Economic relationships in Pre-Columbian Mexico show that Aztec rulers were ruthless exploiters

Phys dot org ^ | September 13, 2023 | Bocconi University

[SunkenCiv]

Spanish conquerors did not themselves bring inequality to the Aztec lands they invaded, they merely built on the socio-economic structure that was already in place, adapting it as it suited their plans. This is the subject of an article by Guido Alfani of Bocconi's Department of Social and Political Sciences and Alfonso Carballo of NEOMA Business School in France. Their article, "Income and inequality in the Aztec Empire on the eve of the Spanish conquest," has just been published in Nature Human Behaviour...

The primary social distinctions in the Aztec Empire were between the nobility, the commoners and the slaves. The elite dominated the commoners by holding exclusive control over resources. The taxes established for each province were variable, depending on how the province had become part of the Aztec Empire. Those provinces that had militarily resisted the Aztec Empire were subjected to higher imperial tax rates once conquered...

As the income share of the poorest 50% was just 23.3%, this makes for a very skewed income distribution, actually even worse than today. The imperial ruling class, the provincial ruling class and the non-ruling nobles amounted to less than 2% of the total population but concentrated 46.6% of the total income.

This is extremely important because it helps explain how a little Spanish army of just a few hundred men could quickly overrun the Aztec Empire. The highly centralized tax collection was so resented by vast regions of the Empire that their populations, whose living standards were only slightly above subsistence, actually took arms on the Spaniards' side.

[SunkenCiv]

• The Aztecs: The Worst Neighbors in the World | Lori Erickson | Patheos | April 4, 2017
• Slavery in the Aztec Empire | Wikipedia
• Sidebar: St Helena's 'liberated' Africans came from West Central Africa between northern Angola and Gabon | Science Daily | Cell Press | September 7, 2023

[SunkenCiv]

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[joma89]

This is a 2nd amendment ping story to me.

[Adder]

But...but...Native Americans are cumbayah pure and beyond reproach!

Huh...

They were human shlts like the rest of us...worse, probably because of that beating hearts sacrifice thing they had going on...

[zeestephen]

Re: "Aztec archives were extensively destroyed by Spanish troops and little usable information survives."

I was under the impression that pre-Columbian Mexico did not have a written language or anything that resembled paper.

What did the Aztec archives look like before they were allegedly destroyed by the Spanish?

Were the archives engraved and/or painted on stone?

What percentage of the Aztec people could actually read or write the archives?

I will guess less than 1% of Aztecs.

And, of course, several thousand 21st Century, Woke, university professors and graduate students.

[SunkenCiv]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_codex

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Aztec/Establishment-of-the-Aztec-empire

[redfreedom]

And some business school in France writing about human behavior came up with this hundreds of years after the fact?

Anything scientists or academia does in this era is automatically made unbelievable simply because lefism, wokism, or what ever you want to call these lazy liars are making up garbage.

[nwrep]

Thank God for the conquistadors.

[Vaduz]

I’ll be who knew the Aztec were the early democrats.

[Burma Jones]

When you are in a war with Inquisition-Era Spain, and they are the aggressors, and reasonable people can view you as the bad guys, you have serious problems in your civilization.

[Honest Nigerian]

It is going to be difficult to get reparations for the slave descendants of the Aztec slaves.
But don’t despair. Things like this are never easy. /s

[zeestephen]

Thanks for the two Aztec links, Civ.

I have always felt that the alleged sophistication of pre-Columbian society, and the alleged post-Columbian death toll from European diseases, have been greatly exaggerated, for the purpose of political correctness.

It is very hard to believe that a functional city of 140,000 people, mentioned in the link, could exist in 1500, without wheeled carts and a written language.

I am also very skeptical that 80%-95% of indigenous Americans died from European diseases. There would have to be many well preserved mass graves that contained dozens, or even hundreds, of un-injured bodies, from all age groups.

If such mass graves exist, I have not read about them.

[SunkenCiv]

Those are my Aztec Two Links. /rimshot

My old Latin Am history prof (turns out he died 40 years ago) spoke of the Aztecs’ “Flower Wars”, which they fought with other cities in order to extract tribute in the form of young people to sacrifice.

The population of the Americas was quite large in spots, but largely in the same spots were the population is large now. They built cities under the direction of despots (which is clearly a worldwide phenomenon ;^) and fought really monstrous wars with other cities (ditto). The rulers of losing cities were generally butchered in painful ways, along with their families.

IOW, they weren’t uniquely noble, they were doin’ what came naturally as part of the human race. It’s likely that the Aztecs would have been overthrown in their turn if the Spanish hadn’t arrived.

The estimates for disease deaths are pretty rough, and based on things like Bernal Diaz’ “the Conquest of New Spain” — when Cortez led his tattered band back to the Gulf, the towns they’d formerly passed through were deserted, and on the way in they’d been heavily populated. I doubt that anything that virulent has ever been around in a population that is also completely immune to its effects.

The dead prof noted that the precolumbian cultures and civs showed population crashes that were followed by slow rebuilding to new zeniths, at least four times prior to 1492. It’s not farfetched to suggest that they were all on the cusp of another crash, and that the earlier crashes were at least in part due to earlier periods of transoceanic contact. That keeps everyone happy. :^)

[Texan5]

I don’t buy the European disease-killed-almost-everyone theory, either-there is certainly evidence that this was not the 1st time those Native Americans had been exposed to people from Europe and/or other places in the world through trade, etc-so they would have at least some exposure/immunity to the diseases of foreigners.

Being Hispanic, and a lover of history-real history, where the truth is not pretty, no matter who your ancestors are-I’m always amused by those who thank God for the conquistadors who brought the Spanish Inquisition to meso/south America-or the Puritans who brought the Brit version of it to N America. How anyone can think that torturing another human for days in various bloody, agonizing ways until they died-because they were an enemy and/or a pagan-is any more noble than that same pagan/enemy cutting out an enemy’s heart or otherwise sacrificing them. Or that it was more noble for the Puritans to torture, drown or burn alive anyone-Native American or their own folks-anyone they decided was a “witch” than it was for the Natives to shoot an enemy full of arrows, impale him on a spear, etc-what an ignorant notion...

My Spanish ancestors were no better/more noble than my Native ones, in my opinion-they were just more sophisticated and intentionally cruel in their methods of murder...

[Texan5]

Nope, not me-I’ve read the history of both-and thank God those violent, bloody people from BOTH the Native and the Spanish civilizations are gone-they were my ancestors, but I would not want to meet any of them on a dark night...

[Mr. Jeeves]

La Raza knows this - they want that system back with themselves on top.

[Texan5]

Thanks-I do believe there is truth to that-I doubt that the Native Emperors/chiefs were much different from the Roman ones-or the European kings later on-they obviously had their Neros, Caligulas and Henry the VIIIs, just like everyone else’s-and theirs met the same fate for being tyrants, too eventually...

[Red Badger]

The elite dominated the commoners by holding exclusive control over resources.

Sounds familiar....................

[Texan5]

I guess the Native elites practiced an early form of communism...

[Ban Draoi Marbh Draoi]

As has been said before: nobody comes to the table with clean hands.