Some random thoughts about historical colonization conflicts
Aztec Empire
I read Aztec, by Gary Jennings, a retelling of (among other things) the encounter between Europeans and the Aztecs (note that they didn’t call themselves Aztecs, they generally called themselves the Mexica). Though the book is fiction, a lot of the dynamics it talks about were real (warning for potential readers that the book doesn’t *just* focus on those dynamics and has a lot of disturbing sex content). I was partly interested because of the potential elements of AI, though there are, of course, many important disanalogies.
Before the conquest, emperor Moctezuma II and his advisors faced a really hard problem. There were strange white soldiers with new animals and technology entering their lands. They did not know exactly who the Spaniards were, how many might follow, how their weapons worked, what political authority they represented, or how to weigh the new potential threat against existing enemies and tributary tensions in the empire.
The Aztec Empire was overthrown, its people disempowered or killed (many by disease), and much of its culture was lost. There’s a lot of debate about Moctezuma II’s strength as a leader. But what struck me most is that even with the benefit of hundreds of years of hindsight, it is super hard to say what the best response would have been.
Succeed in killing Cortés and his men and perhaps you buy time, but how valuable is that time, and will worse retribution follow (plus, how good do you feel about attacking mysterious strangers you encounter whose political and cultural significance you don’t yet understand?)? Resist longer even if you think you’ll lose, and perhaps you preserve dignity or independence for a moment, and perhaps in history, but maybe at catastrophic cost? Ally quickly and perhaps you preserve more lives, as the Tlaxcala (another group in the region that were historical enemies of the Mexica) may have done? The Tlaxcala earned meaningful wins from the alliance (e.g. somewhat better jobs after colonization, tribute exceptions, being allowed to keep their original names, the right to bear arms) relative to other groups; was that a zero-sum game among different indigenous groups, or could everyone have been a bit better off if they followed the strategy? Demonstrate your martial skills to the best of your ability with early skirmishes; then sue for peace and hope that you’ve increased their willingness to pay? But maybe more violent reprisal will follow.
The Aztec prospects for long-run resistance to European domination seem very slim, especially given pathogen vulnerability asymmetry, regardless of whether they can broker a peace treaty with Cortés. If they’d rebuffed the initial invasion and were very skilled, perhaps in the intervening time the Mexica would have gained a valuable understanding of Spanish and European culture and would have been able to enter trade relations with the Europeans as somewhat less junior partners (albeit still ravaged by smallpox and other diseases brought inadvertently by the Europeans). Or maybe not (again, seems really unclear). Also, they didn’t know this, but the original invasion was not initially sanctioned by King Carlos of Spain — Cortés acted unilaterally. As a result, perhaps if they had rebuffed Cortés, the next invading force would have had a pretty different character.
Perhaps people with a much deeper knowledge of this history have somewhat more sophisticated opinions, and I’m not saying that there’s no way to gain more clarity. It’s just pretty striking how little hindsight helps a layperson (or lay-LLM I asked).
Indigenous people of New Zealand and Australia
Reading about the Mexica made me curious about the British settlement of New Zealand and Australia, so I read a bit about the history there and talked to the AIs about it for a while (I read a lot less about this than about the Aztec Empire).
Both involved catastrophic violence, dispossession, and population collapse of the people living in Australia and New Zealand at the time. But my sense is that, while they were both extremely bad, the situation in Australia was noticeably worse. The Maori were able to remain a somewhat legally recognized and politically and culturally cohesive group and they retained more of their land and culture (though again, they still lost much of what they started with, including the vast majority of their land), most famously in the Treaty of Waitangi signed between the British Crown and many Maori chiefs, making the Maori British citizens with a British governor overseeing New Zealand, but preserving some land right for Maori. There were important discrepancies between the English and Maori versions of the Treaty; most notably, the wording of the English version involved a much more profound ceding of sovereignty, but it seems like it had some meaningful effect. In contrast, the British considered Australia terra nullius (nobody’s land), and indigenous lands and cultures had even less legal representation.
The Māori military was more formidable by the relevant time: they had rapidly adopted firearms through trade, fielded larger forces, and built sophisticated fortifications, probably partly as a result of being an agriculture civilization (but rich natural resources make you more of a target) with a denser population. They had clearer hierarchies and rulers who could be negotiated with, whereas most Australian Aborigines were in much smaller nomadic and (often) less hierarchical bands. Because of the above, they were more valuable as trading partners for the British. In several battles in the New Zealand Wars, a small number of Māori warriors held off a larger number of British soldiers, making a full-on fight visibly costly.
Also, New Zealand was settled by the British about 50 years later than they settled Australia. By then, the treatment of Australian Aboriginals was somewhat of a scandal that had embarrassed the British and that they didn’t want to replicate; slavery had ended in the British Empire and there was a wave of moral squeamishness about colonization represented by a religiously-inflected humanitarian movement.
Takeaways
These were three examples that I delved into briefly; it would be cool for actual historians and other people who know more about this to share their views. But I guess my sense is if you’re going to encounter a stronger power, it’s better for you if:
The delta in technological capabilities between you and them is as small as possible
You rapidly adapt to/take on as much of their technology as possible, reducing the delta quickly
You are as well coordinated as possible
If you have the capability to impose meaningful costs on your conquerors, you make those capabilities clear so that they’re incentivized to negotiate with you and there’s common knowledge of your leverage, at least if you can do so without violence that might provoke retribution (with violence, you risk retribution; reprisals in response to Aboriginal Tasmanian resistance seemed like it contributed to the ~ genocide they experienced). Similarly, if you’d be more valuable left intact as a trading partner, that’s helpful too.
Understanding your opponents is huge. Knowing the language, norms, systems of governance, different factions, etc. can make a big difference to your ability to intervene on behalf of your interests. Take prisoners, study artifacts, try to reproduce what you can. This seems like among the more robust interventions that are (somewhat) within your control.
Cultural / ideological factors. Your opponents self-identify as and genuinely are pacifistic and culturally pluralistic and don’t have a culture of expansionism and ruthlessness. Missionaries were less prone to violence but more motivated to stamp out other religions. Military forces might have been more prone to violent domination but less to eradicate other religious and cultural beliefs.
Outcomes were probably particularly debilitating when the following two bad factors aligned:
Early intense contact: they come to settle or conquer rather than to trade or visit (with few opportunities to gain information, trade, adopt new technology, etc)
Vulnerability to disease
These are mostly obvious in retrospect. But that said, probably my biggest takeaway is that not only can the weaker party in these situations be in an extremely tough situation (obvious) where most trajectories are very bad, but often it remains very unclear what strategy would serve them best.
Ally quickly and perhaps you preserve more lives, as the Tlaxcala (another group in the region that were historical enemies of the Mexica) may have done?
In hindsight, that seems like a pretty robust strategy to me? I understand that you mention possible zero-sum dynamics, but I don’t think this negates the relatively straightforward case for it.
The Spanish did not come in with genocidal intentions and were a pretty legalistic culture anyway. I also guess that they were not interested in total dominiation, they wanted trade and probably the recognition of Spain’s king as the official ruler.
I think this makes it seem more obvious than it was. I think that they wanted quite a lot of domination, for example, they wanted to plunder the Aztec empires’ storied hoard of gold, And then they wanted to take over and force people to mine and labor for them more than they wanted to trade with a functioning empire.. I also don’t think it was easy for the Aztecs to understand what the Spanish wanted, or how legalistic their culture was, especially given that, like I noted, Cortes was acting basically as a unilateral renegade.
Some random thoughts about historical colonization conflicts
Aztec Empire
I read Aztec, by Gary Jennings, a retelling of (among other things) the encounter between Europeans and the Aztecs (note that they didn’t call themselves Aztecs, they generally called themselves the Mexica). Though the book is fiction, a lot of the dynamics it talks about were real (warning for potential readers that the book doesn’t *just* focus on those dynamics and has a lot of disturbing sex content). I was partly interested because of the potential elements of AI, though there are, of course, many important disanalogies.
Before the conquest, emperor Moctezuma II and his advisors faced a really hard problem. There were strange white soldiers with new animals and technology entering their lands. They did not know exactly who the Spaniards were, how many might follow, how their weapons worked, what political authority they represented, or how to weigh the new potential threat against existing enemies and tributary tensions in the empire.
The Aztec Empire was overthrown, its people disempowered or killed (many by disease), and much of its culture was lost. There’s a lot of debate about Moctezuma II’s strength as a leader. But what struck me most is that even with the benefit of hundreds of years of hindsight, it is super hard to say what the best response would have been.
Succeed in killing Cortés and his men and perhaps you buy time, but how valuable is that time, and will worse retribution follow (plus, how good do you feel about attacking mysterious strangers you encounter whose political and cultural significance you don’t yet understand?)? Resist longer even if you think you’ll lose, and perhaps you preserve dignity or independence for a moment, and perhaps in history, but maybe at catastrophic cost? Ally quickly and perhaps you preserve more lives, as the Tlaxcala (another group in the region that were historical enemies of the Mexica) may have done? The Tlaxcala earned meaningful wins from the alliance (e.g. somewhat better jobs after colonization, tribute exceptions, being allowed to keep their original names, the right to bear arms) relative to other groups; was that a zero-sum game among different indigenous groups, or could everyone have been a bit better off if they followed the strategy? Demonstrate your martial skills to the best of your ability with early skirmishes; then sue for peace and hope that you’ve increased their willingness to pay? But maybe more violent reprisal will follow.
The Aztec prospects for long-run resistance to European domination seem very slim, especially given pathogen vulnerability asymmetry, regardless of whether they can broker a peace treaty with Cortés. If they’d rebuffed the initial invasion and were very skilled, perhaps in the intervening time the Mexica would have gained a valuable understanding of Spanish and European culture and would have been able to enter trade relations with the Europeans as somewhat less junior partners (albeit still ravaged by smallpox and other diseases brought inadvertently by the Europeans). Or maybe not (again, seems really unclear). Also, they didn’t know this, but the original invasion was not initially sanctioned by King Carlos of Spain — Cortés acted unilaterally. As a result, perhaps if they had rebuffed Cortés, the next invading force would have had a pretty different character.
Perhaps people with a much deeper knowledge of this history have somewhat more sophisticated opinions, and I’m not saying that there’s no way to gain more clarity. It’s just pretty striking how little hindsight helps a layperson (or lay-LLM I asked).
Indigenous people of New Zealand and Australia
Reading about the Mexica made me curious about the British settlement of New Zealand and Australia, so I read a bit about the history there and talked to the AIs about it for a while (I read a lot less about this than about the Aztec Empire).
Both involved catastrophic violence, dispossession, and population collapse of the people living in Australia and New Zealand at the time. But my sense is that, while they were both extremely bad, the situation in Australia was noticeably worse. The Maori were able to remain a somewhat legally recognized and politically and culturally cohesive group and they retained more of their land and culture (though again, they still lost much of what they started with, including the vast majority of their land), most famously in the Treaty of Waitangi signed between the British Crown and many Maori chiefs, making the Maori British citizens with a British governor overseeing New Zealand, but preserving some land right for Maori. There were important discrepancies between the English and Maori versions of the Treaty; most notably, the wording of the English version involved a much more profound ceding of sovereignty, but it seems like it had some meaningful effect. In contrast, the British considered Australia terra nullius (nobody’s land), and indigenous lands and cultures had even less legal representation.
The Māori military was more formidable by the relevant time: they had rapidly adopted firearms through trade, fielded larger forces, and built sophisticated fortifications, probably partly as a result of being an agriculture civilization (but rich natural resources make you more of a target) with a denser population. They had clearer hierarchies and rulers who could be negotiated with, whereas most Australian Aborigines were in much smaller nomadic and (often) less hierarchical bands. Because of the above, they were more valuable as trading partners for the British. In several battles in the New Zealand Wars, a small number of Māori warriors held off a larger number of British soldiers, making a full-on fight visibly costly.
Also, New Zealand was settled by the British about 50 years later than they settled Australia. By then, the treatment of Australian Aboriginals was somewhat of a scandal that had embarrassed the British and that they didn’t want to replicate; slavery had ended in the British Empire and there was a wave of moral squeamishness about colonization represented by a religiously-inflected humanitarian movement.
Takeaways
These were three examples that I delved into briefly; it would be cool for actual historians and other people who know more about this to share their views. But I guess my sense is if you’re going to encounter a stronger power, it’s better for you if:
The delta in technological capabilities between you and them is as small as possible
You rapidly adapt to/take on as much of their technology as possible, reducing the delta quickly
You are as well coordinated as possible
If you have the capability to impose meaningful costs on your conquerors, you make those capabilities clear so that they’re incentivized to negotiate with you and there’s common knowledge of your leverage, at least if you can do so without violence that might provoke retribution (with violence, you risk retribution; reprisals in response to Aboriginal Tasmanian resistance seemed like it contributed to the ~ genocide they experienced). Similarly, if you’d be more valuable left intact as a trading partner, that’s helpful too.
Understanding your opponents is huge. Knowing the language, norms, systems of governance, different factions, etc. can make a big difference to your ability to intervene on behalf of your interests. Take prisoners, study artifacts, try to reproduce what you can. This seems like among the more robust interventions that are (somewhat) within your control.
Cultural / ideological factors. Your opponents self-identify as and genuinely are pacifistic and culturally pluralistic and don’t have a culture of expansionism and ruthlessness. Missionaries were less prone to violence but more motivated to stamp out other religions. Military forces might have been more prone to violent domination but less to eradicate other religious and cultural beliefs.
Outcomes were probably particularly debilitating when the following two bad factors aligned:
Early intense contact: they come to settle or conquer rather than to trade or visit (with few opportunities to gain information, trade, adopt new technology, etc)
Vulnerability to disease
These are mostly obvious in retrospect. But that said, probably my biggest takeaway is that not only can the weaker party in these situations be in an extremely tough situation (obvious) where most trajectories are very bad, but often it remains very unclear what strategy would serve them best.
In hindsight, that seems like a pretty robust strategy to me? I understand that you mention possible zero-sum dynamics, but I don’t think this negates the relatively straightforward case for it.
The Spanish did not come in with genocidal intentions and were a pretty legalistic culture anyway. I also guess that they were not interested in total dominiation, they wanted trade and probably the recognition of Spain’s king as the official ruler.
I think this makes it seem more obvious than it was. I think that they wanted quite a lot of domination, for example, they wanted to plunder the Aztec empires’ storied hoard of gold, And then they wanted to take over and force people to mine and labor for them more than they wanted to trade with a functioning empire.. I also don’t think it was easy for the Aztecs to understand what the Spanish wanted, or how legalistic their culture was, especially given that, like I noted, Cortes was acting basically as a unilateral renegade.