quite literally says that they were "penned up, because there were so many." How do you expect me to take this seriously, if you will not even extend the basic courtesy to familiarize yourself with the sources? Of course the Inka court could not fight back. Look at Titu Cusi's account:
Note that his number is "more than ten thousand", which is still a fairly large number but substantially more restrained than Pizzaro's claim of 40,000, but in actuality 80,000 lying in ambush. Killing a largely unarmed, uncoordinated court penned into a tight enclosure is not the same as "168 Spaniards crushed a Native American army more than 500 times more numerous, killing thousands of natives while not losing a single Spaniard", which is what Jared Diamond claims happened and which he does not question but merely takes at face value. Which again, leads us to the fact that we do not know if the Inkas were illiterate in the first place because we do not know if Qhipu is a form of writing or not.
Likely we will never know the precise number, but that doesn't matter because what is the matter of facts is that Jared Diamond simply takes Pizzaro's account as factual, despite Pizzaro's own account being based just as much on conjecture. Either Diamond was unaware of the existence of alternate accounts, which speaks poorly of his abilities as a historian or he was aware of their existence and chose not to mention which speaks poorly of both his abilities and his integrity.
Note that his number is "more than ten thousand", which is still a fairly large number but substantially more restrained than Pizzaro's claim of 40,000, but in actuality 80,000 lying in ambush. Killing a largely unarmed, uncoordinated court penned into a tight enclosure is not the same as "168 Spaniards crushed a Native American army more than 500 times more numerous, killing thousands of natives while not losing a single Spaniard", which is what Jared Diamond claims happened and which he does not question but merely takes at face value. Which again, leads us to the fact that we do not know if the Inkas were illiterate in the first place because we do not know if Qhipu is a form of writing or not.
Likely we will never know the precise number, but that doesn't matter because what is the matter of facts is that Jared Diamond simply takes Pizzaro's account as factual, despite Pizzaro's own account being based just as much on conjecture. Either Diamond was unaware of the existence of alternate accounts, which speaks poorly of his abilities as a historian or he was aware of their existence and chose not to mention which speaks poorly of both his abilities and his integrity.
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Cetashwayo
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So you didn't know who this man was 3 posts ago but you are confident enough to assert he is lying in this situation based on your extensive knowledge of Inca behavior and history (you don't have any) and not the Spaniards whose accounts were given years later when they were under huge heat by the Spanish Crown and needed to make themselves look good because they were a band of robbers and reavers looting Peru dry and the Crown was replacing them with bureaucrats because of their excesses, which included murdering each other in the process of glorifying themselves. You probably were not aware of what I just said either until you read these words.
Absolutely when 168 men slaughter an army of 80,000 that is extremely credible. It simply is illogical when looking at the scope of human behavior for that to be a fabrication. But meeting foreigners under parley with unarmed attendants and detaching your army to wait nearby is a completely made up thing which doesn't happen. This despite the fact Pizarro and Atahuallpa were exchanging communications and gifts in all accounts ahead of such a parley.
The Spanish story does not hold up under any historical scrutiny, which is why it has been comprehensively challenged and overturned by professional historians studying the events. Most major Anglophone accounts like the Last Days of the Inca don't agree with it. I recommend you check them out.
Absolutely when 168 men slaughter an army of 80,000 that is extremely credible. It simply is illogical when looking at the scope of human behavior for that to be a fabrication. But meeting foreigners under parley with unarmed attendants and detaching your army to wait nearby is a completely made up thing which doesn't happen. This despite the fact Pizarro and Atahuallpa were exchanging communications and gifts in all accounts ahead of such a parley.
The Spanish story does not hold up under any historical scrutiny, which is why it has been comprehensively challenged and overturned by professional historians studying the events. Most major Anglophone accounts like the Last Days of the Inca don't agree with it. I recommend you check them out.
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I am sorry, why do you think that Titu Cusi Yupanqu saying that the Spanish force of 168 defeated a force of greater than 10,000 people and took advantage of the Incans being penned is in anyway contradictory to the idea that the Spanish won a major victory against overwhelming numbers by taking advantage of Incan mistakes? How does anything change if the Spanish were merely outnumbered by two orders of magnitude instead of almost three. What is even the point of dispute here?
In regards to the literacy of the Incas, I am aware of people presenting the argument that the Quipus represented a written language and that it was merely entirely lost with the Spanish conquest. My understanding is that the current historical consensus is that it is not a written language on the basis of the new evidence that could suggest otherwise being much too limited. It is also notable that this new evidence seems to have largely been discovered after Diamond released Guns, Germs, and Steel in 1997.
As opposed to Titu Cusi Yupanqu who was living a life of peaceful leisure where he had not incentives to saying but the complete truth? I didn't know about him personally but the idea of an Incan noble having a reason to glorify the last days of their fallen empire is just common sense.
I have made it completely clear that I recognize the Spanish bias in their encounters. My point is that this is entirely different from saying it is a complete fabrication or that the competing narrative must be the absolute truth. The exact numbers do not matter as much as the mutually agreed upon narrative of the Spanish exploiting Incan mistakes and scoring a major victory despite an extreme disparity of forces.
Thank you for your book recommendation of the Last Days of the Inca. I will see if I can find it at my library.
I think the key point here is the question "Why did Atahuallpa walk into what seems like an obvious trap?". This question could be asked regardless of whether the trap involved a military defeat of 40,000 to 80,000 men or an ambush on a relatively defenseless court of 10,000 people that had penned themselves court. Diamond presented his take on the answer being societal literacy and others (particulary Simon_Jester who I thought shared some interesting thoughts) have shared their take earlier in the thread. How would the two of you answer it?
PS: I am restating my earlier point on being willing to table the topic if it is bothering anyone. I don't have an emotional stake in the discussion but it seems like you may feel differently given your latest post.
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Because an unarmed, panicked court penned into the city walls and unable to effectively move because of its own numbers is not an army. Which is what Jared Diamond presents it as; an overwhelming, military victory against an army of Native Americans, rather than a surprise attack against a largely civilian assembly.
No one has ever said the first, come on.
I think you have a point there on the Incans having turned themselves into a de facto non-military force if we take everything that Titu Cusi Yupanqu writes their lack of weapons and penning inside an enclosed plaza as perfect fact (I am not inclined too do so but will for the purpose of the discussion). I still don't see how this wouldn't be defined as the extremely small numbers of Spanish troops achieving a major military victory by exploiting the fact that their opponents had made a mistake. It is victory achieved through the force of military might after an army (or at least a force that far outnumbers 168 people) made themselves vulnerable.
The fact that this victory involved the horrific war crime of breaking a truce and massacring civilians is irrelevant to the question of why Atahuallpa fell into the trap. If anything it strengthens the idea that societal literacy could be a factor as it would have Atahuallpa making a far more grievous mistake.
I was presenting my absurd sentence purely as a rebuttal to the insulting idea that I was somehow unaware of the nature of the Spanish conquest or the reasons why the Spanish Conquistadors would have a reason to lie.
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My own response to this one, which is not Cherhezad's, would be:
"Because there is a praise, a sense of honor gained, in saying that a man has won a great victory, and it seems unfitting to say that a man has won a great victory by treacherously ambushing unarmed neutrals who believed they were there to negotiate or to meet, kidnapping their leader, and then ransoming him and murdering him when the ransom was gained. To say this is both to give unearned laurels to a man whose deeds were contemptible, and to stain the achievement of other military leaders whose actions were more highly regarded."
Now, there are a LOT of value judgments baked into the above statement, but they are commonly held value judgments about what "military honor" and so forth mean, so if nothing else they have a certain weight of popular consensus culture behind them.
It is a recurring theme in the culture and beliefs of settler colonialism that when the settlers do this kind of thing to the natives it's a cunning strategem that let them boldly triumph against the odds, but that when the natives do this kind of things to the settlers it's vicious treachery and clear proof that the lot of Those People are heathen animals who deserve no better than to be slaughtered to the last man, woman, and child. Cherhezad may understandably be sick of that sort of thing. I can't blame her.
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Claiming that the Spaniards achieved a military victory over the Inka because they betrayed and murdered a bunch of courtiers makes as much sense as saying that the Catholics achieved a military victory over the Hugenots in the Saint Bartholomew's Day massacre. It's not a "military" action in the traditional sense of the word, nor in the way that the word is used in historical analysis and discussion, it's a brutal murder of political enemies through treachery.
This represents an interesting digression into moral philosophy and the question of how we define the legitimate use of force.
I am not sure if it beneficial from a historical perspective to create a distinction between the deployment of military force to achieve an objective (such as decapitating the enemy leadership) and that same practice but using methods deemed illegitimate or immoral. It seems like it would require redefining a great many exercises that we now view as military as something else. An example, would be redefining the bombing campaign against Japan cities as not a military exercise because of the extreme and deliberate pursuit of civilian casualties. Is this useful for the study history?
It does make a lot of more sense in the concept of contemporary foreign policy though as a means of installing firm limits on the use of military force. Firmly defining actions that violate our understanding of the laws of war, are generally dishonorable, or have too many civilian causalities as illegitimate seems like it would be a very positive change.
I am not sure if it beneficial from a historical perspective to create a distinction between the deployment of military force to achieve an objective (such as decapitating the enemy leadership) and that same practice but using methods deemed illegitimate or immoral. It seems like it would require redefining a great many exercises that we now view as military as something else. An example, would be redefining the bombing campaign against Japan cities as not a military exercise because of the extreme and deliberate pursuit of civilian casualties. Is this useful for the study history?
It does make a lot of more sense in the concept of contemporary foreign policy though as a means of installing firm limits on the use of military force. Firmly defining actions that violate our understanding of the laws of war, are generally dishonorable, or have too many civilian causalities as illegitimate seems like it would be a very positive change.
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Cetashwayo
Lord of Ten Thousand Years
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A small group of armed men can kill a lot of unarmed people. This is not a military victory as claimed by the chroniclers. They had knives and llama whips, the army was decamped nearby while negotiations were conducted.
This means that Diamond is wrong. Diamond's portrayal of this as a victory by force of arms by a technologically advanced force is wrong. This was the actual original topic which we were talking about. We have now moved onto "it is impressive to slaughter a bunch of courtiers with horses and cannon", from the original claim of Diamond. We were talking about the original claim, not whatever this is after a page and a half of back and forth. I am not holding a conversation about that, I am talking about what Diamond said, which was wrong.
But it doesn't. That's my point in the Mameluke example. Reading would not have helped the Inca because the Inca didn't have any books on the Spaniards. There were few prior interactions and Pizarro was a unique personality. Do you think reading about Albanians would have protected the Mamelukes from Muhammad Ali? Probably not. Diamond makes an unproven assertion that a literate society is more suspicious than an oral one, because they "had more information". Oral societies pass down huge amounts of information through bards and storytellers. He has made a sweeping generalization without evidence - he decides on the theory first and then tries to find evidence for it. The Inca could be plenty treacherous and cruel to each other. It's not a credible observation. It's an attempt to make a specific mistake into a societal theory.
Because he was under the impression he was entering a negotiation and following rules of normal hospitality and negotiation around it. The Spaniards were until that point following protocols.
How is it glorifying it to indicate they were hoodwinked and fell into a trap? Why would he want to glorify a major loss (which is still portrayed by him as a loss, just as a betrayal and humiliation) when he is writing a letter to Spain? He is attempting to establish the original conquest was based on treachery and the accounts of the Spaniards are wrong when they claim Inca aggression in the process of trying to, in a (doomed) effort, establish support for his Neo-Inca holdout from the Spanish King. You decided on no real basis that he is a liar, only your personal gutfeel that it "makes no sense" and is utopian. It's not claimed his account is 100% accurate. But it aligns far more with what we know of the Inca.
This is not the first time Diamond has come up in this thread in a positive sense. I wish it wouldn't and exact no enjoyment from this conversation. It is tedious to hold arguments where the other person learns about what you're saying for the first time when you say it.
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I think we are getting into the field of moral philosophy and what qualifies as a military action as covered by Simon_Jester above. Does tricking an opponent into letting down their guard and then having your small band slaughter many times their number constitute sufficiently immoral behavior for it to no longer count as a military victory?
I don't think anyone here would argue that it is immoral. Does that make it non-military when considering the overwhelming and unequivocal advantage it gave the Spanish in their future campaign of conquest to take out the enemy leadership?
This also again has nothing to dispute the idea presented by Diamond that societal literacy provides advantages in deception and could explain why Atahuallpa fell into the trap.
My response was only directed at Chehrazad saying:
Complete nonsense. Diamond literally says the Inca did not know what an ambush was because they were non-literate, unlike Pizzaro who came from a "literate civilization" despite also being illiterate himself. He barely mentions native allies, does not use any sources which prima facie makes it an unserious academic work because of his failure to follow established academic procedures and characterizes the entire clash at Kashamarka as a meeting of a few Spanish adventurers toppling the Inca Empire, not through clever exploitation of a pre-existing civil war and a long campaign backed by much more numerous local allies.
I responded by quoting the paragraph where Diamond briefly discusses the advantage of literacy in regards to why Native American leaders were so susceptive to being deceived by Europeans. Everything else flowed from there and it has indeed gone in some strange directions.
Here is how Diamond presented his argument on how literacy mattered:
On a mundane level, the miscalculations by Atahuallpa, Chalcuchima, Montezuma, and countless other Native American leaders deceived by Europeans were due to the fact that no living inhabitants of the New World had been to the Old World, so of course they could have had no specific information about the Spaniards. Even so, we find it hard to avoidthe conclusion that Atahuallpa "should" have been more suspicious, if only his society had experienced a broader range of human behavior. Pizarro too arrived at Cajamarca with no information about the Incasother than what he had learned by interrogating the Inca subjects he encountered in 1527 and 1531. However, while Pizarro himself happenedto be illiterate, he belonged to a literate tradition. From books, the Spaniards knew of many contemporary civilizations remote from Europe, andabout several thousand years of European history. Pizarro explicitly modeled his ambush of Atahuallpa on the successful strategy of Cortes.
In short, literacy made the Spaniards heirs to a huge body of knowledge about human behavior and history. By contrast, not only did Atahuallpa have no conception of the Spaniards themselves, and no personal experience of any other invaders from overseas, but he also had not even heard (or read) of similar threats to anyone else, anywhere else, anytime previously in history. That gulf of experience encouraged Pizarro to set his trap and Atahuallpa to walk into it.
I am not entirely convinced as there are all of the aforementioned other features that I mentioned could be more relevant. I also view it as more Diamond trying answer the question of why did Atahuallpa (and so many other Indigenous leaders) fall for the Spanish deception and seizing on literacy as the explanation after being dissatisfied with the other options. It does seems like a serious mistake to point to literacy as a singular or primary determinant rather than everything else that could be considered as a relevant factor.
That is indeed the mistake Atahuallpa made which left him vulnerable to Spanish treachery. I have no dispute over the Spanish Conquisatodrs violating the traditions of honorable war as held by pretty much every society throughout human history. Violating a truce is pretty much universally condemned for very good reasons. It is still considered prudent to take such precautions as to ensure that you are not helpless before such treacherous.
You are quite literally describing in this paragraph why he would want to frame the Battle of Cajamarca as an act of treachery. He would want to glorify it in the sense of presenting the fallen Incan Empire in the best possible light and the Spanish Conquisitadors in the worst. This would be a direct rhetorical strategy to establish support for his Neo-Inca holdout from the Spanish King. He has everyone reason to bend the truth in the hope that this strategy works.
How does it align with what we know of Incan culture for battle-hardened king fresh off of a civil war to travel to meet a band of mysterious raiders with nothing more than a civilian court? This isn't impossible as human history is full of people doing incredibly stupid things. I just view it as far more plausible for Atahuallpa to have taken the common sense precaution of brining sizeable military forces along with him
Ok, I will end my discussion here and take a pause from the thread as it is clear you are not having as much fun discussing this topic as I am. Sorry for any discomfort this may have caused you.
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Chloe Sullivan
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See, the thing is, this is giving Diamond too much credit.
You assume he explored a bunch of different options and settled on literacy. This, frankly, does not appear to be true. See my previous post where I note the simple thought-experiment of assuming a counterfactual. It does not take a deep dive into history to conclude that literacy is not a "primary determinant" here. It just requires some critical examination of the premise.
The thing that you may not be aware of is that Diamond is not a trained historian. He is a geographer by trade, and previously also studied physiology and ecology. Thus why a large part of his argument centers on things like the spread of crops/domesticated animals and large scale geological barriers - these are the things he has actual expertise in and are familiar to him.
When he brings up literacy as an explanation for historic events, he is speaking as a layman, a non-expert. And this choice of explanation appears to be more grounded in western chauvinism than well-considered historical inquiry.
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In all fairness, many of these explanations take the form "once the inequality started, this is what perpetuated and amplified it."
When you see a cabin crushed under a gigantic avalanche, and someone asks "why," well, there must have been a first sliding stone, or a sound that set the snow to sliding. It is a valid thing to say "I'm not interested in that first cause," but it is at least a valid question for someone to make inquiries about, even if Diamond isn't the guy I'd go to for all my answers.
Hypotheses:
Atahualpa may have figured that no small group of adventurers with no outside backing would have the nerve. He may have underestimated how effective Pizarro's men would be in an all-out attack, thinking that even unarmed, his entourage would be able to beat a fighting retreat in case of treachery. He may have thought he'd be able to sniff out treachery more easily than he, in fact, could; he wouldn't be the first monarch to overestimate himself.
Those'd be some pretty slow messengers.
Roughly ten years elapsed between Cortez's invasion of the Aztec Empire and Pizarro's invasion of the Inca Empire.
You're going to look a little silly here, because the answer is, as others noted, "both." Atahualpa brought an army, but he went into the town with only his entourage because he'd been invited to a parley. The army was still camped outside the town.
You probably shouldn't be quipping about a source you haven't read and only heard described secondhand and saying "obviously someone is lying." That's the kind of statement you don't stake out until you're sure what the texts say.
[squints]
Really?
I mean, you think about that, but you don't think about the part where an Inca emperor might look insecure and tense if he brings a huge guard force of heavily armed soldiers along to a negotiation, when all known convention (including that of the Spanish!) holds that he shouldn't have to, and that his large unarmed procession of loyal followers should be quite enough?
In fairness, Atahualpa might have benefited from knowing that a similar expedition led by the literal second cousin of the guy he was talking to had just busted up the Aztec Empire... by betraying and murdering its emperor. He might have at least viewed the idea of walking up to Pizarro on terrain of Pizarro's choosing without a sizeable armed escort with a livelier sense of caution.
If he already knew that, his decisions do seem rather unwise.
Especially since he does not read and seems unfamiliar with the languages in which the primary sources wrote and spoke. Usually, one of the prerequisites of being a historian is the ability to directly read primary source documents. Roman historians are supposed to know Latin and Greek. Historians of medieval Germany should know medieval German. Historians of China should read Chinese, not just read about Chinese or read Chinese in translation.
And historians of the conquest of the Inca Empire who are trying to make detailed analyses of specific historical events or battlefields... should damn well at least know how to read Spanish, an easy language to learn in America and widely agreed to be one of the easiest to learn in general!
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Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
The context is hypothetical counterfactual imagining if giving writing to indigenous American polities gives them greater ability to stand of European tactics.
AFAIK, there wasn't actual contact between the Incas and Aztecs, so the hypothetical messenger would never even be sent in the first place, technically, since no one knows there's the Incas to send it to.
But if we imagine, by adding in even more counterfactual elements, that a messenger was sent... if the Spanish found out and decided to get out ahead of the message, AFAICT they could. This is not a "realistic" scenario, it's hyperbole to emphasize the utter non-relevance of writing in providing useful warning to the Incas.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I don't think they really could. Think about the logistics of what would be involved to cut off the possibility of a messenger, even if they foresaw one.
The Spanish conquests were generally carried out with such tiny forces because the actual 'might of Spain' in the New World in this period hinged on, like, five or ten thousand dudes who were actually willing to go march out into the totally unexplored wilderness and risk getting stabbed. They had ships, but a lot of the coastline was poorly charted or uncharted and safe harbors were not so well known. They did not have vast forces and logistically just could not fully cordon off entire regions.
I get the part where the Aztecs and Incas just weren't in communication at all, but that's kind of my point. If they had been, for any reason and in any manner, that would likely have made a difference. I don't think the Spanish were in any position to prevent such information from moving.
This isn't "Diamond is right," this is just me remarking on this one thing, probably because I never really gave it any thought.
Except that's the whole issue with the methodology of GG&S. By initially making an assumption ("why") and looking at evidence backwards from said assumption in order to find a just-so story, the book falls victim to confirmation bias and ends up forcing facts to fit a hypothesis implicitly assumed to be true. In all fairness to Diamond, he isn't the only person to do this, Sapiens being the other example coming to mind.
Going with the avalanche analogy, say the owner asks a cryptozoologist "why was the cabin crushed?", and the cryptozoologist decides to do an investigation, inspired by this question. The cryptozoologist then looks at the fact that caves exist at the top of the mountain, that high stress from large masses is more likely to trigger avalanches, and that fewer large caves exist around towns. From this evidence that he examines through the viewpoint of his specialty, he then concludes that a Yeti must live at the top of the mountain in the caves, and its activities are what's causing the avalanche.
On the flip side, say a surveyor is commissioned to map the surrounding mountains. They notice the terrain is fairly steep and has a lot of gullies and troughs. They flip through weather archives recording strong winds and low temperatures in the region. They also find records of prospectors frequently going up the mountain to look for gold (or whatever). After examining all the geographic and meteorological data they can get their hands on, they conclude that the mountain's terrain and weather creates a higher risk of avalanches, and human activity on the slopes increases the risk of triggering an avalanche.
Which person did the more rigorous investigation?
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Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
I think you misunderstood - or maybe I just explained badly. Have you considered how slow it would be to get from Mexico to Chile if the best you can do is runners on foot and maybe a non-seaworthy canoe here and there? My hypothetical/hyperbolic scenario is Pizarro being told "hey the Aztecs just sent a guy to go find the Inca and warn them that you are coming" and then Pizarro going "okay boys, departure date is moved up to today, everyone get on board" and then the Spanish invasion force getting there first because on strategic scale movement, ships are just way faster than an overland messenger.
Yes, this is a silly scenario, but that was the point.
The basic statement that "Pizzaro could (potentially) benefit from knowing what Cortez did, but Atahualpa could not benefit from Moctezuma II's experience." is true.
However, this statement would remain true in a universe, where, all other things equal, the Spanish didn't have writing and the Incas and Aztes did. Because there were no lines of communication between Tenochtitlan and Cuzco, but there were lines of communication across the Spanish holdings in the Americas thanks to Spanish ships.
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