Aztec Empire

The Aztec Empire was a powerful, politically centralized civilization whose roads, writing, money, and famine relief complicate any claim that the tropical Americas were inherently poor or undeveloped. Its conquest by Spain, completed by 1521, also illustrates how colonization seized not only wealth but the institutions and labor systems through which societies were governed.

Civilization and Political Organization

At the time of European arrival, the Aztec Empire was among the complex civilizations of the Americas south of the Tropic of Cancer. Alongside the Inca Empire, it had political centralization, extensive roads, and mechanisms for famine relief. The Aztecs used money and writing, distinguishing their society from many of the Stone Age civilizations that inhabited areas farther north and south. This contrast makes the later prosperity of temperate North America a reversal of fortune, not evidence of an unchanging geographic advantage.

The book invokes the Aztecs against the argument that differences in climate or natural endowments can explain modern inequality. At the time of conquest, tropical regions containing Mexico, Central America, Peru, and Bolivia held major civilizations, while the temperate zones that include the United States, Canada, Argentina, and Chile were, for the most part, less technologically developed. The subsequent reversal, the account argues, is better explained by divergent colonial and institutional histories than by latitude.

Encounter at Tenochtitlan

On November 8, 1519, Hernán Cortés and his men arrived at Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital. Moctezuma II, the emperor, had chosen to welcome them peacefully despite advice from his counselors. An account compiled by a Franciscan priest after 1545 describes the Spaniards seizing Moctezuma II and firing their guns, an episode that spread fear and astonishment through the city.

The account then shows the material demands that followed. At dawn, the Spaniards required food and supplies, including tortillas, turkey, eggs, water, and firewood; Moctezuma II ordered these provisions supplied. The Spanish also took precious objects from the ruler’s storehouse, including feathered ornaments, gold jewelry, and his turquoise diadem. Their handling of the gold was part of a broader seizure: valuable objects were gathered and melted into bars.

Conquest and Colonial Rule

The military conquest of the Aztecs was complete by 1521. Hernán Cortés, governing New Spain, then allocated indigenous people to Spanish settlers through the encomienda. Under this institution, an encomendero received a grant of indigenous people, who owed tribute and labor services; in return, the encomendero was charged with converting them to Christianity.

The book presents the encomienda as a colonial adaptation of an institution that had existed in fifteenth-century Spain during the reconquest of the south. In the Americas, however, it became a more pernicious means of controlling people and extracting their labor. The conquest therefore extended beyond the capture of the capital: Spanish rule placed the population and existing systems of tribute and forced labor under a new elite.

Historical Significance

The Aztec case demonstrates that a society could possess political organization, infrastructure, and systems of provision before European colonization, yet be transformed by conquest into a source of labor and tribute for colonial rulers. The Spanish strategy described in the book centered on capturing indigenous leaders, claiming their accumulated wealth, and taking control of established methods of taxation, tribute, and labor.

In the book’s wider argument, colonial expansion did not simply transmit superior technology to societies with fewer natural advantages. It could destroy or redirect existing economies and strengthen extractive institutions. The conquest of the Aztecs thus serves both as a history of imperial seizure and as evidence against explanations that treat later poverty as the inevitable result of geography or an absence of civilization.