This is inspired by my reading of “Pastwatch” by Orson Scott Card.
First, has any imperialist (read European, for most purposes) nation ever come in contact with another race and not subjugated it? This is looking for the examples of fierce enough resistance etc.
Second, has any imperialist nation came in contact with another race and not tried to subjugate it, for whatever reason?
My other questions - the hints that the Tlaxcala were more involved in the fall of the Mexica/Aztecs… how much of that is made up by Card?
Also, they say that “And the resistance [to the Tlaxcalan empire armed with iron weapons] would be too strong as they came in contact with the Incas.” If this is the case, why wouldn’t they have been as wildly successful in destroying the Incans as the Spanish were, even without assassinating their emperor? I thought the technology of the Incas was on par with that of the Mexica (ie flint weaponry)…
Of all the peoples of the earth, the Japanese most successfully resisted European conquest. When Christian missionaries became too common in the 17th century, the response was to expel all foreigners and kill all Japanese who had converted to Christianity. Japan remained virtually closed to Europeans until Commodore Perry’s famous voyage there. Then during the 19th century the Japanese managed to modernize their society on their own terms, to the point where they were able to defeat the attempted Russian expansion into the Pacific. Japan remained unconquered until 1945, and fortunately the US didn’t try to reduce them to a colony.
Siam (Thailand) managed to avoid becoming either a British or French possession by astute diplomacy.
The British never really succeeded in imposing a government on Afghanistan, and came to grief trying.
Although the Ottoman empire suffered the total loss of it’s non-Turkish domains after WW1, it did retain enough power to reconstitute itself into modern Turkey, even though the British and French had considered carving it up between themselves.
I’d have to check but I don’t think either Persia/Iran or Madagascar were ever European colonies, protectorates or had imposed governments.
The Inca were destroyed by civil war, the end of the line for an economy that depended on continual expansion, and most importantly, smallpox. The Spanish had several decades head start in immunity to smallpox, but the Inca were very badly affected and they were unable to mount any kind of serious defence.
Lumpy, the French ruled Madagascar from the 1880s to the 1960s, and their cultural legacy is still strong.
hibernicus already covered Madagascar, which was directly conquered by the French.
Persia, while retaining a formal independance, was in actuality divided into British and Russian spheres of control and like Siam was effectively a protectorate.
In terms of resistance, Ethiopia, though briefly taken down by Italy in the inter-war years, was never really assimilated or strongly held ( Italian rule lasted ~1936-1941 ). Its victory over Italy at Adowa in 1898, the greatest single battlefield victory by a native army over a European force, plus some clever political maneouverings, preserved their independance while every other African nation but Liberia ( an oddball case ) was absorbed into the European colonial system.
When addressing the issue of “race” in the past, one must look at how the race was defined at THAT time. Middle eastern people were considered to be “white/European” until fairly recently. (WWII ?)
Well, it seems to be the best I can hope for. Did any Native North American tribes resist too much American culturalization/forced movement to reserves?
Also, my question of the Tlaxcala was more - “Did the Tlaxcala have much to do with the instability of the Mexica before the Spaniards arrived, and has it actually been agreed upon that the Mexican empire would have fallen, even without European ‘assistance?’”
That’s a big question. The Sioux fought like crazy for a while, didn’t they? It just didn’t work.
The tribes of the Pacific Northwest came very close to a somewhat amicable agreement with the U.S. (though after their numbers had already been decimated by smallpox, etc.). A number of tribes had agreed to cede the U.S. much of their land in exchange for money, schools, etc. The sticking point was that the tribes wanted to remain on reservations within their original territories. The U.S. was too stupid to realize that these tribes were different from one another, and simply wanted to remove them all to a single reservation. “No,” said the tribal leaders. “We don’t like each other. We’ll fight if you stick us all together.” The U.S. refused to delegate real authority to any of its frontier representatives, so the negotiations dragged on and fell apart.
Eventually, the tribes died off or were more or less fully assimilated. So I guess the U.S. got what it wanted.
Absolutely - many did. King Phillip’s War, waged primarily between the New England colonists ( and some Amerindian allies ) and the Wampanoag ( and allies ), the tribe who had so famously befriended the pilgrims, was one the bloodiest in American history if we go by casualties a a percentage of population. The single worst defeat of the U.S. in an Indian battle was on the Wabash River in 1791 at the hands of an allied force Miamis, Shawnees, Potawatamis, and Chippewas under Chief Little Turtle - Only 580 men escaped under General St. Clair out of a force of 1400 ( Little Turtle had also chewed up General Harmon the year before in the Maumee Valley, killing 183 ).
I could go on for quite awhile - The list of battles and campaigns is huge and whole books have been written on many of them. However all ultimately ended in Amerindian defeat.
Among the limited successes - The Sioux ( Dakota ) Chief, Red Cloud, forced a short-lived negotiated settlement in his favor, but in large part only because the U.S. was bogged down in the Civil War at the time. Pope successfully masterminded a rebellion of Pueblo Indians against the Spanish in the Southwest, but the Spaniards returned ten or so years later to reconquer the area.
No.
The Aztec state, which unlike the Inca Empire should be considered essentially a large city-state with a couple of allied/subordinate partner city-states ( most of the territories ascribed to them on historical maps consisted of tribute-paying states and tribes ), was at the peak of their influence when the Spanish arrived. The Tlaxcala, owing to their pugnacity, their mountainous territory, and I believe at least one major defensive victory several years earlier, were simply the last major pocket of resistance within the ‘Aztec sphere’. They could defend themselves, but they lacked the resources to take the fight to the Aztecs alone. Disease was the major factor in the Spanish/Tlaxcalan victory - It was a smallpox epidemic that so weakened the Mexica that a combined Spanish/Tlaxcalan army ( returning to Tenochitlan after the Spanish had earlier been forcibly expelled ) was able to penetrate their defenses.
They were. The Tlaxcalan leader Maxixcatzin had been the first to ally with the Spanish in 1519 and after the Mexica chewed up the Spanish, ejected them from Tenochitlan, and harried them back to the border of Tlaxcala, he provided them with shelter. While the Aztecs sought to rally their “empire” ( i.e. the numerous subject states of the Mexican plateau ), he managed to persuade his people to stay loyal to Cortes. However he himself was felled by smallpox, along with many of his people ( presumably during the first epidemic of 1520-1521 ).
The epidemic of 1520 was devastating, more so in a densely populated city like Tenochitlan than anywhere else - Remember smallpox functions through a human-to-human communicability chain, so the more concentrated the population, the more rapid the transmission and dispersion and the higher the mortality in a shorter period of time. However although the manpower losses were bad, the real loss was political - The new Mexica ruler Cuitlahuactzin and many of his court were taken out and consequently the Aztec state was unable to function in a properly ( i.e. establish allegiance through military raids ) in its attempt to rally its tributaries on the Mexican plateau in that vital period between expelling Cortes and his return.
It is often said Cortes victory was more political than military. He was able to isolate Tenochitlan and, with Tlaxcalan support, returned to storm and level the city. With Tenochitlan removed, the Spanish replaced them in the ensuing power vacume.
Surprisingly well, at least for awhile. Tlaxcala retained a measure of local autonomy and provided troops for a variety of later Spanish expeditions into Central America and northern Mexico. Tlaxcala today is Mexico’s smallest state and much of the population are descended from the Otomi ( the name of the tribe that dominated Tlaxcala ).
Alright, and what about the Incas? Assuming the Spanish hadn’t interfered and one side or the other had taken control of the empire, would it have stayed a powerful force?
Tough question. The Inca state was quite young, but highly efficient. Just how much lasting damage would have been done to the unity of the royal family ( which was sort of an enormous administrative clan, like the current al-Saud family of Saudi Arabia ) is hard to say. It is also difficult to gauge whether the Inca state would have immediately turned back towards expansion ( though given Atahualpa’s likely predilections, I imagine it would have ) and just what effect that would have had on the internally weakened empire.
However at a WAG, I’d say it would have recovered nicely up to a point ( but see below on disease ) - It really was ruthlessly effective at both military and cultural imperialism. Of course even with no Spanish intervention ( and there was bound to have been some eventually ), there was the scourge of disease to deal with. That too could have compromised internal cohesion to the point where the state began to fragment. The Inca heartland was better-suited to avoiding the worst effects of epidemics due to the discontinuous nature of the more or less self-sufficient communities ( ayllus ) in the Andes, but it was hardly immune.
The Aztec state was really the more structurally fragile of the two, as essentially one major ( and two minor ) city-state that depended on military aggression towards mostly hostile subordinates to induce the support it required ( or insisted on ). Though it was at a peak of power when the Spaniards arrived, it is questionable if it could have kept its total predominance for long ( not a contradiction to my previous answer - it wasn’t tottering when Cortes arrived, but a built-in instability was there that Cortes cleverly exploited ).
Here’s a simple one - where can I find a pronounciation guide to many Mesoamerican names? Heck, I can’t even pronounce Mocteuzma, let alone Atahualpa or Quetzacoutl…
From my little bit of research, it seems that both the Inca (as you said) and the Mexica were both young empires… Were the Mayans really the only other great civilzation to inhabit the Americas? Or did the Olmecs have what we would consider an “empire?”
Thirdly, there is (in the book) some mention of Tarascans working with bronze… is there any truth to this?
Well, there were extensive cities all through the Mississippi valley. The trouble is, we don’t really know much about them. They are generally called “mound-builders”, because they created a huge number of earthworks. But the aforementioned smallpox, measles, mumps, tuberculosis, etc etc etc etc epidemics wiped them out before any european conquistadors or colonists came in contact with them a few hundred years or so later. We don’t really know much about them, since there aren’t really any contemporaneous accounts of their culture.
I always like to point out that the story of the Pilgrims is an incredible example of the story of the Americas in miniature. Plymouth was the site of an indian village. But when the pilgrims arrived the site was empty, because the village had been wiped out by an epidemic. The pilgrims set up a new village on the site of the old village. They were helped by Squanto, who was the only survivor if the old village. He survived because he had been captured and sold into slavery by the Spanish several years before, had been taken to Europe, and eventually escaped and made his way back home…only to find that his village was destroyed. He was living with a neighboring tribe, and adopted the Pilgrims out of sentimentality, I guess. The Pilgrims only survived by learning how to use American crops, which now make up a large portion of our diet…corn, potatoes, sunflowers, chiles, squash, beans, tomatoes. Crops from American Indian farmers transformed agriculture around the world.