Non European Alternate History For December 1997:
What if the timing of the first smallpox epidemic in the Aztec and Inca empires had been different?
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Long Term Consequences (A Decadent Universal Monarchy In Europe?)
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Delay that first epidemic. Cortes and company have to go in and kick Aztec butt without the aid of smallpox. If they succeeded in doing that, then the Spanish have to conquer an undivided Inca empire under an experienced and well loved ruler, instead of a divided empire that had just finished a civil war. It makes for a much tougher conquest, but I think it still eventually leads to a Spanish conquest of the Aztecs and Incas. Even if the first wave on conquerors didn't win, I can't see the Indians bridging the gaps in technology, tactics, and diplomacy that existed between them and Europe. European diseases would eventually make it over and shrink the manpower advantage of the Incas and Aztecs, and the empires would at some point fall to the Spanish. The personalities might be different, but those empires were going to fall at some point.
That doesn't mean that the delay would be meaningless. Put a different person in charge of the conquistadores and Mexico could be a very different place. Cortes was a relatively enlightened for his time and place. He wanted to build a great kingdom, not just extract gold and leave ruins. If he was defeated, the next Spanish leader might not share that vision.
Option 1: Mexico Devastated. If Cortes and company lost, the next commander could be brutal, short-sighted, and greedy. That kind of a leader could obliterate Aztec culture like a conquistador by the name of Guzman did to some of the cultures of northeastern and western Mexico. There could have been a cycle of native revolts and increasingly savage repression. Eventually even Spanish allies like the Tlaxcalans and the Otomi would have been alienated.
With uncontrolled Spanish exploitation, and with European diseases coming in, the high culture area of Central Mexico could have been smashed to the extent that there was not much left for the Spanish to exploit, in which case the conquistadores would drift away like they did in some of the West Indies islands after most of the Indians died off. That would take a lot of doing, given the sheer number of people involved, but the Spanish might be capable of doing it under the right or actually the wrong leader. If that happened, the savage, but militarily effective Chichimec tribes of the deserts north of Mexico might start filtering into the civilized areas, sort of like the barbarians into the Roman Empire. They could be aided by desperate refugees from the Spanish-conquered areas. In our time line the Chichimec tribes did raid into the high culture areas to some extent in the 1560s to 1590s, but the Spanish and their Indian allies were strong enough to keep them from making major incursions.
Option 2: Civil war. A different leader might also lead to a real civil war among the Spanish in Mexico, or a conquistador revolt against the Spanish crown. Both of those things happened multiple times in Peru. They could easily have happened in Mexico if whoever ended up conquering it was less astute than Cortes. Civil wars between the conquistadores would have given the surviving Indian political leaders additional leverage if they had the smarts to use it. The Tlaxcalans, and Otomi seemed to be good at ending up on the winning side. They might have played an enhanced role. The Tarascans weren't as good at playing that game, but they were powerful enough that they might have been able to pull it off. Civil wars or revolts in Mexico could make revolts and civil wars in Peru more likely and more successful because they would reduce overall Spanish power in the New World.
Option 3: The Spanish Go Soft. Given a reasonably enlightened leadership in the Spanish
conquest, and a very long (probably unreasonably long) period before the major killers make it
over to the New World, it is possible that the Spaniards in Mexico could go soft. If disease
stayed away until say 1545, the conquistadores could have had 20+ years with a huge population
at their beck and call. Most of the sons of the conquistadores went soft anyway. In Mexico,
people were wealth. A disease free society would be a much wealthier society, which would
speed up the softening process. By 1545 or so, the original generation of Spaniards would be
aging and the younger generation would have grown up in luxury. With the size of the population
involved, Indian leaders would still have important, though subordinate positions. The military
and technology gap would have closed considerably. At some point those Indian leaders might
have decided that it was time to kick out their Spanish overlords, and they might have had the
ability to do so. Or they might have just gradually increased the reality of their power until the
crown and the resident Spaniards were no longer the real rulers of Mexico. Mexico and Peru
could have remained superficially Spanish, but with a more Indian reality underneath a thin layer
of increasingly out of touch Spanish nobility.
Options one and two could lead to some rather dreary alternate histories: The Russians liberate
Central Europe from the Turks, or something like that. It wouldn't be too conducive to the
industrial revolution or a period of European world dominance. Option three could lead to some
really excessive decadence if the Hapsburg dynasty took out all of its serious challengers, then
proceeded to decay from within. That wouldn't be a very fun place to live if you weren't part of
the ruling class, but it could be fun to write about. If you have any thoughts on this scenario,
e-mail me.