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Si Sheppard – How did a few hundred Spanish soldiers topple two empires? · Dwarkesh Podcast

0:00
Speaker 1: Okay, today I'm chatting with professor and military historian Cy Shepard.
0:03
Speaker 1: I want to talk to you about the conquest of
0:06
Speaker 1: the Aztec and the Inca empires, because these are some
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Speaker 1: of the most shocking events in human history, unparalleled among
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Speaker 1: all the military and diplomatic achievements ever made. You have
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Speaker 1: a few hundred conquistadors show up to a new continent
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Speaker 1: they know nothing about, and within a matter of years,
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Speaker 1: they subjugate empires which have millions of inhabitants in them.
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Speaker 1: In the process of doing so, they are often winning
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Speaker 1: battles where they are outnumbered 100x to one, 1,000x to one,
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Speaker 1: and in many cases, not even taking a single casualty.
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Speaker 1: They're doing this while upwards of 99% of their fighting
0:41
Speaker 1: forces are made up of the very natives that they're
0:44
Speaker 1: going to subjugate. And I wanted to have you on
0:47
Speaker 1: to talk about this episode. We're not going to focus
0:49
Speaker 1: on it. We're mostly talking about the history here, but
0:52
Speaker 1: People think of AI takeover as this crazy sci-fi scenario,
0:55
Speaker 1: but this would not be the first time in history
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Speaker 1: that an alien force with motivations that the natives don't
1:01
Speaker 1: understand is able to use diplomatic cunning and technological advantages
1:07
Speaker 1: to outmaneuver and then take over a much larger and
1:10
Speaker 1: well-established order. And so I wanted to have you on
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Speaker 1: to understand what happened here. So first, I would love
1:15
Speaker 1: to hear the stories of what did Cortez do? What
1:17
Speaker 1: did Pizarro do? How did these conquests actually go down? Okay.
1:20
Speaker 2: Thank you. It's a great pleasure to be here. And yes,
1:22
Speaker 2: we're talking about the birth of our modern world, which
1:25
Speaker 2: played out between 600 to 500 years ago and created
1:28
Speaker 2: the modern globalized community that we all participate in today.
1:33
Speaker 2: It began in the 15th century when Europe backed up
1:36
Speaker 2: against the wall of the Atlantic under immense pressure from
1:39
Speaker 2: external forces and cut off from the core economic power
1:44
Speaker 2: bases of the East, the sources of the spice and
1:47
Speaker 2: silk that had driven the global economy historically throughout Eurasia.
1:51
Speaker 2: finally forced to innovate. Key names like Prince Henry the
1:54
Speaker 2: Navigator of Portugal work on turning the Atlantic Ocean from
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Speaker 2: a barrier into a superhighway. Generational knowledge accrued from captains
2:03
Speaker 2: reporting in on tides and wind currents and whatever land
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Speaker 2: they've managed to reconnoiter, building out the map as they
2:09
Speaker 2: go along, are able to find a way around the
2:12
Speaker 2: south tip of Africa directly to India and therefore cut
2:16
Speaker 2: out the middlemen. In Spanish, Meanwhile, they're heading west. We
2:19
Speaker 2: honor the story of Christopher Columbus. In 1492, he sailed
2:22
Speaker 2: the sea blue. That was entrepreneurship. This was an expedition
2:26
Speaker 2: to arrive at the oriental markets.
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Speaker 3: By traveling west.
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Speaker 2: Of course, his figures were completely wrong, and he was
2:34
Speaker 2: saved by the fact that, unknown to him, there was
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Speaker 2: an entire continent in the place where he thought Japan, China,
2:39
Speaker 2: and the Spice Islands would be. Initially, that was perceived, ironically,
2:43
Speaker 2: as a disappointment. But Over time, it became increasingly apparent
2:47
Speaker 2: this was a source of potential in land, in wealth,
2:50
Speaker 2: and in people that could be exploited. A key turning
2:53
Speaker 2: point happened in 1511 when a Spanish ambitious nobleman seizes
3:00
Speaker 2: control of Cuba, de Velazquez. He sends out from this
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Speaker 2: power base expeditions exploring the coast of what we would
3:08
Speaker 2: call Mesoamerica, Central America. Later in 1518, he assigns that
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Speaker 2: task to a man who he's had a somewhat tempestuous
3:17
Speaker 2: relationship with, a man named Hernan Cortes. He'd arrived in
3:22
Speaker 2: the New World in Cuba in 1511. He had some
3:25
Speaker 2: legal training, so he served as a notary and worked
3:27
Speaker 2: his way up to being alcalde, which is chief magistrate
3:30
Speaker 2: on Cuba, but he had much greater ambition. And he
3:32
Speaker 2: takes this warrant from the governor and runs with it.
3:36
Speaker 2: He begins recruiting men to a much wider and much
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Speaker 2: more ambitious goal, not just to explore the coast, but
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Speaker 2: to penetrate into the interior, to find out what's there
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Speaker 2: and to seize control of it. When the governor realizes
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Speaker 2: what Cortes is up to, he tries to stop him.
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Speaker 2: This great moment on 18th November, 1518, he arrives at
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Speaker 2: the waterfront just as Cortes gets into a boat to
3:58
Speaker 2: go out to his ships offshore. And the governor calls
4:01
Speaker 2: out to him, what are you up to? And Cortes
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Speaker 2: assures him, don't worry, I have this all under control.
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Speaker 2: But of course, the governor had lost control at that point.
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Speaker 2: Now it was Cortes' expedition.
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Speaker 3: So this is the background.
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Speaker 2: And again, as you say, he is literally going off
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Speaker 2: the side of the map. He's entering terra incognita, unknown
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Speaker 2: to Europeans previously. His political antenna, honed by years in
4:23
Speaker 2: the islands, enables him to appreciate at a very early
4:26
Speaker 2: stage that there is a significant imperial power which has
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Speaker 2: hegemony here in the mainland and that its subject peoples
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Speaker 2: chafe under the authority of whoever this lord or imperial
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Speaker 2: power is. He arrives in the lands of the Totonacs,
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Speaker 2: who had recently been incorporated into the imperial orbit of
4:45
Speaker 2: a people who call themselves the Meika, hence Meiko as
4:49
Speaker 2: we know it, but have come down to history based
4:51
Speaker 2: on their mythical origins in a land called.
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Speaker 3: Aslan, as the Aztecs.
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Speaker 2: So, for simplicity's sake, that's what we'll refer to them as.
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Speaker 2: The Totonacs resented this authority, as all subjugated and subordinated
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Speaker 2: peoples do. And they saw the arrival of these outsiders
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Speaker 2: as a potential opportunity to throw off the authority that
5:10
Speaker 2: had been imposed on them. So having established this relationship
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Speaker 2: with the Totonacs, Cortes begins to march inland. And he
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Speaker 2: enters the territory of the Lashkalans, who, like an autoimmune system,
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Speaker 2: immediately rallied to defeat him, to expel him from their territory.
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Speaker 2: But he fights him to a standstill for such a
5:28
Speaker 2: period of time, the Lashkalans, and he arrived at a
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Speaker 2: new kind of arrangement. The Tlaxcalans, again, appreciate his strength,
5:35
Speaker 2: his power, his potential. They swing over to his side
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Speaker 2: and will then, henceforward, serve as guides and reinforcements for
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Speaker 2: his expedition deeper into the interior.
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Speaker 1: Can we pause here and talk about the numbers? So
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Speaker 1: how many men had Cortes brought with him? Even the
5:51
Speaker 1: Tlaxcalans had much larger numbers than Cortes did. So even
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Speaker 1: the standstill is an impressive military achievement, especially because he's
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Speaker 1: fighting without native support.
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Speaker 3: So what are the numbers even at this point?
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Speaker 2: A few hundred on Cortez's side and multiple thousands on
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Speaker 2: the Lashkaran's side. It's at this point that the critical
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Speaker 2: technological differentials from the old and new world really begin
6:11
Speaker 2: to come into effect. The classic text which got me
6:14
Speaker 2: invested in this whole scenario in the first place is
6:16
Speaker 2: Jared Diamond's book, Guns, Germs, and Steel. He enumerates in
6:20
Speaker 2: the title those critical advantages that the Spaniards had. Guns
6:23
Speaker 2: in reality weren't so significant. Once the native peoples got
6:25
Speaker 2: over the shock value, they appreciated given the very slow
6:28
Speaker 2: reloading times involved in firearms at that time, that they
6:31
Speaker 2: weren't so significant as assets on the battlefield. But steel
6:34
Speaker 2: was critical. Local weapons were carved from wood and from
6:40
Speaker 2: stone and from obsidian, that volcanic glass, which is razor
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Speaker 2: sharp when honed to a point and quite dangerous as
6:48
Speaker 2: a slashing weapon. But against the steel armor and especially
6:51
Speaker 2: the steel helmets that the conquistadors were wearing, it was
6:55
Speaker 2: much less effective. And the conquistadors were drawing on military
6:58
Speaker 2: traditions of the old world that went back, incorporating long
7:02
Speaker 2: Toledo steel sword blades. They used those as thrusting weapons
7:06
Speaker 2: to take out indigenous warriors who were coming in with
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Speaker 2: cut and slash weapons, which of course open up the
7:12
Speaker 2: side of the body to be taken out very early.
7:14
Speaker 2: So the combination of the technology with generations of inherited
7:18
Speaker 2: military training and skill meant that the conquistadors had that
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Speaker 2: critical edge on the battlefield. Now, they weren't invincible, and Cortes, again,
7:25
Speaker 2: playing those mind games. He was taking casualties, and he
7:29
Speaker 2: was careful to bury his dead underneath the houses that
7:33
Speaker 2: they were sheltering in, so the Lashkalans wouldn't be aware
7:36
Speaker 2: that they were even having some successes in hand-to-hand combat.
7:39
Speaker 2: It was as much a mind game as it was
7:40
Speaker 2: a physical game. And the ultimate weapon, of course, the
7:43
Speaker 2: conquistadors brought with them was their horses. I cannot emphasize
7:47
Speaker 2: or overemphasize enough how vital the horse was to the
7:50
Speaker 2: conquistadors once they entered into the interior of the American continents.
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Speaker 2: They had the external asset. They had sail power, which
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Speaker 2: enabled them to land anywhere they wanted on the coast.
8:00
Speaker 2: But in the interior, the horse was decisive. There were
8:03
Speaker 2: no native equivalents. The horse originated in North America, but
8:07
Speaker 2: it had subsequently died out. And the local peoples had
8:10
Speaker 2: not just no horses, but no beast of burden generally.
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Speaker 2: That was not integrated into their economies, into their ways
8:17
Speaker 2: of life, or into their military. The Inca, who we'll
8:20
Speaker 2: discuss in a moment, they did have one, which was
8:22
Speaker 2: the llama. And when they campaigned, their armies trailing for
8:25
Speaker 2: miles behind them would be these endless baggage trains of
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Speaker 2: pack animals, llamas. The Aztecs had no equivalent. Their only
8:31
Speaker 2: domestic animals were the turkey and the chihuahua. And speaking
8:36
Speaker 2: of dogs, the conquistadors also bought these big war mastiffs,
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Speaker 2: these fighting dogs which wore armor and were trained to
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Speaker 2: take down men. Again, imagine the terrifying impact that would
8:44
Speaker 2: have for the indigenous people. But the horse was the
8:47
Speaker 2: critical asset. On attack, you could blast through any native formation,
8:50
Speaker 2: which didn't not just have the weapons, but the training
8:53
Speaker 2: or discipline to be able to stand up to mass-shocked cavalry.
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Speaker 2: And if things were going bad for the conquistadors, they
8:58
Speaker 2: could retreat much faster than, of course, the enemies could
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Speaker 2: chase them. So Los Chalens appreciate all these assets coming together,
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Speaker 2: and they see this as their opportunity. They were the holdouts,
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Speaker 2: the last remaining major entity in Mesoamerica, which was still
9:12
Speaker 2: able to go toe-to-toe with the Aztecs. They've been completely surrounded.
9:15
Speaker 2: The Aztecs were upping the ante every year with these
9:18
Speaker 2: ceremonial flower wars, which are becoming more and more obviously
9:21
Speaker 2: wars of conquest. And the Laxcalans have been cut off
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Speaker 2: from the coast and from sources of salt, right? So
9:25
Speaker 2: they were being pushed to the brink. This is a
9:27
Speaker 2: Hail Mary for them. If we ally with these outsiders,
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Speaker 2: these strangers, who are just few in number after all,
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Speaker 2: we may have some potential way to break out of
9:35
Speaker 2: this strategic trap that we've had imposed upon us. So
9:39
Speaker 2: they lean over to the sides of Cortes and they
9:42
Speaker 2: travel with him to Tenochtitlan, the capital, the glittering jewel
9:47
Speaker 2: in the midst of Lake Tishcoco, the capital of the
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Speaker 2: Aztec Empire. And again, this is a dramatic moment when
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Speaker 2: Cortes passes through the causeways out into the city and
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Speaker 2: encounters Moctezuma, II, the Huey-Latawani, as he was called, the
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Speaker 2: great speaker, the emperor of the Aztec Empire. These two
10:06
Speaker 2: worlds come together at that moment. The interface between them
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Speaker 2: was Cortes' interpreter slash mistress, Donna Marina Malinche, as she
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Speaker 2: became known, who is translating from one side to the other.
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Speaker 2: The dialogue that occurs then is one of those great
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Speaker 2: tipping points in history. What was the perspective of Moctezuma II?
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Speaker 2: He was aware Cortes was coming. This is his empire.
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Speaker 2: He has envoys and emissaries and scouts and spies everywhere.
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Speaker 2: And they're reporting back to him that something has washed
10:35
Speaker 2: up on the shores of our empire and it is
10:37
Speaker 2: determined to meet with us. He initially bargains with Cortes,
10:42
Speaker 2: urging him to leave. He provides him with precious gifts,
10:45
Speaker 2: which of course just inflames Cortes even more. And just
10:48
Speaker 2: once he's got hold of Aztec gold, he's just determined
10:51
Speaker 2: to go all the way to the center. So he
10:53
Speaker 2: continues playing this double game. His advisors, his council, urge
10:58
Speaker 2: him not to allow Cortes to proceed to the capital.
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Speaker 2: His own brother, Cuitlahuaq, tells him, if you allow this
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Speaker 2: man inside your house, he will take your house away
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Speaker 2: from you. But Moctezuma proceeds. And from that, he's been
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Speaker 2: condemned by generations of historians. This was a mistake to
11:14
Speaker 2: bring the conquistadors into the heart of the empire itself.
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Speaker 2: I actually think that was his best option, whether he
11:19
Speaker 2: was aware of it or not, because it was better
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Speaker 2: for him to have Cortes as his guest within Tenochtitlan
11:24
Speaker 2: than it was to have Cortes, this random element, at
11:28
Speaker 2: loose within his empire, talking to the subject peoples, inflaming
11:31
Speaker 2: them possibly against central authority. He felt perhaps Cortes was
11:36
Speaker 2: what he said he was, an envoy from a great
11:37
Speaker 2: emperor on the far side of the vast ocean. Cortes, again,
11:41
Speaker 2: with the mind games, had no warrant to say he
11:44
Speaker 2: was a diplomat or ambassador for anybody. He kept telling
11:46
Speaker 2: anyone who'd listen, I speak for the mighty Charles V,
11:49
Speaker 2: the Holy Roman Emperor. Of course, Charles V had no
11:52
Speaker 2: idea who Hernan Cortes was. Cortes, again, is just winging it.
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Speaker 2: The incredible improvisation here. And for a moment, the stasis.
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Speaker 2: The great turning point comes when word arrives from the
12:02
Speaker 2: coast that one of the Aztec regional military officers, on
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Speaker 2: his own initiative, has taken action against the conquistadors left
12:12
Speaker 2: behind on the coast, the ones with the Totonacs, and
12:14
Speaker 2: some of them have been killed. Cortes sees this as
12:17
Speaker 2: his pretext. He marches into the palace of Moctezuma II,
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Speaker 2: the Aztec Huey Latawani, tells him that for his own safety,
12:24
Speaker 2: he was now being taken under the protective custody of
12:27
Speaker 2: the Spanish, and he should come with him or else
12:30
Speaker 2: there will be violence. And this is the moment when
12:33
Speaker 2: Moctezuma's entire worldview just collapses. Nobody had spoken to him
12:37
Speaker 2: like this before. His psychology just disintegrates at that point.
12:41
Speaker 2: He meekly allows himself to be led away. He tells
12:44
Speaker 2: his people, don't resist. I don't want bloodshed. I will
12:48
Speaker 2: pass with these strangers. And then once Cortes is rounded up,
12:52
Speaker 2: the officers at the coast responsible for turning on his
12:55
Speaker 2: men there, he has them in front of the emperor
12:57
Speaker 2: and the entire court burned alive, which is a form
13:00
Speaker 2: of punishment totally unknown to the Aztecs. And they watch
13:02
Speaker 2: this in grim silence. So once Cortes has seized The
13:07
Speaker 2: emperor himself, once he has Moctezuma, he already has the empire.
13:10
Speaker 2: He governs through what is increasingly becoming his puppet. And
13:15
Speaker 2: Moctezuma seems to have fallen almost under the spell of Cortes,
13:18
Speaker 2: the classic Stockholm syndrome. He gives him a grand tour
13:21
Speaker 2: of the city. Cortes, and again, a subtle flex on
13:25
Speaker 2: his power, has brigantines, small sailing boats built. And he
13:29
Speaker 2: takes Moctezuma with him on a sailing cruise on Lake Tishcoco.
13:32
Speaker 2: And the emperor is astonished at this new technology of
13:34
Speaker 2: using the wind to sail on the water. Having the
13:36
Speaker 2: emperor was the key. So the emperor's mistake wasn't inviting
13:40
Speaker 2: Cortes into the city. It was making himself vulnerable by
13:44
Speaker 2: staying there also in an adjacent palace. If he had
13:47
Speaker 2: gone to some further location, made some excuse, a pilgrimage
13:51
Speaker 2: or an expedition of some kind, and had ruled through subordinates,
13:55
Speaker 2: Cortes would have been baffled. He couldn't go chasing after
13:58
Speaker 2: the emperor. That would be obviously too provocative. But without
14:01
Speaker 2: the emperor there, Cortes would have had his options extremely limited.
14:05
Speaker 2: And I don't know what he would have done in
14:06
Speaker 2: that circumstance. But because Moctezuma stayed in his capital, he
14:10
Speaker 2: made himself the target. Once he was taken, this was
14:13
Speaker 2: the key to controlling the entire empire at that point.
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Speaker 1: So obviously the story continues from there. La noche triste.
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Speaker 1: What people might not appreciate about what happened here, in
14:23
Speaker 1: both the Pizarro story of the Inca empire, which we'll
14:26
Speaker 1: talk about later, and in the Aztec story, is that
14:29
Speaker 1: in both cases... the Spanish were themselves divided and in
14:33
Speaker 1: fact fighting each other. So maybe you should tell the
14:38
Speaker 1: story how Velazquez sends another expedition to go capture and
14:44
Speaker 1: arrest Cortes for going beyond the prerogative of his mission.
14:49
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
14:50
Speaker 2: We left the governor on Cuba, of course, fuming. He
14:54
Speaker 2: rallies another expeditionary force because Cortes is stealing his thunder, right?
14:58
Speaker 2: And he sends this on there, Penfeo de Nevaez, a
15:00
Speaker 2: larger force than the one Cortes brought with him originally.
15:04
Speaker 2: This lands on the coast. Cortes appreciates he has to move.
15:07
Speaker 2: So he leaves one of his subordinates, the hot-blooded Alvarado,
15:09
Speaker 2: behind in charge in Tenochtitlan, takes as many men as
15:12
Speaker 2: he can to the coast, confronts de Nevaez, defeats him
15:16
Speaker 2: in a minor battle. And again, the diplomacy wins over
15:19
Speaker 2: the entire expeditionary force that the governor had dispatched. He
15:22
Speaker 2: tells them, my friends, why are we fighting? We have
15:26
Speaker 2: the empire at my disposal, join with me and we
15:28
Speaker 2: can share in the riches. So he wins over the
15:30
Speaker 2: vast majority of this new force. It becomes effectively reinforcements.
15:34
Speaker 2: Marches back to the capital. He finds the mood has
15:36
Speaker 2: turned against him. The problem with not being in charge
15:39
Speaker 2: is you can't be everywhere. And his subordinate, assuming that
15:44
Speaker 2: the Aztecs were mobilizing against him, has had a preemptive strike.
15:48
Speaker 2: There was a festival. The aristocracy, particularly the warrior caste,
15:51
Speaker 2: were celebrating and Alvarado just descended on them, massacred everybody.
15:55
Speaker 2: The survivors rally the population, and when Cortes returns, he
15:58
Speaker 2: finds himself effectively under siege. The people are so appalled
16:02
Speaker 2: now with the failure of their Huey Letoani. When he
16:06
Speaker 2: tries to pacify them, they throw stones at him. Mortally wounded,
16:09
Speaker 2: he either dies or the Spanish finish him off because
16:12
Speaker 2: he's no longer any use to them. So now Cortes
16:15
Speaker 2: is trapped in the city, in Tenochtitlan. He determines to
16:18
Speaker 2: break out, and that is, as you say, La Noche Triste,
16:20
Speaker 2: the tragic night, because so many of his men are
16:23
Speaker 2: left behind. They're either killed as they try to escape
16:25
Speaker 2: the city across the causeways or forced to retreat back
16:27
Speaker 2: to the palaces and they're taken alive and sacrificed subsequently.
16:31
Speaker 2: Cortes gets away with a minority of the troops still
16:34
Speaker 2: at his disposal and makes it back to Lashkarlan territory.
16:39
Speaker 2: That was the critical aspect, the two features of the
16:41
Speaker 2: entire campaign. One, he has enough strike power with enough
16:45
Speaker 2: horses to defeat the Aztecs when they try to finish
16:48
Speaker 2: him off at the Battle of Otumbo. They feel he's
16:50
Speaker 2: on the run. They have the numbers. The conquistadors are
16:53
Speaker 2: dragging their tails between their legs as they flee. Cortes
16:55
Speaker 2: himself is grievously wounded. We can finish them off. And
16:59
Speaker 2: they had the numbers. They were winning. But again, Cortes
17:02
Speaker 2: identifies where the Aztec general is. He rallies enough horsemen
17:07
Speaker 2: to blast through the Aztec ranks and take out their
17:09
Speaker 2: command and control. The Aztec army disintegrates and the Spanish
17:12
Speaker 2: are able to flee. So the battlefield of bondages, they
17:14
Speaker 2: had their horses, their steel, critical. But just as critical
17:17
Speaker 2: was the diplomacy. If the Lashkalans had turned on Cortes
17:21
Speaker 2: at that point, he would have been finished. Not one
17:23
Speaker 2: Spaniard would have survived. None of them would have made
17:25
Speaker 2: it back to the coast. But the Lashkalans see, for
17:28
Speaker 2: their own reasons, not out of any generosity or humanitarian
17:31
Speaker 2: impulse to welcome back the conquistadors, they still see we
17:35
Speaker 2: are committed to these people and to our alliance. So
17:38
Speaker 2: they give Cortes shelter. He recovers physically, begins to rebuild
17:41
Speaker 2: his strength, and is determined to go back to Tenochtitlan.
17:44
Speaker 2: And for round two, and this time, we're not going
17:47
Speaker 2: to be indulging diplomatic niceties. The Lashkalans, their own perspective
17:52
Speaker 2: on this, if you go to Lashkala territory today, the
17:54
Speaker 2: governor's mansion there has murals on the wall. And these
17:58
Speaker 2: depict the Cortes and the conquistadors from the Lashkalan point
18:03
Speaker 2: of view. And it's fascinating to look at how the
18:05
Speaker 2: relationship is not between a superior and a inferior. It's
18:07
Speaker 2: between equals. You see them depicted in the same scale,
18:11
Speaker 2: engaged in diplomacy between partners, not between subordinates and dominant figures.
18:15
Speaker 2: The Lashkalans drove a hard bargain. We want territory carved
18:19
Speaker 2: out of the Aztecs. We want our own fortress in
18:21
Speaker 2: Tenochtitlan after this is over. They saw this as them
18:25
Speaker 2: using the conquistadors, not the other way around, which is
18:28
Speaker 2: very important to bear in mind, that the Aztec empire
18:32
Speaker 2: from a distance, if you look at a map, seemed impressive.
18:35
Speaker 2: But this was an imperial construct and not just the
18:40
Speaker 2: remaining independent entities like the Lashkalans, like the Tarascans, who
18:44
Speaker 2: we can discuss later, hostile to the Aztecs, so were
18:47
Speaker 2: so many of their subordinated peoples. The Totonacs on the coast,
18:50
Speaker 2: the Chalco states on the shores of Lake Texcoco, they
18:54
Speaker 2: chafed under Aztec hegemony and authority. And they too saw
18:59
Speaker 2: the conquistadors as an opportunity to finally shrug off the authority,
19:03
Speaker 2: the demands of the Aztecs and get revenge in a
19:07
Speaker 2: lot of ways. So as Cortes builds up for the
19:10
Speaker 2: final campaign against Tenochtitlan, against the new Huey-Latawane, Cuitlahuaq. And
19:17
Speaker 2: then after he died, his brother, the last of the Huey-Latawane,
19:20
Speaker 2: is Ka'atomac. He has indigenous people flocking to his banner
19:25
Speaker 2: from all over Mesoamerica. He's emphasized that he's still in
19:29
Speaker 2: the fight. He still has those advantages. More reinforcements are
19:32
Speaker 2: arriving at the coast and they're being integrated into the
19:34
Speaker 2: conquistador army. But the force that marches on Tenochtitlan, the
19:39
Speaker 2: total numbers, the conquistadors were maybe one half of 1%
19:42
Speaker 2: in raw numbers of that force. The overwhelming majority were
19:48
Speaker 2: other Mesoamerican peoples who see this as their final reckoning
19:51
Speaker 2: with the Aztecs. And this is the integration, again, of
19:53
Speaker 2: the technology with the diplomacy. Cortes knows to take the city,
19:57
Speaker 2: he has to control the lake. Again, the innovations, they
20:00
Speaker 2: need sulfur for their gunpowder. They have guns, useless without gunpowder.
20:05
Speaker 2: So an expedition goes into the mountains to the volcano, Papacatapetl.
20:09
Speaker 2: and they dangle with ropes inside the caldera of the volcano,
20:13
Speaker 2: scooping out the sulfur they need as the critical ingredient
20:16
Speaker 2: for their gunpowder. Another one builds prefabricated brigantines, boats, in
20:22
Speaker 2: their different sections, and then has untold numbers of porters,
20:26
Speaker 2: human load bearers, bring these prefabricated pieces over the mountains
20:32
Speaker 2: to the lake. They're assembled, and then they loosen the lake,
20:35
Speaker 2: and then now they have control over the lake. So
20:37
Speaker 2: bringing together the technology, the innovations with the local manpower.
20:41
Speaker 2: And this is the force directed against Tenochtitlan in the
20:44
Speaker 2: final battle.
20:45
Speaker 3: I actually didn't know those stories. That's crazy.
20:48
Speaker 1: One of the ways in which, to the extent people
20:50
Speaker 1: are even aware of the story, they might not understand
20:52
Speaker 1: what actually happened is they have this model of the
20:57
Speaker 1: Aztecs or the Incas as this cohesive single nation. And
21:00
Speaker 1: I think a better model might be something like, imagine
21:02
Speaker 1: if it's Russia and Ukraine have been doing trench warfare
21:05
Speaker 1: for 100 years. And imagine the animosity. And then also
21:09
Speaker 1: the Russians are like taking tens of thousands of Ukrainians
21:13
Speaker 1: and like doing human sacrifices with them. And then if
21:16
Speaker 1: some foreign force comes in and says to the Ukrainians,
21:20
Speaker 1: we can help you march into Moscow. I think they'd
21:24
Speaker 1: have a pretty decent odds of getting some agreement there.
21:27
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
21:27
Speaker 2: The old phrase is the enemy of my enemy is
21:29
Speaker 2: my friend. And diplomacy war, that's always very important.
21:33
Speaker 1: I don't think I actually appreciated the ambition of Jane
21:36
Speaker 1: Street's intern projects until last week when I got to
21:38
Speaker 1: see some of them for myself.
21:39
Speaker 3: For example, one.
21:40
Speaker 1: Intern spent part of his summer researching LLM memorization, figuring
21:44
Speaker 1: out how to quantify and reduce it without hurting out-of-sample performance.
21:48
Speaker 1: This matters because whenever Jane Street evaluates a new model
21:51
Speaker 1: on historical data, they need to know that its performance
21:54
Speaker 1: reflects predictive power, not just memorization of past outcomes. Another
21:59
Speaker 1: intern built a custom activation checkpointing scheme. Activation checkpointing lets
22:03
Speaker 1: you trade compute for memory. You recalculate some activations during
22:07
Speaker 1: backdrop instead of storing them all after the forward pass.
22:10
Speaker 1: This intern found a way to identify the activations that
22:12
Speaker 1: are cheapest to recompute, but that still free up a
22:15
Speaker 1: lot of memory. And this allowed his version to outperform
22:18
Speaker 1: PyTorch's native one. These are just two examples, but Jane
22:21
Speaker 1: Street has written about a bunch more. These write-ups are
22:23
Speaker 1: coming out in batches. The first few are live now,
22:26
Speaker 1: including these two, and the rest will be published in
22:29
Speaker 1: the coming weeks.
22:30
Speaker 3: If you want to read them, Or if you want to.
22:31
Speaker 1: Apply for Jane Street's 2027 Summer Internships, go to jainestreet.com.
22:37
Speaker 1: There's so many interesting questions to ask from everything from
22:42
Speaker 1: technology to diplomacy to disease to.
22:47
Speaker 3: Tactics.
22:48
Speaker 1: Before you get to that, I think just to round
22:51
Speaker 1: out the story, in many ways, what's striking about the
22:55
Speaker 1: Conquest of the Incas in Peru under Pizarro 10 years
22:59
Speaker 1: later is how similar it was to Cortez's story, how
23:02
Speaker 1: much he just basically followed the playbook. But I want
23:05
Speaker 1: just people to have a sense of roughly what happened here. Starting,
23:09
Speaker 1: I think, maybe with the Battle of Cajamarca might be
23:11
Speaker 1: the most astonishing military lopsided, encounter that has maybe ever
23:17
Speaker 1: happened in human history.
23:19
Speaker 3: So I would, yeah, if.
23:20
Speaker 1: You can recapitulate a bit of the, at least that battle,
23:23
Speaker 1: and then just the overall story, and then we can
23:25
Speaker 1: do some analysis from there.
23:26
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
23:26
Speaker 2: When Cortes consummates his conquest of Tenerife in 1521, the
23:31
Speaker 2: last of the Huey Latamani surrenders to him and how
23:33
Speaker 2: he occupies the territory, and most importantly, the top of
23:37
Speaker 2: the social hierarchy. The existing structure, as much as possible,
23:40
Speaker 2: is allowed to persist. The conquistadors just decapitate the local
23:44
Speaker 2: nobility and insert themselves at the top. Now, this is
23:47
Speaker 2: the playbook that will continue to be applied less successfully
23:52
Speaker 2: throughout the rest of Mesoamerica because the existing political entities
23:55
Speaker 2: there aren't so sophisticated. Nonetheless, there are rumors, there are
23:58
Speaker 2: always rumors of lost cities of gold and more conquistadors
24:01
Speaker 2: are now flooding into the new world to seek advantage
24:03
Speaker 2: of this. One of this is a distant cousin of
24:06
Speaker 2: Cortes named Francisco Pizarro. He met with Cortes and got
24:10
Speaker 2: the playbook, as you say, about how this is to
24:11
Speaker 2: be done. And then again, in one of these conquistador
24:16
Speaker 2: business ventures, He finds the funding for men and ships
24:19
Speaker 2: and begins pushing south down the west coast of South America,
24:22
Speaker 2: crossing the equator and finally arriving in what is now
24:27
Speaker 2: modern-day Peru. And he encounters what he's looking for, a
24:30
Speaker 2: sophisticated culture on the scale, in fact, in terms of territory,
24:34
Speaker 2: on a much broader scale than Cortes had encountered in Mesoamerica.
24:38
Speaker 2: This is the land of the Inca. When he arrived,
24:40
Speaker 2: there was civil war. The previous Sapa Inca, Huayna Capac,
24:45
Speaker 2: had died in 1525. and his two sons, Atahualpa and Huascar,
24:48
Speaker 2: turned on each other. Atahualpa had just won the civil
24:52
Speaker 2: war and he was proceeding to Cuzco, the Inca capital,
24:54
Speaker 2: to be formally enthroned as the new Sapa Inca. And
24:57
Speaker 2: that's when word arise to him that strangers have entered
25:01
Speaker 2: his realm. And again, we're talking 168 men pushed into
25:06
Speaker 2: the Andes mountains and are seeking him out for reasons unknown.
25:11
Speaker 2: He encounters them outside a place called, as you said,
25:14
Speaker 2: Cajamarca in 1532. And he sees not threat, but opportunity.
25:19
Speaker 2: And just like Moctezuma II had been advised to not
25:23
Speaker 2: treat with this people, so does Atahualpa's envoy, who reports
25:27
Speaker 2: to them, these are not men of good faith. We
25:30
Speaker 2: can take them out. They tend to sleep together. At night,
25:32
Speaker 2: we can set fire to wherever they're staying and just
25:35
Speaker 2: take them all out in one fell swoop. But Atahualpa
25:38
Speaker 2: is interested in what they have to offer him. He's
25:40
Speaker 2: seen the horses. He's seen, in fact, Pizarro made a
25:44
Speaker 2: specific case of impressing. the Sapa Inca with his horses.
25:47
Speaker 2: He sends one of his key lieutenants to put on
25:50
Speaker 2: a display of horsemanship. And famously, he charges right at
25:53
Speaker 2: the Sapa Inca and all his court. And the horse
25:56
Speaker 2: stops just inches from Adewalpa's face, snorting and breathing. And
26:01
Speaker 2: Adewalpa is absolutely stony faced and professes to be unimpressed
26:04
Speaker 2: and says, I will meet with your master at the
26:06
Speaker 2: time of my choosing. After the Spaniards leave, he has
26:08
Speaker 2: all of his court, including his generals who flinched or
26:10
Speaker 2: showed fear, executed just to make the point that we're
26:14
Speaker 2: not to be intimidated by these people. He sends a
26:16
Speaker 2: blocking force, tens of thousands of men, to cut off
26:19
Speaker 2: any retreat, and then he proceeds to meet with Pizarro
26:24
Speaker 2: at Cajamarca with the vast expanse of his army. There's
26:26
Speaker 2: a saying in Peru that Atahualpa was planning to have
26:30
Speaker 2: Pizarro for lunch, but Pizarro ended up having him for breakfast.
26:33
Speaker 2: Once he enters into the confines of a narrow, constricted
26:36
Speaker 2: courtyard space, that's when Pizarro lets off the ambush. He
26:40
Speaker 2: lets fly with all his artillery and all his musketry
26:42
Speaker 2: for the shock value, unleashes his horses. And the Adolfo
26:47
Speaker 2: himself is overwhelmed and taken prisoner at that point. So this, again,
26:50
Speaker 2: is the playbook, the copybook, as you say. Go to
26:53
Speaker 2: the top. Seize whoever is at the very pinnacle of
26:56
Speaker 2: the social hierarchy. You control the entire structure.
26:58
Speaker 1: And just so people know the numbers here, the Incan
27:02
Speaker 1: Empire overall has some 10 million inhabitants. During this first
27:06
Speaker 1: battle where Pizarro encounters the emperor, he has some 160,
27:11
Speaker 1: 190 conquistadors. I think the numbers are known for exactly
27:17
Speaker 1: how many Atahualpa had, but he's facing off the army
27:20
Speaker 1: that has just basically clinched the civil war in the
27:23
Speaker 1: Inca empire and is around tens of thousands of big.
27:27
Speaker 1: I've seen some numbers that are like a hundred thousand
27:29
Speaker 1: or 200,000, but certainly in the high tens of thousands big.
27:32
Speaker 1: So 100 something against almost a hundred thousand.
27:36
Speaker 3: That's the first battle.
27:38
Speaker 1: What is astonishing is that these hundred conquistadors, I think killed,
27:42
Speaker 1: I saw some numbers that are like, they killed like 10,000
27:46
Speaker 1: of the enemy, or at least thousands of Atahualpa's troops.
27:51
Speaker 1: They suffer zero casualties. So they kill close to 10,000
27:56
Speaker 1: of the enemy. They suffer zero casualties. This is the
27:58
Speaker 1: first encounter that the Inca Empire has ever had with
28:02
Speaker 1: the conquistadors. I think that must have been shocking from
28:05
Speaker 1: both sides' perspective. And I want, if you can do
28:09
Speaker 1: some analysis here, how is it possible, how can you
28:11
Speaker 1: have an outcome, a military outcome, where you can have
28:14
Speaker 1: Literally a KD ratio of infinity, of 10,000 to zero.
28:19
Speaker 3: Yeah.
28:21
Speaker 2: The conquistadors themselves admitted the night before that encounter, there
28:25
Speaker 2: were so many campfires from the Inca army scattered across
28:28
Speaker 2: the hills surrounding Cajamarca. It looked like the twinkling of
28:31
Speaker 2: stars at night. And the conquistadors themselves admitted when they
28:35
Speaker 2: saw the number of Inca troops filing into this courtyard,
28:40
Speaker 2: they were losing control of their own bladders out of fear.
28:42
Speaker 2: They knew what the risks were here. But the shock
28:45
Speaker 2: value of that initial impetus was enough to carry them through.
28:48
Speaker 2: The Inca had never heard gunpowder weapons fired in any
28:53
Speaker 2: format before. The ancestral founder of their empire was Pachacuti,
28:58
Speaker 2: which means the thunder bearer. But to see a real-world
29:01
Speaker 2: exemplar of that must have been just beyond shocking. So
29:04
Speaker 2: the actual physical damage that the cannons and harquebuses inflicted
29:07
Speaker 2: was relatively minor. But the explosion and the fact that
29:10
Speaker 2: these strangers seemed to be able to control the thunder
29:12
Speaker 2: must have been psychologically devastating. And then it came down
29:15
Speaker 2: again to that steel and those horses. When Pizarro unleashed
29:19
Speaker 2: the horses, this is something that the Inca, as you say,
29:23
Speaker 2: these are veteran warriors, the winners of a civil war,
29:25
Speaker 2: strategists and at a tactical level within the framework of
29:30
Speaker 2: pre-Columbian Andean warfare. They were the top dogs. But this
29:33
Speaker 2: is something outside of their entire understanding of the universe.
29:36
Speaker 2: They'd never seen a horse before or knew what it
29:38
Speaker 2: could do. If you integrate a rider, into the saddle
29:40
Speaker 2: with stirrups and the shock value of that charge. They
29:44
Speaker 2: had no doctrine to push back against that. And the
29:50
Speaker 2: psychological impact was that they tried to flee. They were
29:53
Speaker 2: piling up against the walls in their desperation to scramble
29:56
Speaker 2: over them to the point where the walls finally gave
29:58
Speaker 2: way under the press of all those bodies. Some of
30:00
Speaker 2: them escaped into the countryside and the Spaniards rode after them,
30:02
Speaker 2: just running them down as they fled. And the only
30:04
Speaker 2: thing that stopped the massacre at the end was night
30:06
Speaker 2: was falling and the Spaniards in darkness couldn't continue the
30:08
Speaker 2: pursuit any longer. So it's what happens when something totally
30:12
Speaker 2: outside the universe of even veteran warriors plays out in
30:17
Speaker 2: a way that they have no mental appreciation of or
30:23
Speaker 2: able to draw back any kind of library of how
30:24
Speaker 2: do I respond in this situation. the fight or flight
30:27
Speaker 2: instinct just completely takes over, and the flight was the
30:30
Speaker 2: winner in this instance. As you say, the only casualty
30:32
Speaker 2: was Pizarro himself. He's reaching for Ada Hualpa to take
30:34
Speaker 2: him prisoner, and one of his more enthusiastic comrades slashing
30:37
Speaker 2: and manages to cut his hand as he does that.
30:41
Speaker 2: That was the only injury any of the conquistadors suffered
30:43
Speaker 2: at this critical moment.
30:44
Speaker 1: Yeah. So give me a sense of how is it
30:47
Speaker 1: that you can have, even if they're on horses, how
30:51
Speaker 1: is it that they're just so impenetrable? It's like if
30:52
Speaker 1: you have a hundred, I guess intuitively you would think,
30:55
Speaker 1: If you have tens of thousands of troops, can't you
30:58
Speaker 1: just swarm a cavalry, and many of them will die,
31:01
Speaker 1: but just pull that guy in his steel armor off
31:06
Speaker 1: the stirrups and take him down and then just kill him?
31:08
Speaker 2: Europeans knew how to do that. The Swiss, for example,
31:11
Speaker 2: had already proved that a mounted knight could be knocked
31:15
Speaker 2: out of the saddle and defeated. If you have men
31:19
Speaker 2: shoulder to shoulder, locked in place with long pikes to
31:22
Speaker 2: keep those horses at a distance and break up the
31:24
Speaker 2: impetus of their charge. But that requires, one, the technology,
31:28
Speaker 2: and two, the discipline, training, and institutional knowledge to do that.
31:32
Speaker 2: Mesoamerican warfare was very loose in its formation. Warriors with
31:36
Speaker 2: a lot of space between them, which is the worst
31:38
Speaker 2: thing that you can do in regards to cavalry because
31:40
Speaker 2: the horses can take advantage of that looseness to just
31:43
Speaker 2: blast through any formation that is coming at them. Now,
31:48
Speaker 2: one depiction of the pre-Columbian societies is that they were
31:51
Speaker 2: somehow childlike, innocent, and couldn't have responded. They did try to,
31:56
Speaker 2: and it's important to bear that in mind. At every level,
31:59
Speaker 2: both the Aztec and the Inca sought to put in
32:02
Speaker 2: place countermeasures to negate the advantages that the conquistadors had.
32:07
Speaker 2: One of the critical exemplars is confined space. The Aztecs,
32:11
Speaker 2: when the Cortes showed up in 1521 for round two,
32:15
Speaker 2: By drawing them into their city, which was a network
32:18
Speaker 2: of islands connected by bridges and causeways, that minimized the
32:23
Speaker 2: advantages of the horses because that's not good horse country.
32:26
Speaker 2: They would learn to fight from rooftops and pelt the
32:29
Speaker 2: enemy with stones or whatever they could from heights. They
32:32
Speaker 2: built man-sized holes in buildings so they could slip from
32:35
Speaker 2: one to the other where the horses couldn't chase them.
32:38
Speaker 2: They learned to use those kind of advantages. They learned
32:41
Speaker 2: the stopping power of water. Interestingly, both completely underconnected. They
32:44
Speaker 2: had no relationship with each other. But against Cortes, when
32:48
Speaker 2: he was taking one of the smaller cities on Lake Texcoco,
32:51
Speaker 2: it's La Palpa, the Aztecs broke the dikes in the
32:54
Speaker 2: lake and flooded the city, which took out a number
32:58
Speaker 2: of the conquistadors and their allies. In that environment, of course,
33:01
Speaker 2: the metal armor works to the disadvantage of the conquistador.
33:05
Speaker 2: It drags them to the bottom. If they'd waited until
33:07
Speaker 2: nightfall when the Spaniards were sleeping, they might have bagged
33:09
Speaker 2: all of them. And so the Inca too, later when
33:15
Speaker 2: the conquistadors moved on Olatentambo, again, the Inca flooded the river.
33:20
Speaker 3: They allowed it to.
33:20
Speaker 2: Burst its banks and again bogged down the conquistador cavalry
33:24
Speaker 2: so that they were adapting. They took captured enemy weapons.
33:27
Speaker 2: They learned to fix conquistador swords to the end of
33:31
Speaker 2: long wooden poles, improvising pike tactics. Again, without being instructed to,
33:36
Speaker 2: they just intuited. that keeping horses at a distance with
33:39
Speaker 2: long spears would be a way to negate the advantages
33:41
Speaker 2: that they had. They Inca-employed the bolas, which they'd used
33:45
Speaker 2: for hunting the great birds of South America, to tangle
33:49
Speaker 2: the legs of horses. One famous incident, an Aztec warrior
33:53
Speaker 2: allowed himself to be speared by a conquistador and gripped
33:57
Speaker 2: hold of the spear, the lance, as it was in
33:59
Speaker 2: his body, fixing the conquistador in place so his supporters,
34:03
Speaker 2: his colleagues, could swarm and take him out of the saddle.
34:05
Speaker 2: So they were trying to improvise. The Aztecs, with their
34:09
Speaker 2: captured Spanish prisoners, used them to learn how to use
34:13
Speaker 2: captured crossbows. The Inca, when they captured Spaniards, would use
34:17
Speaker 2: them to give instruction on how to use these firearms.
34:20
Speaker 2: And Manco Inca, the leader of the Inca resistance, made
34:23
Speaker 2: a point of learning to ride a horse himself, to
34:26
Speaker 2: demonstrate to his people that we can do this. So
34:29
Speaker 2: they were trying, but the learning curve was so steep
34:32
Speaker 2: and the timeframe to internalize foreign technology and foreign tactics
34:36
Speaker 2: was too short for them to really be able to
34:37
Speaker 2: deploy it to their advantage.
34:39
Speaker 3: And this is worth emphasizing.
34:40
Speaker 1: Cortes takes over the Aztec Empire in what is now
34:43
Speaker 1: Mexico in two and a half years. So a couple
34:46
Speaker 1: hundred men, an empire of six million people, two and
34:49
Speaker 1: a half years. Pizarro does the same thing for the
34:51
Speaker 1: Inca Empire 10 years later in about five years. So
34:54
Speaker 1: it's insane how fast these conquests happened. Um, and just
34:58
Speaker 1: how little time that, uh, even though in principle they
35:01
Speaker 1: could have figured out ways in which to combat cavalry
35:03
Speaker 1: and things, just how little time they had to adapt
35:05
Speaker 1: all the while their whole social structure is disintegrating. There's disease,
35:10
Speaker 1: et cetera. There's all this like psychological shock value. Now,
35:13
Speaker 1: the obvious question to ask at this point, before we
35:15
Speaker 1: go to other ones is if you reran the simulation
35:17
Speaker 1: and again, and again, if you just change a few
35:19
Speaker 1: things here and there, change the leader, um, uh, change,
35:24
Speaker 1: change the leader for both the Aztecs or for the Spanish, uh,
35:27
Speaker 1: in these conquests, in what fraction of the simulation do,
35:32
Speaker 1: within a matter of a few years later, the Spanish
35:35
Speaker 1: end up in control of these empires anyways? Because when
35:36
Speaker 1: you first learn about them, it actually sounds like an
35:39
Speaker 1: outrageous and impossible outcome that a few hundred men would
35:43
Speaker 1: take over empires of millions of people. And when you
35:46
Speaker 1: learn more about it, then you begin to think, well,
35:49
Speaker 1: I guess it couldn't have been any other way. But
35:50
Speaker 1: I don't know if that is your opinion.
35:53
Speaker 2: There are the grand... scheme of things. There are multiple
35:57
Speaker 2: wheels that define history. The grand wheels that grind slowly,
36:01
Speaker 2: geography and climate. And then the small wheels in the
36:03
Speaker 2: foreground are the individuals, the key players themselves. And this
36:06
Speaker 2: is an integration of that process, the big wheels with
36:08
Speaker 2: the small ones. Yes, if Cortes, which could have happened
36:11
Speaker 2: on multiple occasions, had been taken out early, the conquistadors, Lidalists, Rattalists,
36:16
Speaker 2: may well have disintegrated. And the conquest may have been
36:19
Speaker 2: aborted at that level. Pizarro, again, Ada Hualpa's critical mistake
36:25
Speaker 2: was inserting himself into Pizarro's trap. If he had sent
36:29
Speaker 2: envoys to keep the negotiations at a distance, he may
36:32
Speaker 2: have been able to frustrate Pizarro's ambitions. And as the
36:36
Speaker 2: head of what remained an integrated Inca empire, he may
36:39
Speaker 2: have been able to use those numbers to win the
36:42
Speaker 2: campaign in the short term. When the Inca did finally
36:45
Speaker 2: turn on the conquistadors, Francisco Pizarro has seized Cusco, stripped
36:51
Speaker 2: the temples of their gold and silver, the sweat of
36:53
Speaker 2: the sun and the tears of the moon, as it
36:55
Speaker 2: was called, shipped it back to Europe. He goes back
36:58
Speaker 2: to the coast to set up Lima, what would become
37:00
Speaker 2: the city of Lima, the modern capital of Peru. The
37:04
Speaker 2: danger with Cusco is the fact it's elevated and away
37:06
Speaker 2: from the coast, which is where the Spanish, of course,
37:09
Speaker 2: with their absolute monopoly over naval power, have the advantage.
37:12
Speaker 2: His problem was he left his half-brothers, in charge back
37:16
Speaker 2: in Cuzco, and they provoke Manco Inca, who'd been set
37:19
Speaker 2: up as Pizarro's puppet ruler, into outright rebellion. He rallies
37:25
Speaker 2: his people, he lays siege to Cuzco, he takes Sacsahuaman,
37:28
Speaker 2: the great fortress that dominates Cuzco, and he has one
37:32
Speaker 2: of his generals, Cuiso Yupanqui, cut off reinforcements arriving from
37:36
Speaker 2: the coast. The Inca could win peace confrontations if they
37:40
Speaker 2: used their terrain and their knowledge of it to their advantage.
37:44
Speaker 2: Pizarro from Lima on the coast is taking reinforcements and
37:46
Speaker 2: pushing them into the interior to relieve Cusco. And, and
37:50
Speaker 2: Cuizo is waiting until they enter narrow defiles and passes
37:53
Speaker 2: through the mountains, blocking both ends and then using boulders
37:56
Speaker 2: and other materials to just obliterate them from the heights.
37:59
Speaker 2: And more and more of these Spanish expeditions are being annihilated.
38:02
Speaker 2: So at that level, when they use the terrain and
38:05
Speaker 2: their institutional knowledge of it to their advantage, the Inca
38:08
Speaker 2: are able to win set piece battles, but they can't
38:10
Speaker 2: seal the deal in Cusco. And, and, Manco makes the
38:14
Speaker 2: mistake of ordering Cuiso to attack Lima. He feels we
38:19
Speaker 2: have the advantage now. I've bottled them up in Cuzco.
38:22
Speaker 2: We've annihilated their relief columns. Take out their city on
38:25
Speaker 2: the coast and the problem is over. But attacking Lima
38:28
Speaker 2: meant passing across open ground, which made the Spanish then
38:31
Speaker 2: unleash their advantage. The general is killed and the whole
38:33
Speaker 2: assault collapses. Back in Cuzco, yes, there's a handful of
38:38
Speaker 2: Spaniards holed up in just a couple of fortified buildings,
38:41
Speaker 2: desperately holding on. Day and night, they're under assault. The
38:44
Speaker 2: psychological aspect to it, the beating of drums and the
38:46
Speaker 2: chanting and the constant rain of missiles to set their
38:49
Speaker 2: building on fire, they would have been wiped out, except
38:51
Speaker 2: for two reasons. One, the open courtyards and plazas of
38:54
Speaker 2: Cusco are good terrain for cavalry, and they still have
38:58
Speaker 2: their horses. And secondly, again, critically, the asset through diplomacy
39:04
Speaker 2: of the local peoples. the subordinated mitmai, as they were called,
39:09
Speaker 2: or yanakona, serfs, the defeated and subordinated people the Inca
39:13
Speaker 2: had brought forcibly within their imperial structure, chafing under those authorities,
39:18
Speaker 2: see these outsiders as their chance to finally break free
39:20
Speaker 2: of Inca authority. So strangely enough, as it may seem,
39:24
Speaker 2: more local peoples had kept joining the besieged Spaniards during
39:29
Speaker 2: the whole battle of Cusco, which played out over many,
39:33
Speaker 2: many months. And the Spaniards end up with more allies
39:35
Speaker 2: and they started during this battle because there were so
39:38
Speaker 2: many people within the Inca empire from the Canary who
39:41
Speaker 2: were from Ecuador to the Chachapoya from the Amazon basin,
39:45
Speaker 2: to even the Ayamaco who used to be rivals with
39:48
Speaker 2: the Inca for control of Cusco itself, increasingly side with
39:52
Speaker 2: the Spaniards. And that local manpower was the critical asset.
39:55
Speaker 2: Without that, they would have been wiped out at Cusco.
39:57
Speaker 2: So again, it's the Spaniards inserting themselves into an imperial orbit,
40:02
Speaker 2: which from a distance looks impressive with its geographic expanse
40:06
Speaker 2: and its total population, but which have been ruthlessly dictated
40:10
Speaker 2: to by a tiny elite of a hierarchy who had
40:14
Speaker 2: imposed themselves over the entire system. Remember, only a small
40:18
Speaker 2: number of people spoke Nahuatl, the imperial language of the Aztecs.
40:21
Speaker 2: Only a small number spoke Quechua, the imperial language of
40:25
Speaker 2: the Inca themselves. It was the Inca empire, but it
40:27
Speaker 2: was constructed from multiple, multiple different ethnicities. And when they
40:31
Speaker 2: saw their chance, they took it to side with the Spaniards.
40:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's worth remembering that The Aztecs and the Incas
40:37
Speaker 1: are themselves sort of the equivalent of the conquistadors in
40:40
Speaker 1: their own world, right? There's 100,000 or so actual Incas
40:45
Speaker 1: that are controlling an empire of 10 million people. So
40:48
Speaker 1: they are themselves an imperial force. Going back to the
40:50
Speaker 1: question then of how contingent these victories were, it kind
40:53
Speaker 1: of sounds like you're saying they are contingent, right? Because
40:55
Speaker 1: if you're pointing out all these cases in which if
40:57
Speaker 1: things had gone slightly differently, the seas of Cusco would
41:00
Speaker 1: have worked or Cortez would have been killed in battle
41:04
Speaker 1: and stuff.
41:05
Speaker 2: The ultimate factor to go down to those background forces,
41:08
Speaker 2: the great wheels that grind through history, the geography and
41:11
Speaker 2: climate structure, one other factor. The fact that Eurasia was
41:15
Speaker 2: so stacked with domesticable animals, sheep, cows, goats, mules, pigs,
41:22
Speaker 2: and above all, horses, and human interaction in biomes with
41:26
Speaker 2: those domesticated animals created the context for the evolution of
41:32
Speaker 2: contagious diseases, endemic or pandemics, that ripped back and forth
41:36
Speaker 2: through Eurasia, and we're familiar with all their names, that
41:40
Speaker 2: never occurred in the New World. The people there had
41:42
Speaker 2: no acquired immunity to diseases such as the big one, smallpox,
41:47
Speaker 2: but beyond that, the whole galaxy of communicable diseases that
41:51
Speaker 2: we're now familiar with as being universal. I think even
41:54
Speaker 2: if the Aztecs Inca had won the short-term proximate victories,
41:58
Speaker 2: the longer-term demographic crisis would have undermined the functional capacity
42:03
Speaker 2: of their societies to remain integrated and to resist much longer.
42:08
Speaker 2: The pressure within them from their subject peoples as they
42:12
Speaker 2: felt the authority of their overlords beginning to weaken would
42:16
Speaker 2: have led to their fragmentation, which is the overarching cycle
42:20
Speaker 2: of pre-Columbian societies generally. They're extremely impressive, in fact, more
42:23
Speaker 2: impressive when you consider the disadvantages they had to struggle with.
42:26
Speaker 2: Their pyramids were built not through the assistance of beasts
42:29
Speaker 2: of burden or even the But simply through pure manpower
42:33
Speaker 2: and the application of that to construct it, the subject
42:38
Speaker 2: peoples would have broken for freedom. We see the recurring
42:41
Speaker 2: cycle of Mesoamerican history, for example, that when Cortes arrived,
42:46
Speaker 2: Tenochtitlan was one of the greatest metropolises, perhaps, on Earth.
42:50
Speaker 2: Beautiful and rich and heavily populated. A hundred years later,
42:54
Speaker 2: if he'd arrived in 1619 as opposed to 1519, he
42:57
Speaker 2: would have found a swamp with moss-covered mounds and hills
43:02
Speaker 2: rising out of it. The parallel to that, of course,
43:04
Speaker 2: is Teotihuacan, the previous great metropolis, which dominated Mesoamerica. It rose,
43:09
Speaker 2: it expanded, it attracted a huge population, it overstressed its environment,
43:13
Speaker 2: and it collapsed. I think the Aztecs naturally would have
43:16
Speaker 2: gone the same way. So one way or another, the
43:18
Speaker 2: Spanish or even subsequent ways of European colonists would have
43:22
Speaker 2: entrenched themselves at the coast and would have perhaps more
43:25
Speaker 2: slowly pushed inland. It's possible that you would see a
43:28
Speaker 2: more balanced relationship between the colonists and the indigenous peoples.
43:32
Speaker 2: But I think in the longer term, they all would
43:34
Speaker 2: have been folded into the grand European imperial framework.
43:39
Speaker 1: So we've gotten to the point now where if you
43:40
Speaker 1: have a computer-based task that a personal assistant could knock
43:44
Speaker 1: out in an hour, AI can probably just do it
43:46
Speaker 1: for you. AI has gotten more and more general over time.
43:49
Speaker 1: So these new AI assistants need much less hand-holding than
43:52
Speaker 1: they used to. For example, SpaceX AI gave Grokbot access
43:56
Speaker 1: to their contracts, vendor spend, and usage data, and asked
43:59
Speaker 1: it to identify potential savings.
44:01
Speaker 3: It ended up finding.
44:02
Speaker 1: Over $ 100, 000 worth, mainly made up of unused SaaS seats
44:06
Speaker 1: and unnecessary add-ons. I tried this on my own spend
44:09
Speaker 1: and Grokbot found more than I expected. It went through
44:12
Speaker 1: all my SaaS tools and figured out which seats I
44:14
Speaker 1: should stop paying for by looking at the last active
44:17
Speaker 1: date for each user. It looked at my billing settings
44:19
Speaker 1: and told me which tools I should pay for annually
44:22
Speaker 1: instead of monthly. And it also messaged me about a
44:24
Speaker 1: couple of subscriptions it doubted that I was actually using,
44:27
Speaker 1: like LinkedIn Premium. And it asked me if I wanted
44:30
Speaker 1: to cancel.
44:30
Speaker 3: Them, which I did.
44:31
Speaker 1: All in, Grokbot found over $ 5, 000 of savings, even though
44:35
Speaker 1: we're a pretty small team. It seems quite likely that
44:37
Speaker 1: within six months, I'll get to completely eliminate some of
44:40
Speaker 1: the most annoying and least productive feeling.
44:41
Speaker 3: Hours of my week.
44:42
Speaker 1: You can already give real work to AI assistants like Grokbot,
44:45
Speaker 1: which has been making a bunch of small things in
44:47
Speaker 1: my life easier. Go to x.ai slash bot to try
44:51
Speaker 1: it out. We do know examples of other native forces
44:55
Speaker 1: who resist European powers for a very long time. I
44:59
Speaker 1: think there's some... platoon or army uh that has just
45:04
Speaker 1: finished off fighting uh in during the american civil war
45:07
Speaker 1: that has to go down and then go fight um
45:10
Speaker 1: uh some native tribes because there was still even late
45:13
Speaker 1: into the 19th century you know native forces were able
45:15
Speaker 1: to resist european um incursions of course you know with
45:18
Speaker 1: the comanche and um and so forth so it does
45:22
Speaker 1: seem to me that they could like Maybe just because
45:24
Speaker 1: they were so centralized, you get the emperor and the
45:26
Speaker 1: whole thing falls, whereas other tribes were more dispersed.
45:29
Speaker 3: You're absolutely right.
45:30
Speaker 2: The key term there, as you used it, was dispersal.
45:32
Speaker 2: The vulnerability of the Aztec, the Inca, was that hierarchical
45:37
Speaker 2: nature in their society. And the absolute loyalty that the
45:40
Speaker 2: system had invested into who was at the top of
45:43
Speaker 2: the social hierarchical tree, the Huyalatuanay for the Aztecs, the
45:47
Speaker 2: Sapa Inca for the Inca themselves. taking that individual destabilizes
45:52
Speaker 2: the whole system, potentially even means that it can be
45:54
Speaker 2: functionally governed through the use of intermediaries or even puppets.
45:58
Speaker 2: The dispersed peoples, as you say, the Comanche, even the
46:01
Speaker 2: Maya in Mesoamerica, whose city-states jealously asserted and defended their
46:07
Speaker 2: autonomy against each other, meant that the Spanish couldn't take
46:10
Speaker 2: out the Maya in one fell swoop. They couldn't do
46:13
Speaker 2: to the Maya what they'd done to the Aztecs. They
46:15
Speaker 2: had to reduce their cities one by one. And that
46:18
Speaker 2: was a long, laborious process that took almost to the
46:20
Speaker 2: end of the 17th century to finally consummate. Even then,
46:24
Speaker 2: there was still smoldering descent. In many ways, you can
46:27
Speaker 2: go to the highlands of Central America and they still
46:29
Speaker 2: speak the ancestral languages of the first one before they
46:31
Speaker 2: speak Spanish. Yes, colonizing powers can find.
46:36
Speaker 3: Aggressive bite back.
46:38
Speaker 2: Just look at Custer's last stand as late as 1876
46:39
Speaker 2: here in America, the entire 7th Cavalry wiped out at
46:43
Speaker 2: the Little Bighorn because they lost the initiative. And at
46:46
Speaker 2: that point, they were fighting warriors who had come together
46:48
Speaker 2: temporarily riding horses, firing guns, and then dispersing afterwards. It
46:53
Speaker 2: was very hard to pin them down, and that was
46:54
Speaker 2: often a frustrating aspect. It took a long process of
46:57
Speaker 2: what amounts to really total war to finally bring them
46:59
Speaker 2: to heel, setting up barbed wire everywhere and, of course,
47:02
Speaker 2: slaughtering the buffalo to take away the basis for their
47:06
Speaker 2: culture and their food chain, to finally bring the last
47:08
Speaker 2: holdouts to heel. So it can be a long, protracted process.
47:14
Speaker 2: The Inca and Aztecs themselves found that out. They never consummated,
47:17
Speaker 2: even incorporating their entire zones, within their empires. The Aztecs
47:21
Speaker 2: had surrounded and were slowly reducing the Les Collins, but
47:24
Speaker 2: to the west, and what's Micahuacan, the Puripuchi people, or
47:28
Speaker 2: as they're called today, the Tarascans, had an empire of
47:30
Speaker 2: their own, and they were able to go toe to
47:32
Speaker 2: toe with the Aztecs. The first time the Aztecs crossed
47:35
Speaker 2: into Tarascan territory, it was a disaster. A key reason
47:39
Speaker 2: for that was actually technology. The Aztecs had no connection
47:41
Speaker 2: with South America. The Tarascans somehow did. We know from
47:46
Speaker 2: linguistic evidence and costume choice some exchange of flora and fauna,
47:51
Speaker 2: and above all, in technology. The Tarascans could smelt metal.
47:55
Speaker 2: Like the Inca, they could smelt copper, and they used
47:58
Speaker 2: that to form the points of their arrows, and their
48:03
Speaker 2: mast arches with their copper-tipped arrows were decimating the invading
48:07
Speaker 2: Aztec forces. So the exchange, if it had been on
48:10
Speaker 2: a broader scale between north and south, would have been
48:12
Speaker 2: potentially an equalizing force. If the Aztec had had llamas,
48:17
Speaker 2: from South America, it would have been dramatically to their advantage.
48:20
Speaker 3: There is tin in the New World, right?
48:21
Speaker 1: Yes.
48:22
Speaker 3: So no bronze, right? Why did we not get bronze
48:24
Speaker 3: from copper and tin?
48:25
Speaker 2: They'd never made it. That's certainly not in Mesoamerica where
48:28
Speaker 2: everything was stone. They're the worst of both worlds. They
48:31
Speaker 2: could smelt silver and gold to attract the greed of
48:34
Speaker 2: the Spaniards, but they couldn't smelt iron to hold them off. Right.
48:37
Speaker 3: No, but before that, you would have thought that they
48:38
Speaker 3: would have done copper, tin, get bronze.
48:41
Speaker 2: They did have bronze in the Inca world.
48:44
Speaker 1: Oh, really? Okay.
48:46
Speaker 2: Aztecs that had access to that, again, they'd have given
48:48
Speaker 2: them a much more aggressive fighting stance. Bronze can't stand
48:51
Speaker 2: up against iron, but it's better than stone.
48:53
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, or obsidian. So this is, I think, an
48:56
Speaker 1: important part of what happens here, which is that the
49:01
Speaker 1: Europeans are learning from each other, but the natives are
49:05
Speaker 1: not learning from each other. So Cortes learns from the
49:08
Speaker 1: conquest of Hispaniola. Of course, he has a ton of
49:11
Speaker 1: improvisation in the way he approaches the conquest of the Aztecs.
49:15
Speaker 1: And then Pizarro, just knows the whole details of what
49:18
Speaker 1: Cortés did a decade earlier, basically follows the same playbook.
49:22
Speaker 1: It's not clear to me that the Incas even knew
49:24
Speaker 1: the Aztecs existed. So you just have a much more
49:27
Speaker 1: accumulation of knowledge than the other one is able to accumulate.
49:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're closed worlds. They were very insular in their societies.
49:38
Speaker 2: To go further back in time, I think the only
49:41
Speaker 2: divergence that would have given pre-Columbian peoples a real long-term
49:46
Speaker 2: chance to hold off the Europeans, if we reverse the
49:48
Speaker 2: clock another 500 years back to leave Ericsson and the
49:52
Speaker 2: Norse in Greenland, they knew of the existence of North America. Helloland, Markland,
49:58
Speaker 2: and Vinland, as they called them, as they explored them.
50:00
Speaker 2: And they tried to colonize the new world. Their numbers
50:03
Speaker 2: were too few, the local resistance was too fierce, and
50:06
Speaker 2: they were forced out. If the Vikings had been able
50:10
Speaker 2: to claim a long-term presence in the New World, they
50:14
Speaker 2: may have been able to drip-feed European technology, European beasts
50:18
Speaker 2: of burden, and above all, European diseases slowly into the Americas.
50:22
Speaker 2: So that 500 years later, when the conquistadors did show up,
50:25
Speaker 2: they'd have met a people who had some resistance to
50:27
Speaker 2: European diseases. knew how to work iron and were riding horses.
50:30
Speaker 2: If that was the case, all bets are off.
50:32
Speaker 1: That would be such an interesting history. What does the
50:33
Speaker 1: new world look like if the Vikings had actually set
50:36
Speaker 1: up there?
50:37
Speaker 3: That's very interesting.
50:38
Speaker 1: What was Pizarro's greatest innovation on Cortez's strategy?
50:44
Speaker 2: I think essentially the key to it was following the
50:50
Speaker 2: blueprint as closely as possible. Go right to the top,
50:54
Speaker 2: established a coastal sediment, which Cortes also was very invested in.
50:57
Speaker 2: So you have a secure base to fall back to
50:59
Speaker 2: if what's happening in the interior is not playing out.
51:02
Speaker 2: A base on the coastline was originally with the conquistadors,
51:06
Speaker 2: but more broadly, the Portuguese, British, French. Subsequently, they would
51:09
Speaker 2: build those key strongholds on the coast, which because of
51:14
Speaker 2: their monopoly over nautical technology means they were effectively unable
51:19
Speaker 2: to be extricated by any local or indigenous population. And
51:23
Speaker 2: that's one thing that people tend to underestimate with the
51:26
Speaker 2: success of European expansion. At the end of the day,
51:30
Speaker 2: they had the fortresses, right? And again, the long institutional
51:33
Speaker 2: knowledge of what a perfect fortress should look like. Those
51:35
Speaker 2: jagged edge star parameters and revetments and battlements which maximized firepower.
51:42
Speaker 2: Even Eurasian cultures, even the Qing Chinese struggled to be
51:46
Speaker 2: able to deal with that. The peoples of the pre-Columbian
51:49
Speaker 2: Americas had no real chance of storming defenses on that
51:53
Speaker 2: kind of a scale. The Inca Aztecs even didn't have
51:56
Speaker 2: siege warfare. They didn't have siege weapons, battering rams, catapults,
51:59
Speaker 2: nothing like that. So once the Europeans dug into fortified positions,
52:04
Speaker 2: it was very hard to move them out of that.
52:08
Speaker 2: Pizarro's own environment was quite different from that of Cortes.
52:11
Speaker 2: I mean, the highlands of Mexico are quite elevated, but
52:14
Speaker 2: the Andes Mountains, the conquistadors were moving into. I mean,
52:18
Speaker 2: I've been at elevation in the Himalayas and I was
52:21
Speaker 2: struggling to breathe with the altitude sickness. So how they're
52:25
Speaker 2: able to move to those heights and then be able
52:29
Speaker 2: to fight battles is really astonishing.
52:31
Speaker 1: With many dozens of pounds of armor and equipment.
52:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, it speaks to their physical stamina honed over many
52:42
Speaker 2: years of hard living and the core motivations. This had
52:46
Speaker 2: better be worth it. So that's why Cortes and Pizarro
52:50
Speaker 2: were always of first among equals. They had to keep
52:53
Speaker 2: demonstrating success. They had to be the alpha dog in
52:56
Speaker 2: all circumstances because around them were many ambitious men, some
53:00
Speaker 2: of whom had titles or claims that were just as
53:03
Speaker 2: legitimate as Cortes or Pizarro. And Cortes was always on
53:06
Speaker 2: top of that situation. Pizarro, of course, at the end
53:08
Speaker 2: lost control. He made his end as a rival faction
53:12
Speaker 2: stormed his household. And he went down fighting, not against
53:17
Speaker 2: the indigenous people, but against his fellow Spaniards.
53:20
Speaker 1: What I find interesting about these conquests is that once
53:23
Speaker 1: the emperor is captured, Atahualpa for the Incas and Moctezuma
53:27
Speaker 1: for the Aztecs, what is it that they think is
53:30
Speaker 1: going to happen?
53:31
Speaker 3: Why are they cooperating?
53:33
Speaker 1: What is the end story in which they come out
53:35
Speaker 1: on top? Do they think that the Spanish were going
53:37
Speaker 1: to leave if they give them enough gold? What is
53:40
Speaker 1: their end game there?
53:41
Speaker 3: That's a good question.
53:42
Speaker 2: I mean, I think Moctezuma II, from the moment when
53:46
Speaker 2: Cortes seized him, because previously the records of Moctezuma... reflect
53:50
Speaker 2: that he was a peddleless autocrat. He centralized all power
53:53
Speaker 2: in the aristocracy. Previously, it used to be possible to
53:55
Speaker 2: work up from outside the circle into the inner circle,
53:58
Speaker 2: but he forbade that. He was almost Stalinist in his
54:05
Speaker 2: authority over his underlings. And he was the one who
54:08
Speaker 2: was amping up the ritualistic flower wars into successive campaigns
54:15
Speaker 2: of encirclement and annihilation for the Lashkarans. So he was,
54:18
Speaker 2: in every sense of the word, an autocrat. Perhaps it's
54:24
Speaker 2: for the first time in his life being told what
54:26
Speaker 2: to do just led to a complete psychological break because
54:29
Speaker 2: once Cortés had hold of him, he seems to have
54:32
Speaker 2: pulled a complete 180 switch and become essentially, willingly, Cortés' s puppet.
54:38
Speaker 2: He was always trying to do what Cortés wanted in
54:43
Speaker 2: a way that would still be beneficial for his people,
54:46
Speaker 2: but would not rock the boat so much in terms
54:49
Speaker 2: of Cortés' s authority. In the end, it wasn't Cortes who
54:53
Speaker 2: disposed of it. It was his own people because they
54:55
Speaker 2: realized that he had sold them out and he had
54:58
Speaker 2: to go. His being unilaterally deposed, that had never happened
55:03
Speaker 2: before in Aztec history. He was the first Huey Latawane
55:05
Speaker 2: to be repudiated by his own people and replaced by
55:08
Speaker 2: someone else.
55:09
Speaker 1: But what did he think was going to happen? He
55:11
Speaker 1: seemed like he had his wits about him, right?
55:14
Speaker 2: He did. And the Spanish accounts refer to that he
55:16
Speaker 2: had a regal bearing, was clearly intelligent, And he was
55:19
Speaker 2: adapted to the situation. He learned to speak Spanish very,
55:21
Speaker 2: very quickly. He learned to play cards and chess. So
55:25
Speaker 2: he was, I think, trying to integrate himself as much
55:27
Speaker 2: as possible. At the same time though, I think he
55:30
Speaker 2: was also reaching out to his own people and he
55:32
Speaker 2: was waiting perhaps for his opportunity to fully mobilize him.
55:36
Speaker 2: Perhaps he just felt he never quite got the opportunity
55:38
Speaker 2: to do that. Because bear in mind, the deal was,
55:41
Speaker 2: if he provided Cortez and he walked into that room
55:44
Speaker 2: and said, I can fill it up this high with
55:46
Speaker 2: gold and silver, and Pizarro had promised he'd be released
55:48
Speaker 2: at that point, perhaps he actually felt that this was
55:52
Speaker 2: a man of his word. But Pizarro in no case was,
55:56
Speaker 2: and had him go on to death after getting what
55:57
Speaker 2: he wanted. So it may just be that he misinterpreted
56:00
Speaker 2: Pizarro as someone who was on the same level, that
56:03
Speaker 2: kings don't do this to other kings, but he was
56:06
Speaker 2: dealing with a freebooting, entrepreneurist pirate, essentially, not someone operating
56:10
Speaker 2: in good faith.
56:11
Speaker 1: Okay, so zooming out, it's sort of interesting to think
56:15
Speaker 1: about what this Spanish New World conquest really accomplished.
56:23
Speaker 3: So they're basically after gold and silver.
56:25
Speaker 1: In a weird way, they're sort of like paper clippers
56:28
Speaker 1: who don't really care about this indigenous culture or even
56:31
Speaker 1: the productive capacity of this new.
56:36
Speaker 3: Continent.
56:36
Speaker 1: They just care about these metals, which are not in
56:39
Speaker 1: and of themselves productive assets, right? They can't generate wealth.
56:42
Speaker 1: They're basically like crypto, the old gold and silver are.
56:45
Speaker 1: So they're just obsessed with this. Initially, we were talking
56:48
Speaker 1: about this yesterday. This helps them fund the, you know,
56:53
Speaker 1: Europe's in a tough spot at this time because the
56:55
Speaker 1: Ottomans and other forces are, the reconquest just happened. So
57:00
Speaker 1: the Spanish had been fighting off Arab armies that had
57:03
Speaker 1: control over parts of the Iberian Peninsula. And they used
57:06
Speaker 1: this gold and this silver to, I guess, help pay
57:11
Speaker 1: for the defenses back at home. But if you think
57:14
Speaker 1: about what's really happening here, there's no new net wealth
57:18
Speaker 1: that has been generated, right? It's just basically redistribution among Europeans,
57:22
Speaker 1: where if they're using bullion as currency, now the relative
57:26
Speaker 1: ratio of bullion has changed. You get inflation plus some
57:29
Speaker 1: redistribution here. It's basically the government printing more money. It
57:32
Speaker 1: doesn't create more stuff. There's no productive, at least initially,
57:36
Speaker 1: the Spanish are not getting any new productive capacity out
57:38
Speaker 1: of the New World. What does change is that during
57:41
Speaker 1: this period, the Ming dynasty is in charge of China,
57:43
Speaker 1: and it has really messed up the circulation of paper currency.
57:48
Speaker 1: Nobody trusts it. Every time there's inflation, they just make
57:51
Speaker 1: up a new currency, and people's stocks of wealth are
57:53
Speaker 1: totally worthless. And so now the Spanish set up these
57:58
Speaker 1: silver mines in the New World, and they ship that
58:01
Speaker 1: silver off to China. And China is then sending millions
58:05
Speaker 1: of pieces of porcelain and tons and tons of silk
58:08
Speaker 1: and spices and fine goods to Europe. Basically, hundreds of
58:12
Speaker 1: tons of real goods. I don't know if it might
58:15
Speaker 1: have been thousands of tons in exchange for basically a
58:18
Speaker 1: medium of exchange, basically to make up for the fact
58:20
Speaker 1: that they don't have reliable means of exchange at the
58:22
Speaker 1: time in the Ming Dynasty. And I think that is
58:25
Speaker 1: an important, interesting piece of like, what is a function
58:28
Speaker 1: of the Spanish.
58:30
Speaker 3: Colonies in the new world.
58:31
Speaker 1: It's not generating any net new wealth. In the grand
58:34
Speaker 1: scheme of things, it's basically helping get, I don't know,
58:37
Speaker 1: Chinese stuff for free in some sense.
58:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, the conquistadors really didn't appreciate what they'd accomplished, many
58:45
Speaker 2: of them. Some of them died doing what they did.
58:49
Speaker 2: The ones who were lucky or good lived long enough
58:52
Speaker 2: to settle down on what were called encomiendas, that's local estates,
58:56
Speaker 2: with many of the local peoples to farm the land
58:58
Speaker 2: for them, kind of peon land. The later iteration was
59:05
Speaker 2: the bureaucrats. Once the conquistadors had cleared the ground, the
59:08
Speaker 2: bureaucrats would arrive from Spain. and they would begin running
59:11
Speaker 2: and administering what would become Mexico, Peru, South America generally.
59:16
Speaker 2: The conquistadors in South America rebelled against that, had to
59:19
Speaker 2: be put down by force to retain South America within
59:23
Speaker 2: the Spanish empire. Once that was accomplished though, the whole
59:26
Speaker 2: process became very integrated into the Spanish imperial orbit. the
59:30
Speaker 2: first empire in which the sun never sets. Once the
59:33
Speaker 2: Spanish had discovered and exploited a mountain of silver at
59:37
Speaker 2: Potosí in what's now Bolivia, they put the last piece
59:41
Speaker 2: of the puzzle in place for true globalization. Initially, the gold,
59:47
Speaker 2: silver was all going east, as you say, into the
59:50
Speaker 2: coffers of King Charles V and his son, King Philip II,
59:53
Speaker 2: for their wars of evangelicalism. defense and expansion against the
1:00:00
Speaker 2: Ottomans to keep the Netherlands under their control to ideally,
1:00:04
Speaker 2: through the armada, bring the one true apostolic faith of
1:00:07
Speaker 2: Catholicism back to England. Most of those ventures, of course,
1:00:11
Speaker 2: were failures. And as you say, the net impact for
1:00:14
Speaker 2: Spain was ultimately quite negative because by infusing Europe with
1:00:19
Speaker 2: this enormous expansion of liquidity through the silver that was
1:00:23
Speaker 2: pouring off the treasure ships every year arriving in Spain,
1:00:29
Speaker 2: all they were doing was importing inflation and pushing prices
1:00:32
Speaker 2: up to levels. And real wages in Spain actually fell
1:00:34
Speaker 2: during this period because, yes, there was excess liquidity, but
1:00:37
Speaker 2: this meant prices for even staple goods were much higher
1:00:40
Speaker 2: than they had been previously. And the ultimate negative effect
1:00:43
Speaker 2: was the seductive drug, essentially, of having silver on tap
1:00:49
Speaker 2: meant that Spain never developed towards what we call functional capitalism.
1:00:53
Speaker 2: It never developed capital markets or or independent banking systems,
1:00:58
Speaker 2: the way that were emerging in places like the Netherlands
1:01:00
Speaker 2: and England during this period. So those powers moved ahead
1:01:04
Speaker 2: while Spain and Portugal were left behind, didn't really fully
1:01:07
Speaker 2: industrialized in the 19th century, were left very rural and
1:01:11
Speaker 2: poor and backward by the 20th century. Still now they're
1:01:13
Speaker 2: catching up from that. So the average Spanish gain from
1:01:17
Speaker 2: this was quite marginal. Yes, we can afford fleets necessary
1:01:22
Speaker 2: to face off against the Ottomans at Lepanto in 1571,
1:01:26
Speaker 2: which is good, but in terms of the development of
1:01:29
Speaker 2: the society, that really plateaued and stayed that way for
1:01:32
Speaker 2: hundreds of years. The other side of the equation, as
1:01:34
Speaker 2: you mentioned, is China. Yes, once the Spanish had fully
1:01:39
Speaker 2: become able to exploit the silver mines of South America,
1:01:42
Speaker 2: they could then take advantage of their developing knowledge of
1:01:46
Speaker 2: the Pacific Oceans, wind currents, to send those great ships
1:01:50
Speaker 2: west to the Philippines, to Manila, their base in the Orient,
1:01:56
Speaker 2: And from there, meet with merchants coming from Japan, from Siam,
1:02:00
Speaker 2: and most of all from China, bringing goods with real
1:02:03
Speaker 2: practical value for exchange for that extracted silver. So as
1:02:07
Speaker 2: you say, the Spanish are buying goods with value, with
1:02:11
Speaker 2: a success liquidity. And the real benefit from that is
1:02:15
Speaker 2: not something that's structurally to the advantage of the country
1:02:18
Speaker 2: as a whole. So yes, what the conquistadors did was historically,
1:02:24
Speaker 2: put the last pieces of the puzzle in place for
1:02:26
Speaker 2: true globalization. Trade is no longer trans-Eurasian or even trans-Atlantic,
1:02:33
Speaker 2: it's trans-global. The networks now affect everybody at some point
1:02:36
Speaker 2: along the line. And the Ming found that out in
1:02:38
Speaker 2: the mid 1640s, when there was a cash crisis, having
1:02:42
Speaker 2: fully transferred the basis of exchange in their empire to silver,
1:02:49
Speaker 2: when access to silver was cut off or at least
1:02:52
Speaker 2: minimized for a number of reasons during the first half
1:02:55
Speaker 2: of the 17th century. The Ming at the worst possible
1:02:58
Speaker 2: time with the Manchu at the gates could no longer
1:03:00
Speaker 2: fund their armies. They couldn't pay to put a military
1:03:03
Speaker 2: in place to hold them off. So the Manchus moved
1:03:06
Speaker 2: in at a moment of supreme advantage, blew out the
1:03:08
Speaker 2: Ming and replaced them as the new hegemons over the
1:03:12
Speaker 2: Chinese imperial zone.
1:03:14
Speaker 3: Yeah.
1:03:15
Speaker 1: It's interesting to contrast the Spanish who had immediate and
1:03:18
Speaker 1: outrageous successes in the new world with the English around
1:03:23
Speaker 1: the same time who were setting up the colony in Virginia.
1:03:26
Speaker 1: And there's so many letters from that time where people
1:03:30
Speaker 1: are complaining about the Virginia company is just literally a
1:03:32
Speaker 1: waste of English money and- Lies.
1:03:36
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
1:03:36
Speaker 1: And just like, everybody's dying. They're not getting, there's like
1:03:40
Speaker 1: nothing to farm here. There's nothing to get out of this.
1:03:44
Speaker 1: In the long run, of course, I guess the British
1:03:46
Speaker 1: did lose control of the New World. But for a while,
1:03:49
Speaker 1: they did gain these productive new colonies in the New World.
1:03:51
Speaker 1: And I don't know what to think about this. I mean,
1:03:53
Speaker 1: there is this way of thinking about maybe the Spanish
1:03:56
Speaker 1: set up this extractive because they had this very quick
1:03:59
Speaker 1: initial success. They set up a very extractive settlement, which
1:04:04
Speaker 1: didn't result in net productive capacity in the long run,
1:04:08
Speaker 1: whereas the British were forced because there was no you know,
1:04:14
Speaker 1: just like crazy bullion floating around. They were forced to
1:04:16
Speaker 1: build up some productive capacity, build up these kinds of
1:04:20
Speaker 1: institutions that would allow them to make most use of America, Canada,
1:04:25
Speaker 1: and so on. Yeah.
1:04:26
Speaker 2: You look at the Netherlands and England. The two late
1:04:29
Speaker 2: comers to the game of imperialism, Protestant powers marginalized for
1:04:32
Speaker 2: that reason in Europe. And the Netherlands especially has nothing.
1:04:34
Speaker 2: Natural resources, absolutely zero. So in that environment, you're forced
1:04:39
Speaker 2: to innovate and think about how you can achieve capital
1:04:43
Speaker 2: gain and true economic expansion. Everybody wants the quick fix, understandably.
1:04:47
Speaker 2: We play the lottery for that exact reason, right? But
1:04:50
Speaker 2: be careful what you wish for because you may just
1:04:52
Speaker 2: actually get it. And those societies that have arrived at
1:04:56
Speaker 2: the quick fix, whether that's gold or silver or monocultural
1:05:00
Speaker 2: crop production of some kind, which gives you a monopoly
1:05:03
Speaker 2: on its provision, they become satisfied with that. They become
1:05:07
Speaker 2: trapped within an environment that exists solely for that purpose
1:05:10
Speaker 2: and they don't develop beyond the essential thresholds that that
1:05:13
Speaker 2: allows for. Even here in the US, we can look
1:05:16
Speaker 2: at the difference between the North and the South, that
1:05:17
Speaker 2: geographic line. Below that line, yes, you can get the
1:05:22
Speaker 2: quick fix. You can put all your capital into buying
1:05:25
Speaker 2: slaves and have them work at providing cash crops, which
1:05:29
Speaker 2: is tobacco, the original one, indigo and sugar, and of
1:05:33
Speaker 2: course the big one, cotton. The North didn't have those advantages.
1:05:36
Speaker 2: You couldn't just buy land and then extract the resource
1:05:40
Speaker 2: from it. You had to think about how to make money.
1:05:42
Speaker 2: And that's why all the investment money in the North
1:05:44
Speaker 2: was going into things with long-term productivity, into trade and commerce,
1:05:49
Speaker 2: into advanced capital markets and the banking system, and of course,
1:05:52
Speaker 2: into industrialization. That all happened in the North. So when
1:05:56
Speaker 2: the rupture came in the 1860s and the North and
1:05:59
Speaker 2: South went to war, all those advantages were with the North,
1:06:02
Speaker 2: not just population, but the industrial base, the capital markets
1:06:05
Speaker 2: necessary for it to put in place a winning long-term
1:06:08
Speaker 2: strategy for actually defeating the South in that conflict. That, again,
1:06:14
Speaker 2: is the long-term lesson, that having life too easy from
1:06:18
Speaker 2: the beginning leads to a certain, I don't want to
1:06:22
Speaker 2: call it laziness, but lack of vision, perhaps, in alternatives
1:06:25
Speaker 2: that may, in the longer term, actually be more advantageous.
1:06:30
Speaker 1: So earlier in this episode, I asked Sai if you
1:06:32
Speaker 1: could rerun the conquest a thousand times How often do
1:06:36
Speaker 1: the Spanish end up in control? What if the Aztecs
1:06:38
Speaker 1: had learned ironworking from the Vikings? Or the Spanish hadn't
1:06:42
Speaker 1: brought smallpox? Or Cortes had died earlier? Obviously with history,
1:06:46
Speaker 1: counterfactuals are just thought experiments. But with software, you can
1:06:49
Speaker 1: actually test them. The Antithesis software testing platform runs your
1:06:53
Speaker 1: system through thousands of parallel histories, letting you explore any
1:06:57
Speaker 1: counterfactual you want. How does your software perform if a
1:07:00
Speaker 1: packet gets dropped? What about when the network drags? Or
1:07:03
Speaker 1: the machine dies mid-write? Importantly, you don't have to come
1:07:07
Speaker 1: up with these counterfactuals. One big problem with traditional testing
1:07:10
Speaker 1: is that it only covers a distribution that you know.
1:07:13
Speaker 1: To test for a bug, you first have to imagine it.
1:07:16
Speaker 1: These tests are sort of like the flower wars. The
1:07:18
Speaker 1: Aztec success in these ritual battles against known rivals made
1:07:22
Speaker 1: them feel like the best military in the world, but
1:07:24
Speaker 1: they're still unprepared for Cortez. Antithesis solves this by steering
1:07:29
Speaker 1: your tests for you. injecting faults and making things as
1:07:32
Speaker 1: adversarial as possible. That way, your software gets tested against
1:07:35
Speaker 1: scenarios you'd never imagine, but that could still arise in
1:07:39
Speaker 1: the real world. Go to antithesis.com slash thwarkash to learn more.
1:07:47
Speaker 1: Going back to the Aztec Zincas, one thing that's remarkable
1:07:50
Speaker 1: here is just how bad their strategy and tactics often were.
1:07:53
Speaker 1: For example, because Aztec military conflict was based around capturing
1:07:58
Speaker 1: victims for sacrifice, There are many cases where Cortez himself
1:08:01
Speaker 1: was laying on the ground and had been knocked off
1:08:04
Speaker 1: his horse. But instead of just killing him on the
1:08:06
Speaker 1: ground and guarding their advantage, the Aztecs were trying to
1:08:10
Speaker 1: seize him to go have some sacrifice water. And this
1:08:14
Speaker 1: allowed him to get himself out of thorny situations. Another
1:08:18
Speaker 1: huge mistake that would happen in these conflicts is that
1:08:24
Speaker 1: In the traditional way in which this military conflict would
1:08:27
Speaker 1: happen is that the general would be garnished and plumbed
1:08:31
Speaker 1: with all this extra, you know, decorations, basically, which would
1:08:35
Speaker 1: make him easy to identify in a battlefield. And if
1:08:38
Speaker 1: you have cavalry that can just see, here's where the
1:08:41
Speaker 1: general is, let's go directly to him, kill him, the
1:08:44
Speaker 1: whole enemy force will rout. It just makes your entire
1:08:47
Speaker 1: chain of command, you might have 100,000 troops, but then
1:08:49
Speaker 1: your general dies and everybody else routs. Another example, the
1:08:52
Speaker 1: Battle of Cusco. A couple hundred Spaniards defending against this
1:08:57
Speaker 1: huge rebellion. If the rebellion had just kept attacking at night,
1:09:03
Speaker 1: instead of only attacking during the day, the Spaniards would
1:09:05
Speaker 1: have never gotten a chance to rest and would have
1:09:08
Speaker 1: just been depleted pretty quickly. But instead, they would let
1:09:12
Speaker 1: them rest at night, wouldn't use their overwhelming numbers to
1:09:14
Speaker 1: do rotations. that would attack at different times. Now, why
1:09:17
Speaker 1: I find this confusing is that it's not like the
1:09:21
Speaker 1: conquistadors arrived at the doorsteps of a bunch of peace-loving
1:09:25
Speaker 1: hippies who didn't know anything about war. Aztec society, Inca
1:09:28
Speaker 1: society was organized around warfare. All adult males were trained
1:09:32
Speaker 1: to be warriors. It was basically like the Sparta of
1:09:34
Speaker 1: the new world, right? So how do we understand how
1:09:37
Speaker 1: a very military-focused culture did not have the strategic wherewithal
1:09:42
Speaker 1: to do this improvisation that, you know, Cortez was doing improvisation,
1:09:47
Speaker 1: Pizarro was doing a bunch of improvisation.
1:09:48
Speaker 3: Why weren't they able to do the same thing?
1:09:50
Speaker 2: There are a lot of factors, one of which is
1:09:52
Speaker 2: that cultural, the religious aspect to it. The warfare was
1:09:56
Speaker 2: rewarded by increase in status. The warriors would be recognized
1:10:02
Speaker 2: for bringing captives back to Tenochtitlan for sacrifice. There was
1:10:07
Speaker 2: even like a hierarchy in terms of the prisoners. like
1:10:11
Speaker 2: that four Totonacs were worth one Chichimec because the Chichimec
1:10:14
Speaker 2: were a wilder tribe to the north and fought more
1:10:16
Speaker 2: fiercely than the Totonacs did. To a degree, there's a
1:10:19
Speaker 2: certain overlap with European cultures. There was great advantage throughout
1:10:23
Speaker 2: the feudal era in taking your enemies alive as opposed
1:10:25
Speaker 2: to killing them because then you could ransom them back
1:10:28
Speaker 2: to their families and you could come out of that
1:10:30
Speaker 2: ahead in terms of at least financial gain. In a way,
1:10:33
Speaker 2: the Aztec model makes more sense because sacrificing your enemy
1:10:36
Speaker 2: means you'll never see him again, whereas selling your enemy
1:10:39
Speaker 2: back to his family means he's up for round two
1:10:41
Speaker 2: and you might face off against the same guy across
1:10:43
Speaker 2: a future battlefield. Even kings, the kings of France after
1:10:46
Speaker 2: the battles of Poitiers and Pavia were captured and then
1:10:51
Speaker 2: subject to various indignities. So to a degree, there was
1:10:54
Speaker 2: a certain level of overlap, but more holistically, you're right. Yes,
1:10:57
Speaker 2: the Aztecs did fight ideally to capture, not to kill.
1:11:01
Speaker 2: And there were multiple episodes when they did have Cortes
1:11:04
Speaker 2: himself under their knives, but were so desperate to haul
1:11:06
Speaker 2: him off His compatriots, sometimes sacrificing themselves, were able to
1:11:10
Speaker 2: rescue him. So that was an aspect of their warfare
1:11:13
Speaker 2: ingrained in their culture, in their faith, in the religious
1:11:16
Speaker 2: expression of the values of an entire people. Difficult to
1:11:20
Speaker 2: tilt that within the framework that we're talking about. I'd
1:11:22
Speaker 2: be asking people here, if we're fighting aliens from another planet,
1:11:27
Speaker 2: to give up Christianity because there's too much invested in
1:11:30
Speaker 2: terms of its morality and more effective combat skills will
1:11:32
Speaker 2: be derived from following some other faith. It was not
1:11:36
Speaker 2: possible to reorient an entire society in that limited timeframe
1:11:39
Speaker 2: to do that. The Cusco situation, we could, to use
1:11:42
Speaker 2: a famous film example, the movie 300. The Spartans are
1:11:45
Speaker 2: able to hold the pass at Thermopylae because against overwhelming numbers,
1:11:49
Speaker 2: it's very, very narrow. And within Cusco, the surviving conquistadors
1:11:54
Speaker 2: fell back to two heavily fortified buildings with narrow entrances.
1:11:58
Speaker 2: And the streets of Cusco are quite narrow as well.
1:12:01
Speaker 2: which means that even those overwhelming numbers could only be
1:12:03
Speaker 2: channeled down through those narrow avenues, and those could be
1:12:07
Speaker 2: blocked relatively effectively even by the small numbers of conquistadors
1:12:11
Speaker 2: and their increasing numbers of native allies able to put
1:12:14
Speaker 2: in place with their metal armor blocking operations that could
1:12:17
Speaker 2: hold those kind of frameworks. Beyond that, when the pressure
1:12:20
Speaker 2: came off, then they would unleash their horses, largely through
1:12:23
Speaker 2: the wider plazas and then the surrounding countryside, looking for
1:12:26
Speaker 2: isolated detachments to take out. And this effect was demoralizing
1:12:30
Speaker 2: on the Inca. They initially had the advantage. They were
1:12:33
Speaker 2: rallied by Manco. We're going to deal with these barbarians
1:12:36
Speaker 2: once and for all. But as the frustration of the
1:12:38
Speaker 2: siege drags on, there's more and more defections, men slipping
1:12:42
Speaker 2: away at night, either to switch sides or just go
1:12:45
Speaker 2: back to their homes and families. Again, this army is huge,
1:12:48
Speaker 2: very diverse. And many of those recruits are peoples who've
1:12:53
Speaker 2: been subjugated and have no institutional loyalty to the Inca.
1:12:56
Speaker 2: The bottom line is they need to get home to
1:12:58
Speaker 2: their farms to get the harvest before the winter. The
1:13:03
Speaker 2: nature of warfare in the pre-Columbian America and in Europe
1:13:06
Speaker 2: for much of its history was driven by the annual
1:13:11
Speaker 2: cycle of planting and harvesting the crops. You need the
1:13:14
Speaker 2: men on their farms to do that because if they're
1:13:16
Speaker 2: not there, then you face a very hard year coming
1:13:20
Speaker 2: up if you don't have enough crops set aside to
1:13:22
Speaker 2: get you through the winter and the following year. So
1:13:25
Speaker 2: for all those reasons, the Inca, yes, with those huge numbers,
1:13:27
Speaker 2: weren't able to really overwhelmingly apply them at the same time.
1:13:31
Speaker 2: If they'd caught perhaps the entire conquistador army marching through
1:13:36
Speaker 2: one of those mountain passes, yes, they may have been
1:13:39
Speaker 2: able to win a set-piece battle in that environment. The
1:13:41
Speaker 2: horses can't charge up the steep slopes. Both ends, if
1:13:45
Speaker 2: they're blocked, Cleverly with boulders and with trees mean the
1:13:48
Speaker 2: infantry is not going anywhere either. You have them essentially
1:13:51
Speaker 2: pinned down. All the advantages would have been useless at
1:13:54
Speaker 2: that point. Metal armor won't protect you from a two-ton
1:13:56
Speaker 2: boulder rumbling from the heights right into your face. If
1:14:00
Speaker 2: they've been able to arrange that, on small scales they were,
1:14:02
Speaker 2: but to get the entire conquistadors in one place at
1:14:05
Speaker 2: one time like that, that never happened.
1:14:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Basically, it was not enough time to
1:14:08
Speaker 3: accumulate the strategy.
1:14:11
Speaker 2: Again, it's that shockingly short, steep learning curve. It just
1:14:14
Speaker 2: wasn't enough time.
1:14:15
Speaker 1: Yeah. So in retrospect, you have these outrageous battles with,
1:14:20
Speaker 1: you know, thousands of deaths on one side and zero
1:14:23
Speaker 1: deaths on the other side. But my understanding is this
1:14:26
Speaker 1: came as a surprise to the conquistadors as well. And
1:14:29
Speaker 1: so how were some hundred odd men willing to go
1:14:34
Speaker 1: confront an empire of 10 million people and say, your
1:14:38
Speaker 1: job is to take this over? You know, it would
1:14:40
Speaker 1: be sort of like dropping a hundred Marines into like,
1:14:48
Speaker 1: 18th century England and being like, okay, you better come
1:14:51
Speaker 1: out the other end with control over parliament. How is
1:14:55
Speaker 1: this a thing that they were willing to do?
1:14:58
Speaker 2: The kind of classic push-pull factors. They came from a
1:15:02
Speaker 2: proud land, a new country, Spain, and they come together
1:15:05
Speaker 2: in 1492. And they were aware their history was one
1:15:08
Speaker 2: of struggle, uniting the peninsula and consummating the Reconquista. So
1:15:14
Speaker 2: they had a proud warrior background, but little to show
1:15:16
Speaker 2: for it, really. again, the quality of life, particularly in Extremadura,
1:15:21
Speaker 2: which is the province in Spain with so many of
1:15:24
Speaker 2: these conquistadors originated from, was a land of hardship. It
1:15:28
Speaker 2: was small farms and dusty terrain and unproductive. And they
1:15:32
Speaker 2: were aware of a wider world around them. And it's
1:15:34
Speaker 2: like so many men have throughout history. They see their
1:15:37
Speaker 2: only path forward as being anything more than dirt farmers
1:15:40
Speaker 2: is to seek a career of high risk and potential,
1:15:45
Speaker 2: even fatal outcomes. But possible great reward as well. Men
1:15:49
Speaker 2: have joined armies, militaries, fought in campaigns. Not even there aren't,
1:15:53
Speaker 2: even other peoples for many centuries, millennia now for that reason.
1:15:57
Speaker 2: And the attraction of the new world, once they're aware
1:16:01
Speaker 2: that out there is a whole new land where it's
1:16:04
Speaker 2: possible for even a small man like myself to become something,
1:16:07
Speaker 2: to become somebody. All I have as an asset is
1:16:10
Speaker 2: my fighting skills. And yeah, I could keep fighting in
1:16:13
Speaker 2: the campaigns against the Moors or against the Turks, but
1:16:16
Speaker 2: those are high risk, low return ventures. Yeah, I'll be
1:16:20
Speaker 2: fighting in my home waters, but what will the potential
1:16:22
Speaker 2: rewards be? These Turks can fight. The message I'm getting
1:16:27
Speaker 2: from the far side of the Atlantic is the risks
1:16:30
Speaker 2: there are much lower and the potential rewards much higher.
1:16:33
Speaker 2: It means traveling across the vast ocean. It means essentially
1:16:37
Speaker 2: being very self-reliant and falling in with men who are
1:16:40
Speaker 2: just as cutthroat as I am.
1:16:42
Speaker 1: How important is religion in the morale of the soldiers?
1:16:44
Speaker 1: Because In retrospect, we're like, okay, they were able to
1:16:46
Speaker 1: take on huge armies, but they didn't know. They didn't
1:16:48
Speaker 1: even know that there was an empire there to take over.
1:16:51
Speaker 1: They didn't know where its capital was. They'd never seen
1:16:53
Speaker 1: it before. They knew nothing about what are the alliances
1:16:55
Speaker 1: that they need to maneuver. What are the sizes of
1:16:58
Speaker 1: the armies we need to face? What is the basic
1:17:00
Speaker 1: terrain and geography that we need to navigate? And so
1:17:03
Speaker 1: I'm still trying to understand how they gained the confidence,
1:17:06
Speaker 1: you and your couple hundred buddies, to go and take
1:17:10
Speaker 1: on a huge empire? I don't know, but do they
1:17:13
Speaker 1: just think God would make sure that they're okay? Yeah,
1:17:17
Speaker 1: how do I understand that?
1:17:18
Speaker 2: Cortes and Pizarro both had men of the cloth traveling
1:17:20
Speaker 2: with their expeditions to provide for their spiritual needs. And
1:17:24
Speaker 2: Cortes and Pizarro, in retrospect, would make a great deal
1:17:27
Speaker 2: of this in their writing. They were professed to be outraged,
1:17:30
Speaker 2: particularly by the Aztec cult of human sacrifice, which was
1:17:34
Speaker 2: integral to their society. I don't see any reason why
1:17:38
Speaker 2: that would be untrue. I mean, it would be shocking
1:17:41
Speaker 2: to actually see that happen. And Cortes, or Moctezuma, invited
1:17:45
Speaker 2: him to the top of one of the two great
1:17:46
Speaker 2: pyramids in Tenochtitlan. He remarks the priests were daubed from
1:17:49
Speaker 2: head to foot in black clay or body paint. And
1:17:56
Speaker 2: the interior was black with spilled blood and it stank abominably.
1:18:00
Speaker 2: So I don't see any reason why... they wouldn't be
1:18:04
Speaker 2: genuinely mortified by that. And they would take a certain
1:18:06
Speaker 2: degree of legitimacy from tearing down the ancient idols of
1:18:10
Speaker 2: these superstitious peoples and raising them up to the one
1:18:12
Speaker 2: true faith. You can solve your conscience in many ways
1:18:15
Speaker 2: by doing that. Then in real terms, I'm here for
1:18:18
Speaker 2: what I can take, but I am performing the will
1:18:21
Speaker 2: of God and therefore I have some absolution when I'm
1:18:23
Speaker 2: called to account at the end of the day. So
1:18:25
Speaker 2: men will sometimes seek to find a higher purpose in
1:18:28
Speaker 2: what are very low endeavors, which is what was playing
1:18:30
Speaker 2: out at that time. Again, coming to the motivation, the
1:18:34
Speaker 2: initial conquests were relatively easy. The island populations in the Caribbean,
1:18:38
Speaker 2: what we now call Puerto Rico and Hispaniola, Cuba, the
1:18:41
Speaker 2: peoples there were quite low on the tech tree, were
1:18:44
Speaker 2: not unified, did not have a significant military presence. And
1:18:48
Speaker 2: of course, on islands, there's nowhere for them to run.
1:18:51
Speaker 2: You could run into the mountains of Cuba, but eventually
1:18:54
Speaker 2: they would all be hunted down. So the feeling was
1:18:57
Speaker 2: the pickings here are pretty easy. And the enthusiastic attitude was, well,
1:19:00
Speaker 2: why would it be any different in the mainland? Of course,
1:19:02
Speaker 2: they did run up against heavy fighting. And some of
1:19:04
Speaker 2: them would say afterwards, the veterans of wars against the Turks,
1:19:07
Speaker 2: this was some of the hardest fighting I've ever been through.
1:19:11
Speaker 2: But by that point, they'd seen that the potential rewards
1:19:13
Speaker 2: are much higher as well. When they arrived at Lake Tishcoco,
1:19:16
Speaker 2: they would marvel as if we'd have just arrived in Atlantis, right?
1:19:20
Speaker 2: To be in this place on this lake with these
1:19:22
Speaker 2: cities arranged around its edges and the biggest city of
1:19:25
Speaker 2: all appeared to be floating on the water like Venice,
1:19:28
Speaker 2: except even more dramatic with its high temples. To them,
1:19:32
Speaker 2: this both awed them and inflamed that greed that they had.
1:19:36
Speaker 2: And Cortes himself admitted as much to Moctezuma's own voice.
1:19:40
Speaker 2: He said, my men and I suffer from a disease
1:19:43
Speaker 2: of the heart that only gold can cure. So Moctezuma
1:19:46
Speaker 2: sent him feathered headdresses and all the traditional regalia. He
1:19:49
Speaker 2: sent him jade and obsidian, which in the Aztec world
1:19:52
Speaker 2: would have been symbols of great regard. And Cortes was
1:19:55
Speaker 2: happy to put on the headdress and he sent it
1:19:57
Speaker 2: back to the king. But the little trinkets of gold
1:19:59
Speaker 2: that he was getting, that was the real end purpose.
1:20:04
Speaker 2: And the local peoples would talk about how the Spanish
1:20:07
Speaker 2: were chattering like monkeys as they were picking up these
1:20:10
Speaker 2: gold and were fascinated by it.
1:20:11
Speaker 3: Yeah.
1:20:12
Speaker 1: By the way, Bernal Diaz, who was on this Cortes'
1:20:17
Speaker 1: expedition and wrote a first-hand account of what happened afterwards,
1:20:19
Speaker 1: he basically says in his account that basically in every
1:20:22
Speaker 1: single town we come across, even in small outlying villages
1:20:25
Speaker 1: on the empire, every temple, every city, just has tons
1:20:30
Speaker 1: of human sacrifice remains left over. So this is just
1:20:33
Speaker 1: an endemic part of the society that I guess must
1:20:35
Speaker 1: have horrified the Spanish. It's hard to square any sort
1:20:42
Speaker 1: of humanitarian, even plausible motivation to the Spanish.
1:20:46
Speaker 3: They were just very willing.
1:20:47
Speaker 1: I think maybe even worse than almost any other European
1:20:51
Speaker 1: conquest ever, the Spanish in the New World just massacre,
1:20:55
Speaker 1: huge swaths of innocent women and children, like the literal genocide,
1:20:59
Speaker 1: intentional genocide, not just disease. Yeah, crazy amounts of rape
1:21:04
Speaker 1: and assault. So there wasn't a sense of like, we're
1:21:08
Speaker 1: freeing these people from the shackles of oppression, or at
1:21:11
Speaker 1: least there's no plausible story you could tell where that's
1:21:14
Speaker 1: what you're doing.
1:21:14
Speaker 2: They would argue in the long term, just in these
1:21:16
Speaker 2: people's interests, right? But of course, in the short term,
1:21:19
Speaker 2: as you say, the accounts are unambiguous about this, throwing
1:21:23
Speaker 2: men and women to those huge hunting dogs that they
1:21:25
Speaker 2: brought with them for sport, to watch them being torn apart.
1:21:28
Speaker 2: They could rationalize that in Mesoamerica, in reference to that
1:21:33
Speaker 2: cult of sacrifice, which was endemic, ingrained into the mentalities
1:21:37
Speaker 2: of those people. There was a regular cycle of sacrifice,
1:21:40
Speaker 2: and that would peak according to particular crises, major campaigns,
1:21:43
Speaker 2: or the like. There are accounts, again, these are distorted accounts,
1:21:47
Speaker 2: but an almost industrial level of human sacrifice that the
1:21:52
Speaker 2: parade of prisoners who've been drugged to keep them pacified,
1:21:55
Speaker 2: stretched from the pyramid complex all the way through to
1:21:58
Speaker 2: the causeways. One after the other, they'd be worn up
1:22:01
Speaker 2: to the top of the pyramids to the temple complex.
1:22:04
Speaker 2: Four priests, each would take an arm and a leg. Well,
1:22:06
Speaker 2: a fifth one would use an obsidian blade to open
1:22:08
Speaker 2: an incision and pull out the heart, which we offer
1:22:11
Speaker 2: to the gods. I've been to those pyramids, the ones
1:22:13
Speaker 2: at Teotihuacan. The steps leading up are very, very narrow.
1:22:16
Speaker 2: You almost have to walk up sideways, deliberately so, because
1:22:19
Speaker 2: when the heart had been taken out and burned, the
1:22:22
Speaker 2: body would be tumbled off the far side and the
1:22:24
Speaker 2: steps were so steep to allow it to tumble all
1:22:26
Speaker 2: the way to the bottom. And then the warrior who'd
1:22:28
Speaker 2: taken that prisoner would then take the flesh on to
1:22:31
Speaker 2: be consumed. It was the consummation of his victory as
1:22:33
Speaker 2: a warrior to take on, literally internalize the defeated enemy.
1:22:37
Speaker 2: So this was, as you say, it's a cycle that
1:22:40
Speaker 2: the world is better off without. I'm not going to
1:22:42
Speaker 2: make any excuses for it. But the motivations of those
1:22:44
Speaker 2: who did that, that was not selfless. It was at
1:22:48
Speaker 2: best a beneficial side effect, window dressing on a process
1:22:52
Speaker 2: of colonization and even literal genocide. And even less validation
1:22:56
Speaker 2: in South America because there was no such tradition at all.
1:22:58
Speaker 2: The Inca would very occasionally take a virgin sacrifice into
1:23:02
Speaker 2: the high mountains where she'd be drugged and you can
1:23:04
Speaker 2: still find the mummified corpses of these girls. But that
1:23:06
Speaker 2: was very rare and very specific. There was no ingrained
1:23:10
Speaker 2: culture of mass human sacrifice at all.
1:23:12
Speaker 3: Okay.
1:23:12
Speaker 1: Here's a question I find very interesting. Why is it
1:23:18
Speaker 1: that the Spaniards are able to weaponize the divisions between
1:23:25
Speaker 1: the different native forces to their own advantage, but the
1:23:30
Speaker 1: natives are not able to do the same with the Spaniards?
1:23:32
Speaker 1: So we know that there are significant divisions among the Spaniards, right? Literally,
1:23:38
Speaker 1: there's a whole much larger force that is sent over
1:23:41
Speaker 1: to arrest Cortes.
1:23:43
Speaker 3: Similarly, we didn't get into this much, but in the.
1:23:47
Speaker 1: In Pizarro's expedition, his second-in-command, Almagro, is pissed off that
1:23:53
Speaker 1: Pizarro is getting all the spoils. He comes back, lays
1:23:56
Speaker 1: siege to Cusco, after Manguenca has laid siege to Cusco,
1:24:00
Speaker 1: and captures it. And so they were literally fighting in
1:24:04
Speaker 1: multiple cases in both these expeditions. The Spanish are fighting
1:24:07
Speaker 1: each other while they're taking over a much larger empire.
1:24:11
Speaker 3: And why is it that the Manco Inca or.
1:24:15
Speaker 1: Moctezuma are not able to use these divisions to their
1:24:18
Speaker 1: own advantage to stay in power?
1:24:21
Speaker 2: That's a good question. The critical difference is this is
1:24:24
Speaker 2: happening for the conquistadors within the Spanish orbit. They're all Castilians,
1:24:28
Speaker 2: they're all Spaniards, shared common backgrounds for most of them.
1:24:33
Speaker 2: And their confrontations were personal rivalries within their system. If
1:24:39
Speaker 2: confronted by an existential crisis, to pit them against each other,
1:24:43
Speaker 2: I think that would have failed because their bottom line
1:24:45
Speaker 2: was they would have united if they felt there was
1:24:47
Speaker 2: a common cause against them that would have forced them
1:24:49
Speaker 2: to do that. Whereas for the local peoples, these are
1:24:53
Speaker 2: differences between entire societies, both the external and internal factors here. Cuitlahuec,
1:25:01
Speaker 2: who succeeded his brother, Moctezuma II, as he were Latawane,
1:25:04
Speaker 2: after driving the Spaniards out during La Noche Triste, he
1:25:07
Speaker 2: sent emissaries to the Lashkalans, to the Tarascans, to build
1:25:11
Speaker 2: an expanded or new triple alliance, to come together as
1:25:14
Speaker 2: native people with a common interest against these outsiders. And
1:25:18
Speaker 2: the Lashkaran younger generation thought about it, but the old
1:25:21
Speaker 2: men who still retained power, who had been fighting against
1:25:24
Speaker 2: the Aztecs for decades and saw them as, in the end,
1:25:28
Speaker 2: the existential threat, repudiated this possibility. The Tarascans wanted nothing
1:25:32
Speaker 2: to do with the Aztecs. No, we are enemies and
1:25:34
Speaker 2: always have been and always will be. this is your
1:25:37
Speaker 2: problem and maybe you'll get taken out, no loss to us.
1:25:40
Speaker 2: So they couldn't overcome the kind of institutional hostilities, which
1:25:44
Speaker 2: go way, way back through their history. The only way
1:25:48
Speaker 2: that the indigenous people could have played the same game,
1:25:51
Speaker 2: and to a degree this did happen later, was to
1:25:53
Speaker 2: play different European powers off against each other. But of course,
1:25:56
Speaker 2: the problem for the Aztecs, for the Inca was the
1:25:59
Speaker 2: Spanish were the only game in town. They were the
1:26:01
Speaker 2: only outsiders they'd encountered. If the English, French, Dutch, even
1:26:07
Speaker 2: the Ottomans, had been players in New World colonization at
1:26:10
Speaker 2: that very early stage. It may have been possible for
1:26:12
Speaker 2: local peoples to identify, okay, these are different cultures. We
1:26:16
Speaker 2: can play them off against each other to our advantage.
1:26:18
Speaker 2: That may have been the game, but at that time,
1:26:20
Speaker 2: it wasn't possible.
1:26:22
Speaker 1: Now, we should talk about the, I know you spent
1:26:24
Speaker 1: a little bit of time thinking about what happened in
1:26:26
Speaker 1: all these other episodes of colonialism as well. In India,
1:26:31
Speaker 1: for example, we do have many different European powers, and
1:26:34
Speaker 1: why was it not possible for the Mughals to play
1:26:37
Speaker 1: them off each other indefinitely to keep control over India.
1:26:41
Speaker 2: The Mughal, I mean, it peaked under Aurangzeb at the
1:26:44
Speaker 2: beginning of the 18th century. Subsequently, his successes didn't have
1:26:49
Speaker 2: whatever you call it, the authority, the charisma, the riz,
1:26:53
Speaker 2: whatever you want to define it, to maintain that hegemony
1:26:57
Speaker 2: which he'd established by almost taking over all of India.
1:27:01
Speaker 2: And the Mughals was at root, had the same problem
1:27:05
Speaker 2: that the Manchu did when they conquered the Ming in
1:27:08
Speaker 2: the 17th century. And they built the Qing dynasty China,
1:27:11
Speaker 2: the greatest physical extent it ever had, but they were
1:27:13
Speaker 2: always outsiders. They were not indigenous to the population. In
1:27:17
Speaker 2: the background, there was always that vague resentment that were
1:27:19
Speaker 2: being ruled here by foreigners. And that was okay while
1:27:22
Speaker 2: they were going from success to success, but when the
1:27:24
Speaker 2: momentum halts and it begins to roll backwards, that's when
1:27:32
Speaker 2: the local power brokers begin to feel to themselves, maybe
1:27:35
Speaker 2: we have more to gain from breaking away from the
1:27:37
Speaker 2: empire than we do from remaining within it. So both
1:27:40
Speaker 2: Mughal India and Manchu China had that kind of fatal defect,
1:27:45
Speaker 2: as it were, coded into the ultimate basis for their authority.
1:27:49
Speaker 2: So even without the Europeans, I think the Mughal Empire
1:27:52
Speaker 2: would have peaked and it would have disintegrated. Now, what
1:27:55
Speaker 2: would have happened next would be more like a patchwork
1:27:56
Speaker 2: quilt of different authorities, some larger, some smaller. The Maratha Confederacy,
1:28:00
Speaker 2: I think, would have been a major player, but not
1:28:02
Speaker 2: one that could incorporate the entire subcontinent within its authority.
1:28:05
Speaker 2: And of course, we look at Chinese history. It's the
1:28:07
Speaker 2: constant cycle of the rise of a dynasty, its peak,
1:28:10
Speaker 2: its decline into anarchy, and then the rise of a
1:28:13
Speaker 2: new imperial hegemon in the region. So that cycle would
1:28:15
Speaker 2: play out, I think, regardless of whether the Europeans intervened.
1:28:19
Speaker 2: Specifically in terms of why the British took over at
1:28:21
Speaker 2: the end, well, in the bluntest terms, The Royal Navy
1:28:25
Speaker 2: rules the waves. And in terms of projecting power, the
1:28:28
Speaker 2: Brits were able to force the French out of Canada
1:28:31
Speaker 2: and out of India because they controlled the sea lanes.
1:28:33
Speaker 2: And although the French had, in terms of population and military,
1:28:36
Speaker 2: a larger force, if you can't project that force, it's
1:28:39
Speaker 2: really of no value to you.
1:28:41
Speaker 1: So this is very interesting because it makes sense why
1:28:42
Speaker 1: the British could have been one of the major powers
1:28:45
Speaker 1: in India, where there's the Marathas, there's the remainders of
1:28:50
Speaker 1: the Mughal Empire, there's many other factions, and then there's
1:28:53
Speaker 1: this British outpost. They've gotten rid of the French. The
1:28:56
Speaker 1: British have got Bengal. Why is it that they were
1:28:59
Speaker 1: able to consolidate where nobody else is able to consolidate.
1:29:03
Speaker 1: And I think one hypothesis here is that we often
1:29:08
Speaker 1: talk about advantages in technology, but we don't talk about
1:29:11
Speaker 1: advantages in sort of governance or in terms of organization.
1:29:15
Speaker 1: And the Eastern Eternity Company was like a company. It
1:29:18
Speaker 1: had a board that could fire and hire CEOs and
1:29:21
Speaker 1: lieutenants and whatever. It It wasn't necessarily like the most
1:29:28
Speaker 1: competent people who were in charge of the Eastern Journey Company.
1:29:30
Speaker 1: They were like pretty competent people, Robert Clive.
1:29:32
Speaker 3: And his underlings.
1:29:34
Speaker 1: And you would have instances in, for example, I think
1:29:37
Speaker 1: the Nawab of Bengal right before the British are able
1:29:40
Speaker 1: to gain control of Bengal, which is the initial tax
1:29:44
Speaker 1: base that they set up in order to further their conquest.
1:29:48
Speaker 1: Ali Vardy Khan is considered to be a pretty good
1:29:50
Speaker 1: ruler who was able to hold the British at bay
1:29:52
Speaker 1: and stuff. And then he dies and his prince is
1:29:55
Speaker 1: this crazy psychopathic guy who doesn't listen to advice and
1:29:59
Speaker 1: so forth. So because there's this monarchical tradition across all
1:30:04
Speaker 1: these principalities in India, there's just going to be sooner
1:30:07
Speaker 1: or later a bad king. And that king cannot stop,
1:30:11
Speaker 1: will not be able to stop the British incursion. There's
1:30:17
Speaker 1: also all these forces around these principalities who are like,
1:30:20
Speaker 1: who are we going to lend money to? Who are
1:30:22
Speaker 1: we going to lend our troops to? And they realize
1:30:25
Speaker 1: there's a bad king right now. The British seem pretty competent.
1:30:28
Speaker 1: I'm going to make an alliance with the British instead.
1:30:31
Speaker 1: And similarly with the case of the Aztecs and Incas,
1:30:34
Speaker 1: maybe even more so, the overwhelming majority of the troops,
1:30:39
Speaker 1: forces that the British are using are Indians, right?
1:30:42
Speaker 2: Seapoys, yeah.
1:30:43
Speaker 3: Seapoys. So I think this is an underrated thing.
1:30:45
Speaker 1: Of just being able to delegate competent people and be
1:30:50
Speaker 1: able to replace them one after another if they get
1:30:53
Speaker 1: killed or if they resign or something. There's not going
1:30:55
Speaker 1: to be some crazy succession crisis that creates this anarchy
1:30:57
Speaker 1: that then somebody else can swoop in and take control.
1:31:00
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
1:31:02
Speaker 2: Just to give one example, the British were winning the
1:31:03
Speaker 2: Hundred Years' War because the King of France, Charles VI,
1:31:06
Speaker 2: was insane. He was convinced he was made out of glass,
1:31:08
Speaker 2: for example. And then the English lost the Hundred Years'
1:31:11
Speaker 2: War because their King, Henry VI, was insane. And he
1:31:14
Speaker 2: would just shut down months at a time. Mentally, he
1:31:16
Speaker 2: just couldn't function. In non-democratic environments, yes, the corporations, for
1:31:22
Speaker 2: the reasons you outlined, profit-driven and therefore not loyal to
1:31:25
Speaker 2: bloodlines or any other kind of extraneous circumstances, but just
1:31:28
Speaker 2: looking for the most competent leadership and a capacity to
1:31:31
Speaker 2: exchange and replace people are much more flexible than those
1:31:35
Speaker 2: kinds of hierarchical states. Even in many ways you could
1:31:37
Speaker 2: argue in democratic societies, the corporations can still maneuver them
1:31:40
Speaker 2: because they're untied to particular loyalties. And it's just that
1:31:44
Speaker 2: brand awareness that they're trying to push. The British and
1:31:46
Speaker 2: Dutch were late to the game of imperialism and you
1:31:49
Speaker 2: wouldn't give them much a chance given the differentials, but
1:31:52
Speaker 2: they unleashed the power of the free market. As you say,
1:31:55
Speaker 2: the East India Company, the English and Dutch equivalents, the
1:31:58
Speaker 2: British Hudson's Bay Company, which is really what made Canada
1:32:01
Speaker 2: as we understand it today. Those corporations, driven by those motives,
1:32:06
Speaker 2: acting with almost plenipotentiary powers at vast distances, had the
1:32:09
Speaker 2: flexibility on the ground to take advantage of local circumstances
1:32:12
Speaker 2: to insert themselves into diplomatic arrangements, which had persisted for
1:32:15
Speaker 2: centuries with all the accumulated grievances. Here, we're the fresh newcomers.
1:32:19
Speaker 2: We have, obviously, skills at what we do. As you say,
1:32:22
Speaker 2: taking control of the tax revenue of Bengal effectively took
1:32:26
Speaker 2: control of the entire political movement. What can you do
1:32:28
Speaker 2: without taxation? Reorient that towards the shareholders, force the local
1:32:33
Speaker 2: people to stop producing these crops, even if it means
1:32:35
Speaker 2: millions starve to death, in order to produce opium, to
1:32:37
Speaker 2: take advantage of that, it was devastating in its impact
1:32:41
Speaker 2: in political structures that had no real environment where that
1:32:43
Speaker 2: was part of their established traditions. And even the conquistadors,
1:32:47
Speaker 2: even the Vikings, if we go back far enough, these
1:32:51
Speaker 2: were business operations. The Vikings would be men who would
1:32:55
Speaker 2: assemble with what weapons they had, enough capital upfront to
1:32:59
Speaker 2: pay for boats, to go raiding, to make this profitable
1:33:02
Speaker 2: by looting churches and monasteries. That's what the conquistadors were.
1:33:06
Speaker 2: They were freebooters operating within a capitalist system. These were
1:33:11
Speaker 2: not desperadoes of the lowest of the low. Many of
1:33:13
Speaker 2: them had some education. A lot of them were Hidalgos,
1:33:17
Speaker 2: which is the lowest rung of the petty nobility in Castile,
1:33:19
Speaker 2: who inherited titles and attitudes, but not much assets beyond
1:33:23
Speaker 2: what they could put up as soldiers of fortunes. They
1:33:26
Speaker 2: call themselves companeros, which is colleagues or companions, not soldados.
1:33:29
Speaker 2: So this whole operation was, if you like, the most raw,
1:33:33
Speaker 2: unbridled capitalism at its finest, pooling assets to derive enormous
1:33:39
Speaker 2: profits from very risky ventures.
1:33:42
Speaker 1: Maybe to close us off, The thing I find very
1:33:44
Speaker 1: remarkable in this story is we've talked about how lopsided
1:33:47
Speaker 1: these battles have been, how quickly this conquest proceeded. In
1:33:50
Speaker 1: the grand scheme of things, the technological advantages that the
1:33:55
Speaker 1: conquistadors had over these empires are not that shockingly big, right?
1:34:00
Speaker 1: As you mentioned, guns at this time are not good
1:34:02
Speaker 1: enough to actually be that helpful during battle. So it's
1:34:04
Speaker 1: basically horses and it's steel weapons. In fact, I think,
1:34:07
Speaker 1: I don't know if we've talked about this, but towards
1:34:10
Speaker 1: the ends of these conquests or the middles of these conquests,
1:34:12
Speaker 1: the metal is weighing them down and it's really hot
1:34:15
Speaker 1: and stuff. So they're even like receding to the cotton
1:34:18
Speaker 1: armor that the natives are using.
1:34:20
Speaker 3: So it's not even the armor.
1:34:20
Speaker 1: It's really just that they had better, like, you know,
1:34:24
Speaker 1: metal swords instead of obsidian blades and that they had horses.
1:34:31
Speaker 1: And that's enough to let a couple hundred men take
1:34:34
Speaker 1: over entire empires. You can draw analogies to what might
1:34:39
Speaker 1: happen in the future. We don't even have to go there.
1:34:42
Speaker 1: I just find it sort of remarkable how little it
1:34:46
Speaker 1: took for them to be so dominant.
1:34:48
Speaker 2: They could win battles. They could not have won the war, though,
1:34:51
Speaker 2: at the end without the support of those indigenous allies.
1:34:54
Speaker 2: So those overwhelming numbers. Yes, you're absolutely right. They would
1:34:57
Speaker 2: always keep their helmets to protect the head, but many
1:34:58
Speaker 2: of them were ditching the metal armor in favor of
1:35:00
Speaker 2: the local stuff because that was good enough as protection
1:35:02
Speaker 2: against local weapons. They would not have done that and
1:35:05
Speaker 2: carried it back to Europe. That would have made them
1:35:06
Speaker 2: too vulnerable. But here, you adapt to the circumstances. You
1:35:09
Speaker 2: have more freedom of mobility. It's less exhausting wearing cotton
1:35:11
Speaker 2: than it is to wear metal. So they would make
1:35:14
Speaker 2: that adaptation. They would even sometimes, for very prized allies, again,
1:35:19
Speaker 2: as a way of integrating them into the Spanish coalition,
1:35:22
Speaker 2: is provide them like local chiefs and warlords with Spanish weapons,
1:35:26
Speaker 2: just to emphasize that you're so special to me. And
1:35:29
Speaker 2: this was effective in binding them together. And they were very,
1:35:33
Speaker 2: very clever in identifying the local sub-chiefs beneath the Aztec
1:35:39
Speaker 2: layer of authority who would be receptive to the idea
1:35:42
Speaker 2: of why are you taking orders from them when you
1:35:44
Speaker 2: get a better deal from us, right? They knew, for example,
1:35:48
Speaker 2: the Aztec Empire was called the Triple Alliance because it
1:35:50
Speaker 2: was set up in 1428 by the first Chiwi Latoani
1:35:54
Speaker 2: as a coalition between the three city-states, Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tacuba.
1:35:58
Speaker 2: In 1516, so.
1:36:00
Speaker 3: Like two years.
1:36:03
Speaker 2: Three years before Cortes arrived in Mesoamerica, the chief of
1:36:08
Speaker 2: King of Texcoco died and his two sons fought a
1:36:10
Speaker 2: civil war for who would succeed him. Moctezuma stepped in
1:36:14
Speaker 2: and gave the title to one of those brothers. So
1:36:17
Speaker 2: what does the other brother do when the Spanish show up?
1:36:20
Speaker 2: He immediately sides with them to get within his own family.
1:36:23
Speaker 2: His own family was on both sides of this war.
1:36:26
Speaker 2: This is his path to getting what he feels is
1:36:28
Speaker 2: his due, being the King of Texcoco. And in the
1:36:31
Speaker 2: broader sense, If I'm under the Spanish versus under the Aztecs,
1:36:35
Speaker 2: maybe these newcomers will give me a better deal. So
1:36:36
Speaker 2: there was that seductive quality at the elite level. Now,
1:36:40
Speaker 2: what they didn't understand was so many of them thinking
1:36:42
Speaker 2: they were using the Spanish to their advantage. They didn't
1:36:45
Speaker 2: appreciate the numbers in which the Spanish and later Europeans
1:36:48
Speaker 2: would arrive. Their closed worlds didn't allow them to think
1:36:51
Speaker 2: about people from such vast distances could come in such
1:36:53
Speaker 2: huge numbers. And in the end, as happened in, for example,
1:36:57
Speaker 2: Australia and New Zealand, that we'll become the minority in
1:36:59
Speaker 2: our own country. the demographic tide they didn't appreciate in
1:37:03
Speaker 2: the long term would work fundamentally against them.
1:37:06
Speaker 1: Yeah.
1:37:07
Speaker 2: Okay.
1:37:07
Speaker 1: So the analogy to AI, they're so obvious, it's not
1:37:09
Speaker 1: worth spelling out. But I think that's actually an excellent
1:37:11
Speaker 1: place to close. This is such a bizarre, shocking, and
1:37:16
Speaker 1: interesting part of human history. And I appreciate you coming
1:37:19
Speaker 1: on and telling us all about it.
1:37:20
Speaker 2: Real pleasure. Thank you for having me.