Very interesting essay, as always. As someone with a longstanding fascination with the Aztecs and Mesoamerica generally, I'd like to respond to a few points in particular:
"So why did they do it? Why the unfathomable scale of human sacrifice, accompanied by ritual cannibalism? The common answer is: it was their culture. And because the Aztecs happened to be non-Europeans, any criticism of this culture in certain circles is perceived as verboten."
I think here you confuse post-colonialist discourse with actual archaeological and anthropological approaches to Aztec society. No serious Mesoamericanist has ever doubted that the Aztecs practiced human sacrifice at large scale, though numbers were grossly exaggerated post-Conquest. But the idea that it didn't happen is post-colonial fantasy and hardly worth mention given what a fringe view it is. Human sacrifice was a longstanding part of Mesoamerican culture generally, a fact indisputable from archaeology, iconography, and both Indigenous and Spanish descriptions. I also haven't encountered any Mesoamericanist, in secondary sources of personally, who shrugged it off as, "It was their culture."
Aztec sacrifice had a theological component, yes, but a political one as well (as we discussed elsewhere, I think). Theologically, it was believed that the gods had given their blood to create humanity, so humanity owed the gods a blood debt--especially since without human blood Huitzilopochtli could not protect the universe from the depredations of the star demons (tzitizimime) who would destroy humanity after an apocalyptic earthquake, thus ending our world. This theology existed prior, but was largely codified by long-term royal advisor Tlacaelel, who turned this into a justification for Aztec conquest. "Sorry, peoples of Anahuac [Mesoamerica], but we just have to do this to keep the universe running. By the way, give us your riches so it doesn't happen to your warriors." This was projected power and imperial justification.
I also don't think it's whataboutism to mention that European cultures were as brutal, albeit in different ways, because just as there are those who would erase the reality of the Aztecs' brutality, there are also those who would marshal an older counternarrative that the Spanish were the "good guys" here since they didn't sacrifice people. But Europeans did, of course. Not just in the Inquisition, but also in the Protestant witch-hunts and let us not forget the widespread nature of public torture and execution as entertainment. This was a feature of European culture as late as the 1700s, and was often both incredibly brutal and filled with religious overtones (sin, redemption, and martyrdom narratives).
For all their violence, the Aztecs didn't really torture people (nothing like the living amputations practiced in the sci-fi novel you mentioned occurred, which was when I knew the book would probably irritate me). "But none of that's human sacrifice!" the Eurocentrists might say. That's a question of perspective and semantics. We're still talking about ritual bloodshed in the name of a deity. Frankly, I'd rather have my heart cut out than be broken on the wheel or torn apart with red-hot pincers.
"The reason why so many academics continue to evade the question of moral evil in relation to the Aztecs is the same reason why so many justify the stomach-churning violence of October 7."
I get where you're coming from with this, since there is the school of thought that we are not to critique the struggles of the colonized. There's a technical term for this mindset: bullshit. But let's not fall into the trap of these ideologues. Modern-day Gaza and 16th century Tenochtitlan are societies separated by so many centuries and so much cultural difference that to lump them together in any sort of comparison obscures more than it illuminates. About all they have in common is that both have used political violence to achieve their ends. Which is pretty much every human society on the planet, ever.
"Aztecs, not Europeans, were the original settler colonialists, and the way they treated their vassals was so outrageous that the rebellion, with or without Spaniards, was inevitable."
The Aztecs were not settler-colonialists in that they neither settled nor colonized. The cultures and political structures of their vassals were largely left in place, since their empire was hegemonic. They expected tribute and taxes, not land or cultural conformity beyond the insistence that Huitzilopochtli be worshiped by the conquered in addition to their gods, to recognize his mythic triumph over their local deity. In a way, they functioned more like gangsters than colonialists.
As Mesoamerican historian Ross Hassig pointed out (forgive me, but I don't have the reference in front of me) the Spaniards supplied the means for rebellion. They had military capital for enemies of the Aztecs not due to their numbers, but their utility as shock troops. The old Mesoamerican tactic of punching through enemy lines is way more effective with mounted cavalry, though this was hardly decisive given that the Aztecs found ways to counteract most of the new technology the Spaniards brought. In the end, this was a Mesoamerican-on-Mesoamerican war that the Spaniards provided an advantage in. The unexpected (by all parties) appearance of smallpox and other diseases later on sealed the possibility of true Spanish dominance of the region (and even this didn't go unchallenged). Both the barbaric and idyllic views of the Aztecs obscure the fact that there was a lot of sophisticated Native politics going on here. Far from viewing the Spaniards as gods (this was a post-colonial invention/misinterpretation), Mesoamericans viewed them as a useful political tool, and the Conquest was hardly inevitable.
But you're right that they WERE arch-imperialists, and even as someone who tends to be sympathetic to the Aztecs, I've often come to the same conclusion you have: imperialism is imperialism, and the idea that this is a sin unique to Europe is ideological rather than at all historical. I will point out that the colonial structure the Spaniards built, centered on systems of land ownership that still fuck over Indigenous groups in Mexico today, wrought long-term destruction in Mesoamerica far beyond what Aztec dominance did. But if I'm a Tlaxcaltec or Purepecha or Totonac living in fear that the armies of Tenochtitlan are going to come in to levy punishment because my city wasn't able to supply its expected tribute, that's hardly going to change my fear and hatred of my oppressors.
In the end, I don't think judging the morality of a culture like the Aztecs is useful no matter which way we take it. Whether someone views them as saintly victims or rapacious savages says more about modern politics than Mesoamerican society and both views are woefully inadequate in understanding how they thought and why. My long term fascination with the Aztecs springs from their stark combination of indisputable genius in science, art, philosophy, engineering, and social planning with incredible violence. They're an arresting example of human duality, but--like any culture from sufficient distance in time--not one I think is constructive to judge on a moral level.
Thank you for such a detailed and informed response! I think you should publish it as an essay because it contains so much interesting information. I am actually in agreement about the Aztecs who were a fascinating and complex culture - and the more I learned about them, the more interested I became. But the Aztecs are gone. What I was actually arguing about is cultural relativism and its unholy alliance with narrow-minded moralism. Whether the Aztecs were morally better or worse than the Spaniards is an open question. But was their culture in some profound sense more dysfunctional than the West? This is a subject worth debating, but you cannot debate it in the academy today. Any attempt to position cultures on a scale, whether of functionality, technology or universal ethics, runs into a wall of indignation. And yet, instead of embracing moral relativism which would at least be consistent with cultural relativism, postcolonial theorists apply a very strict moral standards - but only to the West.
Recently the Journal of Medical Ethics published an article defending FGM because “it is their culture”. There are endless similar examples, both in the academy and in the political discourse. But there is an inbuilt contradiction at the heart of postcolonialism. I am sure Aztecs believed they were doing the right thing, and so did Spaniards. If we are to take cultural relativism at face value, then we have to treat both cultures in the same way and to embrace a kind of moral agnosticism. But this is not what happens. Gayatri Spivak, a very famous postcolonial theoretician, defended the practice of widow-burning in India because its abolition by the British was racist. You mights say: so what? Racism was part of the British culture of the time. And honestly, a widow in India would probably prefer racial discrimination to being burned alive. And yet, this is not an argument that you hear often or at all. The West is held to a moral standard that is not applied to non-Western peoples.
Bishop’s novel is actually about this very issue: cultural dysfunction. I should have made it clearer in my post. The muphormers are not Aztecs; they just imitate certain aspects of their culture. As opposed to the imperial Aztecs, they are a persecuted minority. So, should they be held responsible for the downward spiral of their degeneration? Would the Aztec empire have fallen apart even if no conquistadors had shown up? I believe it would have. The ritual bloodletting on the scale they practiced was unsustainable, both politically and psychologically. So, the question is not whether human sacrifices were good or bad. The real question is what happens to a culture when it clashes with human nature. But this is not something you can debate in the academy today. Acknowledging that human nature exists would require acknowledging that some cultures are successful because they are more attuned to the evolutionary imperatives that shaped our species. And that would require accepting and even celebrating the historical success of the West.
Thank YOU for your characteristically thoughtful answer! I think I will actually draw this up as an essay in polite response to yours, if you would have no objections.
I actually think you and I agree far more than we disagree on all of this. Part of what I dislike about the reading of Aztec culture that you criticize here is that it portrays this worldly, powerful, and strategically brilliant culture (they figured out how to circumvent cavalry and ships after only being introduced to them a scant year before) as a society of helpless victims.
I don’t think the Aztecs would have fallen apart as quickly as you think, both because the sacrifices were not as unsustainable as some have believed (even assuming 10-30,000 at a go fir the dedication of Templo Mayor, this would have been a very rare event) and the Aztecs had the psychological energy of a new empire bolstered by stunning success. The viceroy of Cuba, Diego Velazquez, had also initially wanted to trade with the peoples of Mexico rather than conquer them (Cortes was acting against official policy).
There’s also a historical wildcard that isn’t much discussed—the pochteca, or merchant guilds. These were powerful, wealthy, and militarily capable but also secretive and expected to defer to the dominant warrior cult. I can easily see a case in which they set up trade with the Spaniards, revolted, and established their own regime either as the power behind the throne or perhaps as some kind of merchant-republic (the precedent of republican government existed in Mexico). And moreover, while the Aztec state is obviously dead, Indigenous Mexico is very much still alive. As one example, during the so-called “War of the Castes,” the Yucatec Maya revolted against the Mexican government in the 1800s and for a time Eastern Yucatan was a de facto independent state so locally powerful that they could even strong-arm the British in Belize into giving them guns.
But as mentioned above, I don’t think imparting a moral dimension to the Conquest is ultimately helpful, and it ultimately denies what this clash of worlds truly was: an encounter between powerful, canny, and militaristic cultures that was not fated to end the way it did.
Please do write this essay! Wouldn’t it be great if people on this platform (or anywhere, for that matter) responded with detailed and rational arguments instead of emojis and insults! I know, too much to ask for. When you publish your essay, I will link to it and let our readers decide.
You obviously know more about the inner workings of Aztec civilization than I do, and it is intriguing to think what it might have evolved into. Which brings me to my next point: alternate history of the Aztec empire. There are a couple of books but not too many. I am now reading “Memory Called Empire” by Arkady Martin, and it’s quite good, but so far the Aztec connection is cosmetic (names and aesthetics). I will write a detailed review when I am done.
Now I am trying to imagine a technological culture based on human sacrifice. Well, that’s an idea 😊
Interesting analysis. Another work of science fiction that addresses the same issues is Sheri S Tepper’s Arbai (AKA Mary Wedtriding) Trilogy especially the third book, Sideshow, in which she discusses that not all civilisations or cultures deserve our respect.
Glad you mentioned Sideshow. Tepper is unjustly forgotten, even though she was a pioneer in many ways and her Grass is a classic. What happened? Is it because her views, though feminist in their own way, don’t fit into the contemporary zeitgeist?
If I may, I'd like to recommend another book that's stuck with me and been a favorite of mine since I first read it growing up and I think touches on a similar subject of cultural superiority, though from a less dark and serious approach and having a more optimistic ending.
The book in question is "Star Wars: X-Wing: Starfighters of Adumar" by Aaron Allston; a quick summary is that Wedge Antillies (a notable character from the original trilogy) and a team of pilots are assigned as ambassadors to the planet Adumar, which has the 'hat' of having their society centered around pilots, with the mission of convincing the planet to join the Galactic Republic rather than the Galactic Empire. Which at first sounds great to the pilots sent there since they're practically worshiped as heroes, but then they gradually discover that beneath the surface is a reality that they find particularly unsettling - including how a core part of Adumar's culture basically celebrates killing each other in what are effectively fights for mere honor, glory, and prestige - and gets more complicated as their own approach to the planet - which involves trying to be a good influence that leads the planet away from its more barbaric nature - runs counter to the approach preferred by the diplomat they're working with, who would prefer they 'do as the Romans'.
I think a big part of why the book has stuck with me - besides being a book from a franchise I enjoy anyway - is because it does take an interesting look at this particular topic right at a time when I was taking notice of the issue myself.
Now that I think about it, I should probably consider writing an article of my own on the book that goes more in-depth on the matter and why I love it so much.
Thank you! I always appreciate suggestions for new books to read. I have to confess that I am not a big Star Wars fan, so I am not familiar with this novel. But I used to read the occasional Star Trek tie-in and some were written by excellent writers, such as Greg Bear, and were as good as any standalone SF. I will look it up. It certainly seems to fit the theme.
I did notice it looked like you weren't big on Star Wars from glancing at some of your other writings, but I wouldn't have taken the opportunity to make the recommendation if I didn't think it fit the theme.
On that, an additional note I'll add is that another thing about "Starfighters of Adumar" I find fascinating is that it finds this uniquely perfect place where it very much feels like it's part of the Star Wars universe, but the story itself could easily work as its own standalone novel without any Star Wars connection at all.
Oh, I have nothing against the Star Wars franchise which , I am sure, contains some interesting books and movies (and some mediocre ones, as happens with every franchise). I just am not very involved in it personally, so I didn’t not know the book you mentioned. I did not mean it to sound like I am dismissing it for that reason. Actually, the Star Wars universe is a very fruitful field of cultural analysis, but others have done it, so I’d rather do something else.
Another SF novel that looks at this situation of colonization and brutality is The Sparrow (1996) by Mary Doria Russell and it's sequel the Children of God. Earth first discovers the planet Rakhat after a listening post picks up breathtakingly beautiful, exquisite music being broadcasted into space. Believing it to be a deeply spiritual, religious alien culture, the Vatican finances a secret mission to make first contact.The sole human survivor of the mission, a Jesuit priest named Father Emilio Sandoz, returns to Earth physically and mentally broken and It is ultimately revealed that the "exquisite music" they heard on Earth was not a holy hymn, but rather an art form generated by the orgasmic ecstasy of a predatory alien poet-merchant named Hlavin Kitheri. The beauty of the song is directly tied to the sexual violation and systematic sodomising/rape of his victims—including Sandoz himself, who is kept as a mutilated captive in an alien harem. This might not seem as though it has much to do with colonization but indeed colonization is at the heart of this novel and one of the things I particularly remember about it although it is some time since I read the books is that early on the point is made by the colonizers that at some point they said to the alien planet citizens that "we meant no harm". Point being of course that it was impossible for the colonizers not to inflict harm something that latter day moralists unable more likely unwilling, to grasp about the true, brutal history of the human species: one civilization trampling another will inevitably produce harm.
Thank you for this reference. Sparrow is one of the true masterpieces of SF: a complex and challenging novel, which I plan to write more about. I did not reference it in this essay because there is a complication: the inhabitants of the planets are aliens; in fact, the elite and the commoners are actually different species. So, the issue becomes whether different biology would ultimately produce different and incompatible moral codes. This is a common theme in SF, explored by Stanislaw Lem in Eden and Solaris, and by James Blish in A Case of Conscience. I wanted to keep my focus on human cultures. But your point is correct in any case. Human history is about cultures and civilizations clashing, conquering, absorbing and influencing each other. This is reality, and we should not pretend otherwise.
Also, another commentator mentioned Blake's 7. It's a slightly strange series that oscillated, not always intentionally, between grim dystopia and OTT camp. I think of it as a B+ series, good, but not great, although some individual episodes achieve greatness. However, @Gareth Robert's painstaking, labour-of-love, episode-by-episode analyses at his Substack "The Culture Bunker" have made me anxious to do a re-watch.
Incidentally, the series was created by Terry Nation, who also created the Daleks for Doctor Who, and there was a substantial overlap of personnel in front of and especially behind the camera (both were BBC series).
A great note (almost long enough to be an essay)! I am not a Dr. Who fan, so I didn’t know about this Aztec episode but I will find it. Presenting is a plague on culture; and when combined with a totalitarian ideology, it becomes politically dangerous.
Elana you might like to check out a 1978 BBC sci-fi programne called Blakes 7. Set in a dystopian future ruled by the authoritarian Terran Federation, Roj Blake and his band of escaped criminals constantly present us with the question "are they freedom fighters or are they terrorists"? Just watch the first episode "The Way Back". At one level you can watch it simply as a futuristic adventure series. At a deeper level it considers every single major topic of current affairs discussed in that time. It was cheaply made so ignore the wobbly sets. Look more deeply.
Lack of religion doesn't have any better a track record. Some of the most extensive killing in history came from societies that explicitly rejected religion, including Communist Russia and Communist China.
Very interesting essay, as always. As someone with a longstanding fascination with the Aztecs and Mesoamerica generally, I'd like to respond to a few points in particular:
"So why did they do it? Why the unfathomable scale of human sacrifice, accompanied by ritual cannibalism? The common answer is: it was their culture. And because the Aztecs happened to be non-Europeans, any criticism of this culture in certain circles is perceived as verboten."
I think here you confuse post-colonialist discourse with actual archaeological and anthropological approaches to Aztec society. No serious Mesoamericanist has ever doubted that the Aztecs practiced human sacrifice at large scale, though numbers were grossly exaggerated post-Conquest. But the idea that it didn't happen is post-colonial fantasy and hardly worth mention given what a fringe view it is. Human sacrifice was a longstanding part of Mesoamerican culture generally, a fact indisputable from archaeology, iconography, and both Indigenous and Spanish descriptions. I also haven't encountered any Mesoamericanist, in secondary sources of personally, who shrugged it off as, "It was their culture."
Aztec sacrifice had a theological component, yes, but a political one as well (as we discussed elsewhere, I think). Theologically, it was believed that the gods had given their blood to create humanity, so humanity owed the gods a blood debt--especially since without human blood Huitzilopochtli could not protect the universe from the depredations of the star demons (tzitizimime) who would destroy humanity after an apocalyptic earthquake, thus ending our world. This theology existed prior, but was largely codified by long-term royal advisor Tlacaelel, who turned this into a justification for Aztec conquest. "Sorry, peoples of Anahuac [Mesoamerica], but we just have to do this to keep the universe running. By the way, give us your riches so it doesn't happen to your warriors." This was projected power and imperial justification.
I also don't think it's whataboutism to mention that European cultures were as brutal, albeit in different ways, because just as there are those who would erase the reality of the Aztecs' brutality, there are also those who would marshal an older counternarrative that the Spanish were the "good guys" here since they didn't sacrifice people. But Europeans did, of course. Not just in the Inquisition, but also in the Protestant witch-hunts and let us not forget the widespread nature of public torture and execution as entertainment. This was a feature of European culture as late as the 1700s, and was often both incredibly brutal and filled with religious overtones (sin, redemption, and martyrdom narratives).
For all their violence, the Aztecs didn't really torture people (nothing like the living amputations practiced in the sci-fi novel you mentioned occurred, which was when I knew the book would probably irritate me). "But none of that's human sacrifice!" the Eurocentrists might say. That's a question of perspective and semantics. We're still talking about ritual bloodshed in the name of a deity. Frankly, I'd rather have my heart cut out than be broken on the wheel or torn apart with red-hot pincers.
"The reason why so many academics continue to evade the question of moral evil in relation to the Aztecs is the same reason why so many justify the stomach-churning violence of October 7."
I get where you're coming from with this, since there is the school of thought that we are not to critique the struggles of the colonized. There's a technical term for this mindset: bullshit. But let's not fall into the trap of these ideologues. Modern-day Gaza and 16th century Tenochtitlan are societies separated by so many centuries and so much cultural difference that to lump them together in any sort of comparison obscures more than it illuminates. About all they have in common is that both have used political violence to achieve their ends. Which is pretty much every human society on the planet, ever.
"Aztecs, not Europeans, were the original settler colonialists, and the way they treated their vassals was so outrageous that the rebellion, with or without Spaniards, was inevitable."
The Aztecs were not settler-colonialists in that they neither settled nor colonized. The cultures and political structures of their vassals were largely left in place, since their empire was hegemonic. They expected tribute and taxes, not land or cultural conformity beyond the insistence that Huitzilopochtli be worshiped by the conquered in addition to their gods, to recognize his mythic triumph over their local deity. In a way, they functioned more like gangsters than colonialists.
As Mesoamerican historian Ross Hassig pointed out (forgive me, but I don't have the reference in front of me) the Spaniards supplied the means for rebellion. They had military capital for enemies of the Aztecs not due to their numbers, but their utility as shock troops. The old Mesoamerican tactic of punching through enemy lines is way more effective with mounted cavalry, though this was hardly decisive given that the Aztecs found ways to counteract most of the new technology the Spaniards brought. In the end, this was a Mesoamerican-on-Mesoamerican war that the Spaniards provided an advantage in. The unexpected (by all parties) appearance of smallpox and other diseases later on sealed the possibility of true Spanish dominance of the region (and even this didn't go unchallenged). Both the barbaric and idyllic views of the Aztecs obscure the fact that there was a lot of sophisticated Native politics going on here. Far from viewing the Spaniards as gods (this was a post-colonial invention/misinterpretation), Mesoamericans viewed them as a useful political tool, and the Conquest was hardly inevitable.
But you're right that they WERE arch-imperialists, and even as someone who tends to be sympathetic to the Aztecs, I've often come to the same conclusion you have: imperialism is imperialism, and the idea that this is a sin unique to Europe is ideological rather than at all historical. I will point out that the colonial structure the Spaniards built, centered on systems of land ownership that still fuck over Indigenous groups in Mexico today, wrought long-term destruction in Mesoamerica far beyond what Aztec dominance did. But if I'm a Tlaxcaltec or Purepecha or Totonac living in fear that the armies of Tenochtitlan are going to come in to levy punishment because my city wasn't able to supply its expected tribute, that's hardly going to change my fear and hatred of my oppressors.
In the end, I don't think judging the morality of a culture like the Aztecs is useful no matter which way we take it. Whether someone views them as saintly victims or rapacious savages says more about modern politics than Mesoamerican society and both views are woefully inadequate in understanding how they thought and why. My long term fascination with the Aztecs springs from their stark combination of indisputable genius in science, art, philosophy, engineering, and social planning with incredible violence. They're an arresting example of human duality, but--like any culture from sufficient distance in time--not one I think is constructive to judge on a moral level.
Thank you for such a detailed and informed response! I think you should publish it as an essay because it contains so much interesting information. I am actually in agreement about the Aztecs who were a fascinating and complex culture - and the more I learned about them, the more interested I became. But the Aztecs are gone. What I was actually arguing about is cultural relativism and its unholy alliance with narrow-minded moralism. Whether the Aztecs were morally better or worse than the Spaniards is an open question. But was their culture in some profound sense more dysfunctional than the West? This is a subject worth debating, but you cannot debate it in the academy today. Any attempt to position cultures on a scale, whether of functionality, technology or universal ethics, runs into a wall of indignation. And yet, instead of embracing moral relativism which would at least be consistent with cultural relativism, postcolonial theorists apply a very strict moral standards - but only to the West.
Recently the Journal of Medical Ethics published an article defending FGM because “it is their culture”. There are endless similar examples, both in the academy and in the political discourse. But there is an inbuilt contradiction at the heart of postcolonialism. I am sure Aztecs believed they were doing the right thing, and so did Spaniards. If we are to take cultural relativism at face value, then we have to treat both cultures in the same way and to embrace a kind of moral agnosticism. But this is not what happens. Gayatri Spivak, a very famous postcolonial theoretician, defended the practice of widow-burning in India because its abolition by the British was racist. You mights say: so what? Racism was part of the British culture of the time. And honestly, a widow in India would probably prefer racial discrimination to being burned alive. And yet, this is not an argument that you hear often or at all. The West is held to a moral standard that is not applied to non-Western peoples.
Bishop’s novel is actually about this very issue: cultural dysfunction. I should have made it clearer in my post. The muphormers are not Aztecs; they just imitate certain aspects of their culture. As opposed to the imperial Aztecs, they are a persecuted minority. So, should they be held responsible for the downward spiral of their degeneration? Would the Aztec empire have fallen apart even if no conquistadors had shown up? I believe it would have. The ritual bloodletting on the scale they practiced was unsustainable, both politically and psychologically. So, the question is not whether human sacrifices were good or bad. The real question is what happens to a culture when it clashes with human nature. But this is not something you can debate in the academy today. Acknowledging that human nature exists would require acknowledging that some cultures are successful because they are more attuned to the evolutionary imperatives that shaped our species. And that would require accepting and even celebrating the historical success of the West.
Thank YOU for your characteristically thoughtful answer! I think I will actually draw this up as an essay in polite response to yours, if you would have no objections.
I actually think you and I agree far more than we disagree on all of this. Part of what I dislike about the reading of Aztec culture that you criticize here is that it portrays this worldly, powerful, and strategically brilliant culture (they figured out how to circumvent cavalry and ships after only being introduced to them a scant year before) as a society of helpless victims.
I don’t think the Aztecs would have fallen apart as quickly as you think, both because the sacrifices were not as unsustainable as some have believed (even assuming 10-30,000 at a go fir the dedication of Templo Mayor, this would have been a very rare event) and the Aztecs had the psychological energy of a new empire bolstered by stunning success. The viceroy of Cuba, Diego Velazquez, had also initially wanted to trade with the peoples of Mexico rather than conquer them (Cortes was acting against official policy).
There’s also a historical wildcard that isn’t much discussed—the pochteca, or merchant guilds. These were powerful, wealthy, and militarily capable but also secretive and expected to defer to the dominant warrior cult. I can easily see a case in which they set up trade with the Spaniards, revolted, and established their own regime either as the power behind the throne or perhaps as some kind of merchant-republic (the precedent of republican government existed in Mexico). And moreover, while the Aztec state is obviously dead, Indigenous Mexico is very much still alive. As one example, during the so-called “War of the Castes,” the Yucatec Maya revolted against the Mexican government in the 1800s and for a time Eastern Yucatan was a de facto independent state so locally powerful that they could even strong-arm the British in Belize into giving them guns.
But as mentioned above, I don’t think imparting a moral dimension to the Conquest is ultimately helpful, and it ultimately denies what this clash of worlds truly was: an encounter between powerful, canny, and militaristic cultures that was not fated to end the way it did.
Please do write this essay! Wouldn’t it be great if people on this platform (or anywhere, for that matter) responded with detailed and rational arguments instead of emojis and insults! I know, too much to ask for. When you publish your essay, I will link to it and let our readers decide.
You obviously know more about the inner workings of Aztec civilization than I do, and it is intriguing to think what it might have evolved into. Which brings me to my next point: alternate history of the Aztec empire. There are a couple of books but not too many. I am now reading “Memory Called Empire” by Arkady Martin, and it’s quite good, but so far the Aztec connection is cosmetic (names and aesthetics). I will write a detailed review when I am done.
Now I am trying to imagine a technological culture based on human sacrifice. Well, that’s an idea 😊
Interesting analysis. Another work of science fiction that addresses the same issues is Sheri S Tepper’s Arbai (AKA Mary Wedtriding) Trilogy especially the third book, Sideshow, in which she discusses that not all civilisations or cultures deserve our respect.
Glad you mentioned Sideshow. Tepper is unjustly forgotten, even though she was a pioneer in many ways and her Grass is a classic. What happened? Is it because her views, though feminist in their own way, don’t fit into the contemporary zeitgeist?
The Muslim Arabs are the colonizers in the Middle East.
If I may, I'd like to recommend another book that's stuck with me and been a favorite of mine since I first read it growing up and I think touches on a similar subject of cultural superiority, though from a less dark and serious approach and having a more optimistic ending.
The book in question is "Star Wars: X-Wing: Starfighters of Adumar" by Aaron Allston; a quick summary is that Wedge Antillies (a notable character from the original trilogy) and a team of pilots are assigned as ambassadors to the planet Adumar, which has the 'hat' of having their society centered around pilots, with the mission of convincing the planet to join the Galactic Republic rather than the Galactic Empire. Which at first sounds great to the pilots sent there since they're practically worshiped as heroes, but then they gradually discover that beneath the surface is a reality that they find particularly unsettling - including how a core part of Adumar's culture basically celebrates killing each other in what are effectively fights for mere honor, glory, and prestige - and gets more complicated as their own approach to the planet - which involves trying to be a good influence that leads the planet away from its more barbaric nature - runs counter to the approach preferred by the diplomat they're working with, who would prefer they 'do as the Romans'.
I think a big part of why the book has stuck with me - besides being a book from a franchise I enjoy anyway - is because it does take an interesting look at this particular topic right at a time when I was taking notice of the issue myself.
Now that I think about it, I should probably consider writing an article of my own on the book that goes more in-depth on the matter and why I love it so much.
Thank you! I always appreciate suggestions for new books to read. I have to confess that I am not a big Star Wars fan, so I am not familiar with this novel. But I used to read the occasional Star Trek tie-in and some were written by excellent writers, such as Greg Bear, and were as good as any standalone SF. I will look it up. It certainly seems to fit the theme.
I did notice it looked like you weren't big on Star Wars from glancing at some of your other writings, but I wouldn't have taken the opportunity to make the recommendation if I didn't think it fit the theme.
On that, an additional note I'll add is that another thing about "Starfighters of Adumar" I find fascinating is that it finds this uniquely perfect place where it very much feels like it's part of the Star Wars universe, but the story itself could easily work as its own standalone novel without any Star Wars connection at all.
Oh, I have nothing against the Star Wars franchise which , I am sure, contains some interesting books and movies (and some mediocre ones, as happens with every franchise). I just am not very involved in it personally, so I didn’t not know the book you mentioned. I did not mean it to sound like I am dismissing it for that reason. Actually, the Star Wars universe is a very fruitful field of cultural analysis, but others have done it, so I’d rather do something else.
Another SF novel that looks at this situation of colonization and brutality is The Sparrow (1996) by Mary Doria Russell and it's sequel the Children of God. Earth first discovers the planet Rakhat after a listening post picks up breathtakingly beautiful, exquisite music being broadcasted into space. Believing it to be a deeply spiritual, religious alien culture, the Vatican finances a secret mission to make first contact.The sole human survivor of the mission, a Jesuit priest named Father Emilio Sandoz, returns to Earth physically and mentally broken and It is ultimately revealed that the "exquisite music" they heard on Earth was not a holy hymn, but rather an art form generated by the orgasmic ecstasy of a predatory alien poet-merchant named Hlavin Kitheri. The beauty of the song is directly tied to the sexual violation and systematic sodomising/rape of his victims—including Sandoz himself, who is kept as a mutilated captive in an alien harem. This might not seem as though it has much to do with colonization but indeed colonization is at the heart of this novel and one of the things I particularly remember about it although it is some time since I read the books is that early on the point is made by the colonizers that at some point they said to the alien planet citizens that "we meant no harm". Point being of course that it was impossible for the colonizers not to inflict harm something that latter day moralists unable more likely unwilling, to grasp about the true, brutal history of the human species: one civilization trampling another will inevitably produce harm.
Thank you for this reference. Sparrow is one of the true masterpieces of SF: a complex and challenging novel, which I plan to write more about. I did not reference it in this essay because there is a complication: the inhabitants of the planets are aliens; in fact, the elite and the commoners are actually different species. So, the issue becomes whether different biology would ultimately produce different and incompatible moral codes. This is a common theme in SF, explored by Stanislaw Lem in Eden and Solaris, and by James Blish in A Case of Conscience. I wanted to keep my focus on human cultures. But your point is correct in any case. Human history is about cultures and civilizations clashing, conquering, absorbing and influencing each other. This is reality, and we should not pretend otherwise.
By coincidence, on Friday I wrote about the Aztecs, Doctor Who and the habit of imposing contemporary values on depictions of the past on TV:
https://substack.com/@danielgsaunders/note/c-291998723
Also, another commentator mentioned Blake's 7. It's a slightly strange series that oscillated, not always intentionally, between grim dystopia and OTT camp. I think of it as a B+ series, good, but not great, although some individual episodes achieve greatness. However, @Gareth Robert's painstaking, labour-of-love, episode-by-episode analyses at his Substack "The Culture Bunker" have made me anxious to do a re-watch.
Incidentally, the series was created by Terry Nation, who also created the Daleks for Doctor Who, and there was a substantial overlap of personnel in front of and especially behind the camera (both were BBC series).
A great note (almost long enough to be an essay)! I am not a Dr. Who fan, so I didn’t know about this Aztec episode but I will find it. Presenting is a plague on culture; and when combined with a totalitarian ideology, it becomes politically dangerous.
Elana you might like to check out a 1978 BBC sci-fi programne called Blakes 7. Set in a dystopian future ruled by the authoritarian Terran Federation, Roj Blake and his band of escaped criminals constantly present us with the question "are they freedom fighters or are they terrorists"? Just watch the first episode "The Way Back". At one level you can watch it simply as a futuristic adventure series. At a deeper level it considers every single major topic of current affairs discussed in that time. It was cheaply made so ignore the wobbly sets. Look more deeply.
Thank you! I really appreciate references to fiction and film I don’t know. I have never heard of Blakes 7 buy I will look it up
"Literary SF, on the other hand, is much bolder in going where no academic mindful of their tenure prospects has gone before." 🤣
Great essay.
Thank you!
Religion kills.
Lack of religion doesn't have any better a track record. Some of the most extensive killing in history came from societies that explicitly rejected religion, including Communist Russia and Communist China.
I consider communism and Nazism to be secular religions, and certainly much worse than Christianity.
Some religions definitely kill more than others.