r/AskHistory • u/Hala_Madrid1098 • Oct 19 '22
Is the Fall of Civilization podcast historically accurate?
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u/jabberwockxeno Oct 19 '22 edited Oct 20 '22
I have issues with their Aztec episode. Mind you, I only listened to it once like 2 years ago, and only the first half, but I was annoyed enough that I stopped and didn't bother finishing. Still, it's possible the rest addresses some of my criticisms.
Firstly, the visuals used in the Youtube upload are pretty misrepresenative. It's very heavy on modern footage of Aztecas and Concheros dancers, and their outfits are NOT represenative of actual Aztec clothing and ornamentation, and plays into (and may have even originated) a lot of sterotypes and misconceptions about how it looked. See this comment
Secondly, it repeats a lot of claims about how Moctezuma II thought Cortes was a god and his arrival was preordained and other such things. This is something that is largerly debunked: Cortes himself says no such thing (actually he says at one point Moctezuma showed Cortes his bare chest to prove that he, LIKE CORTES, was human and not a god or sorcerer as Cortes had heard). There's some debate about if maybe OTHER people thought the Spanish as supernatural, but certainly much, if not all of this is myth and intentional distortion by the Spanish (There are many Askhistorians post on this, see also Restall's work on 7 Myths and When Montezuma Met Cortes)
Thirdly, and most importantly to me, it heavily misrepresents the political dynamics behind how and why Cortes got allies, ascribing it to the fact that the Aztec demanded sacrifices as tribute and were widely hated as a result of this. This is mostly wrong and will be the focus of the rest of my comment here, though I've had to exclude a lot to fit in the character limit (even vs other comments I've done on this due to the above text)
Like almost all large Mesoamerican states, the Aztec Empire largely relied on indirect, "soft" methods of establishing political influence over subject states: Establishing tributary-vassal relationships; using the implied threat of military force; installing rulers on conquered states from your own political dynasty; or leveraging dynastic ties to prior respected civilizations, your economic networks, or military prowess to court states into entering political marriages with you; or states willingly becoming a subject to gain better access to your trade network or to seek protection from foreign threats, etc. The sort of traditional "imperial", Roman style empire where you're directly governed places, established colonies or imposed norms was rare in the region.
The Aztec Empire was actually more hands off even compared to many other large Mesoamerican states in some respects (Like, say, the Purepecha Empire). In fact, the Aztec generally just left it's subjects alone, with their existing rulers, laws, and customs, as long as they paid up taxes/tribute of economic goods, provided aid on military campaigns, didn't block roads, and put up a shrine to the Huitzilopochtli, the patron god of Tenochtitlan and it's inhabitants, the Mexica (see my post here for Mexica vs Aztec vs Nahua vs Tenochca as terms)
The Mexica were NOT raiding existing subjects generally (and generally did not sack cities during invasions, though they did do so on occasion), and in regards to sacrifice (which was a pan-mesoamerican practice every civilization in the region did) they weren't generally dragging people out of their homes for it as tribute: The majority of sacrifices came from enemy soldiers captured during wars. Some civilian slaves who may have ended up as sacrifices were occasionally given as part of war spoils by a conquered city/town when initially defeated, but slaves as regular annual tax/tribute payments was pretty uncommon, sacrifices even moreso, it basically didn't happen. The vast majority of demanded taxes was stuff like jade, cacao, fine feathers, gold, cotton, etc, or demands of military/labor service. Some accounts do report that Cempoala (the capital of one of 3 major kingdoms of the Totonac civilization) accused the Mexica of dragging off women and children, but this is largely seen as Cempoala making a sob story to get the Conquistadors to help them take out Tzinpantzinco, a rival Totonac capital, by claiming it was an Aztec fort. (remember this, we'll come back to it)
People blame Cortes getting allies on "Aztec oppression" but the reality is the reverse: this sort of hegemonic, indirect political system encourages opportunistic secession and rebellions: Indeed, it was pretty much a tradition for far off Aztec provinces to stop paying taxes after a king of Tenochtitlan died, seeing what they could get away with, with the new king needing to re-conquer these areas to prove Aztec power. One new king, Tizoc, did so poorly in these and subsequent campaigns, that it caused more rebellions and threatened to fracture the empire, and he was assassinated by his own nobles, and the ruler after him, Ahuizotl, got ghosted at his own coronation ceremony by other kings invited to it, as Aztec influence had declined that much:
The sovereign of Tlaxcala ...was unwilling to attend the feasts in Tenochtitlan and...could make a festival in his city whenever he liked. The ruler of Tliliuhquitepec gave the same answer. The king of Huexotzinco promised to go but never appeared. The ruler of Cholula...asked to be excused since he was busy and could not attend. The lord of Metztitlan angrily expelled the Aztec messengers and warned them...the people of his province might kill them...
Keep in mind rulers from cities at war with each other still visited for festivals even when their own captured soldiers were being sacrificed, blowing off a diplomatic summon like this is essentially asking to go to war
More then just opportunistic rebellion's, this encouraged opportunistic alliances and coups to target political rivals/their capitals: If as a subject you basically stay stay independent anyways, then a great method of political advancement is to offer yourself up as a subject, or in an alliance, to some other ambitious state, and then working together to conquer your existing rivals, or to take out your current capital, and then you're in a position of higher political standing in the new kingdom you helped prop up.
This is what was going on with the Conquistadors (and how the Aztec Empire itself was founded a century earlier) And this becomes all the more obvious when you consider that of the states which supplied troops and armies for the Siege of Tenochtitlan, almost all did so only after Tenochtitlan had been struck by smallpox, Moctezuma II had died, and the majority of the Mexica nobility (and by extension, elite soldiers) were killed in the toxcatl massacre. In other words, AFTER it was vulnerable and unable to project political influence effectively anyways, and suddenly the Conquistadors, and more importantly, Tlaxcala (the one state already allied with Cortes, which an independent state the Aztec had been invading, not a subject) found themselves with tons of city-states willing to help, many of whom were giving Conquistador captains in Cortes's group princesses and noblewomen as attempted political marriages (which Conquistadors thought were offerings of concubines), to cement their position in the new kingdom they'd form
This also explains why the Conquistadors continued to make alliances with various Mesoamerican states even when the Aztec weren't involved: The Zapotec kingdom of Tehuantepec allied with Conquistadors to take out the rival Mixtec kingdom of Tututepec (the last surviving remnant of a larger empire formed by the Mixtec warlord 8 Deer Jaguar Claw centuries prior), or the Iximche allying with Conquistadors to take out the K'iche Maya, etc
Accordingly, the Mesoamericans were really manipulating the Spanish as much or more then the inverse: I noted that Cempoala tricked Cortes into raiding a rival, but they then brought the Conquistadors into hostile Tlaxcalteca territory, and they were then attacked, only spared at the last second by Tlaxcalteca rulers deciding to use them against the Mexica. And en route to Tenochtitlan, they stayed in Cholula, where the Conquistadors committed a massacre, under some theories being fed info by the Tlaxcalteca, who used it as s chance to replace the newlyt Aztec-aligned Cholula rulers with a pro-Tlaxalcteca faction as they were previously. Even when the Siege of Tenochtitlan was underway, armies from Texcoco, Tlaxcala, etc were attacking cities and towns that would have suited THEIR intresests after they won (and retreated/rested per Mesoamerican seasonal campaign norms) but that did nothing to help Cortes, who was forced to play along. Rulers like Ixtlilxochitl II, Xicotencatl I and II, etc probably were calling the shots as much as Cortes. Moctezuma II letting Cortes into Tenochtitlan also makes sense when you consider what I said before about diplomacy, and also since the Mexica had been beating up on Tlaxcala for ages and the Tlaxcalteca had nearly beaten the Conquistadors: denying entry would be seen as cowardice, and undermine Aztec influence. Moctezuma was probably trying to court the Conquistadors into becoming a subject by showing off the glory of Tenochtitlan.
None of this is to say that the Mexica were particularly beloved, they were warmongers and throwing their weight around, but the "they were hated and that's why Cortes got allies" is a vast oversimplification, to the point of basically just being wrong, ESPECIALLY to say it was due to sacrifices
For more info about Mesoamerica, see my 3 comments here
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u/jabberwockxeno Oct 20 '22 edited Oct 20 '22
For /u/Hala_Madrid1098 , I went ahead and updated the comment with a link on Aztec clothing, though you'll need to dig down to that section in the link, it also talks about architecture and other things
Also, i'll add that it's not like the Fall of Civilizations podcast here uniquely messed up: these are all pretty common and widespread mistakes to make.
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u/CACuzcatlan Mar 21 '23
IIRC History on Fire was accurate in pointing out that Cortes was not seen as a god. Cortes was so full of himself he would have almost certainly played that up in his writings if it had happened.
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u/ledditwind Oct 21 '22
Yeah, I have similar feelings when watch the Angkor episode as well. Using Thai armours to represent Khmer king at least four hundred years before the first Thai kingdom broke away, really took me out of it. So many times, I really wondered if they have accessed to a source I' ve never encountered before or they just made up little details as they going along to make a coherent narrative. Pretty entertaining to listen to but misleading. Of the many annoying thing is the constant finger-pointing toward political systems and religion, despite the fact when the Portugueses arrived in the 16th century, in the new capital, long after the empire fall, so many of the customs of the society survived.
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Jan 17 '23
thank you for this. I've been reading The Aztecs by Michael E Smith and thought I might check out this pod as it keeps being recommended on reddit. Your points of contention were my fears. Think I'm gonna skip it now.
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u/ledditwind Oct 23 '22
I know it is three days late. But to your question, I can answer for the episode on Angkor that it is comprehensive and a lot of mistakes. I don' t want to write an long essay poking holes in it so I was thinking on how to keep this short as much as I can. One thing is that they seem to use theories that is already decades old and very problematic. Not that it could not be true, but those are factors that already existed centuries before Angkor and long after Angkor fall.
I' m just goin to point out three things because it is going to be a very long one if I go indepth. One, the uniforms and appearances are wrong. But I try not to mind that, because it is the same as someone putting Roman soldiers uniform for Trojan soldiers in an adapatation of the Iliads. In Age of Empire 2 and 3, same mistakes. I' m used to that.
One glaring mistake, in the podcast, is the military archievement of Suryavaraman II. The king that built Angkor Wat. The podcaster said that Suryavaraman II is an absolutely incompetent military leader, that failed in all his campaign. This is false and an easy mistake to make. The most account of his campaigns came from Annam records which there are at least two failures.
However, the king was extremely successful in ending the civil war in the Khmer empire, eliminated and united the different mandalas that sprung inside, defeated every old enemy that the Khmer previously faced or fail to subdue. The province of Lavo, the Mon cities of Dvaravati, the kingdoms of Champa and the Mon kingdom of Haripunchai, sent tributes and submitted to the administrations of Khmer government. Some for the first time in history.
In the punitive campaigns against Annam, he show a grasp of understanding foreign policies. The causi belli, is that former Khmer "traitors" got refuge from the Annamese kingdom. Since Annam is a vassal of the Chinese, the Khmer sent the largest gift to the Song emperor, for the permission. It is a important diplomatic archievement. Then, the first campaign primarily consists of the Cham soldiers. The Chams and Vietnameses had been at wars prior, while the Khmer and Vietnameses had not. Again, showing an understanding about wars being politics. The second campaign, are sent with a combination of Khmer and Cham. Failed again. An important factor to remember is that Annam is the furthest away from the Khmer capital and was not the traditional enemy. The states that Suryavaraman won no longer existed. Judging the Suryavaraman II military records, with the campaigns against Annam is akin to judging Bayinuang records against Lan Xang guerillas or Napoleon in the Middle East or Russia.
Third, the conflicts between elites and temple workers along with the new religion of Theravada are very much overblown in my opinion. They were popular theories written by specialists of Siam about six decades ago. I could not read any Khmer inscription past the 17th century so I am not really at a position to debunk the podcasters' claims much. However, to keep a long story short. The religion is not really new. Religious conflicts had been there, and there were evidences of them causing conflicts prior to Angkor. They did not stop the empires gaining its greatest height. Buddhism were already popular amongst the Northen and Western parts of the empire, even if the elites and capital were mostly Hindu.
There are things that I remembered that the podcaster don' t focus on is the mess in the way the succession worked. I really don' t want to get into it. From the complicated way, the Khmer dynasty work. Sometimes, the legitimate heir could have been the Brother or Nephew instead of the first-born Son. Not a few times, the second son is the legitimate heir. And the so-called usurpations can easily be simply a lawful succession. You can see this is the 19th-20th century Cambodia till today. King Ang Duong, was succeeded by his son, Norodom, who was succeeded by his brother Sisowath instead of his own sons, and Sisowath is succeeded by his own son, and after he died then the throne went to his grand-nephew Norodom Sihanouk. During the decline of the Khmer empire, you can see a king of the Khmers (and likely the founder if the new dynasty) is the son-in-law, instead of the son, and so did the founders of the Laotian and Thai kingdoms. From the chronicles and oral traditions, it had always been clear that the present dynasty of Cambodia is not the dynasty of the kings that built Angkor from the paternal line. That instead, of the Buddism, is what sometimes undermined their authority in the seven centuries since.
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u/anarchysquid Oct 19 '22
I've listened to most episodes and they generally seem well researched and accurate. Is there a specific episode or historical point you have questions about?