How did the conquistadors conquer all of South America with only a few hundred men?

They were outnumbered thousands to one and yet they ruled over a continent with millions of people?

How is that possible?

Other urls found in this thread:

dx.doi.org/10.1101/008011.
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

They had 200,000 Tlaxcala allies, for starters.

They allied with the lowly natives and took over the big empires that were oppressing them. They then took the land of the big empires and assimilated with the local people, creating societies familiar enough to the natives yet easy for Spain to control and extract resources from. The Tlaxcalans helped Cortez and remained fairly autonomous well into the 19th century and Pizzaro played both sides in a civil war for the Inca Empire. In both cases disease decimated the natives; greatly reducing the number of fighting men while simultaneously throwing the native's economy and society into chaos.

In the case of the Aztecs, they found willing allies among the Aztec subject peoples, who really didn't like the whole human sacrifice thing.

Aztecs were assholes towards virtually all their neighbors. Cortez had no problem finding allies. Also having guns, metal weapons and armour as well as cavalry helps quite a bit.

The idiotic natives actually believed "my enemies enemy"...

The Conquistadors WAY outnumbered the Aztecs. They had thousands of native and billions of microbial allies.

This and .
Really European and African diseases not only kill massive amount of natives but also disrupt chain of command and shatter society.

Diseases, native allies and being around 5000 years ahead in military technology helped surely.

guns, germs, and steel

and allies

They had tens of thousands of native allies everyone conveniently forgot about. Also disease

Disease

Because the whole thing was a powderkeg because they were brutal assholes.

Native allies, as everyone has mentioned, but let's not forget that their "rule" wasn't very strict, and didn't have much reach. The northern region of New Spain was effectively outside of Spanish control. In much of the empire, if the locals didn't like the royal governor, they kicked his ass out. Spain didn't have nearly the army necessary to control all they claimed to possess. They held a handful of important urban centers and some mines. That's about it.

Lot of allies. Lot of the natives being pants on the head retarded. Lot of superior technology. Lot of luck with disease/

Yeah. Its more like they got rid of the native empire rule throughout the americas, replacing it with very loose control. Most of their actual control came when they pumped in a ton of europeans into the americas to settle and when the natives decided to follow european culture to fit in and receive better benefits

there was sexual attraction, both races were sexy as fuck

>natives decided

p r o b l e m a t i c

On that note, why the hate for La Malinche? People that call her a traitor are literally butthurt that a slave was unloyal.

They had far superior weapons and also horses.

apparently she liked to ride a horse in spanish clothes and treat people like shit, that become a norm in mexican mestizo culture

>ally with tribe
>hey bros, we'll help you fuck up all the rival tribes
>they do that
>Europeans take over land and fuck the natives they originally allied with
>rinse and repeat

How do you think the brits got so far in Africa? They played local tribes off each other

She's also considered the mother of the mestizo people.

Native allies, like the Tlaxcallans.

local allies but with the inca it was civil war, disease and local allies
funnily enough spanish chronists were so far into their colonialism that they pushed the 200 spanish beat a whole empire by themselves narrative, at least in Peru

They never conquered even the half of the modern chilean territory.

They never conquered the Mapuche.

Spanish had more casualties in the depopulated southern cone than in Mexico and Peru
Mapuches, tehuelches and pampas in general were great warriors, only the machine gun defeated them

They obviously did. Argentina wasn't mixed before and now it is composed of Mixed Hispanic people that identify as White.

I remember reading about the conquest of a city and it said that Pedro de Alvarado with only 80 men, and 15000 native allies took it.

> Argentina wasn´t mixed
Buenos Aires was literally founded by christianized guarani indians.

They were defeated by the chilean and argentinian governments, not the spaniards.

Lets put it this way imagine its europe in the 1500s and a people they've never seen was using ww1 era technology and brought diseases to which europeans had no immunity too plus they allied with rival states to aid them in the conquest. This is basically how it was done in the americas.

Actually thats Zazil Ha, Gonzalo Guerreros wife.

Salmonella worked wonders.

there was an apocalipsis going on

You want the real answer or the libtard answer?

The libtard answer is disease
The real answer is that those subhumans had a lower IQ and it's been confirmed by recent studies on the alleles for intelligence

>muh IQ

Late medieval/early modern tech level versus chalcolithic/early bronze tech level.

Fuck off /pol/

"and it's been confirmed by recent studies on the alleles for intelligence"

>hurr, lets try and guess and perscribe iq to people in the far past based on their records which don't place them as much different than medieval europeans

>200,000 Tlaxcala allies
This is a made up number from revisionists.

because whites are better at swordfighting than mud people

Even if you revise that down to 80,000 that's still a huge amount of help, especially if you're willing to share things like steel weapons and armor, horses, etc. Obviously you wouldn't have enough for ALL of them, but maybe their commanding officers.

The BMW should use her as a mascot in Mexico.

The Spaniards didn't have the logistic to give that many weapons to their allies,unless their allies were just 2000-5000 strong.This is not civ

If Amerindians are low-IQ then so should grorious nippon and their big neighbors with the second biggest and most important empire in history.

Regardless, a huge ass army with a good amount of armor and some shitty 15th century guns is going to be a force to be reckoned with.

Not really considering they're genetically very distant from them

Do you have a single fact to back that up?

He is wrong on principle but you are wrong too on relating the japanese with the amerindians.

It's a broad generalization to answer to a shitpost. But even if they're not the same ethnicity they are both part of the mongoloid group. Unless there's something I don't know about japanese history.

Yes, pic related or any other PCA

How'd they make allies without being able to communicate? Surely it would've take years for them to translate with each other properly

>both part of the mongoloid group

Again, common mistake done by retards who still believe in the same classifications done by pseudo scientists 200 years ago and are not aware of what contemporaey studies concluded

Mongoloid is a skull type and an enormous generalisation. i discourage using it unless it's about anatomy

Was there not a more complicated way to present simple information?

>There is general agreement among anthropologists that the source populations for the migration into the Americas originated from an area somewhere east of the Yenisei River.[17] The common occurrence of the mtDNA Haplogroups A, B, C, and D among eastern Asian and Amerindian populations has long been recognized, along with the presence of Haplogroup X.[18] As a whole, the greatest frequency of the four Amerindian associated haplogroups occurs in the Altai-Baikal region of southern Siberia.[19] Some subclades of C and D closer to the Amerindian subclades occur among Mongolian, Amur, Japanese, Korean, and Ainu populations.[18][20]

As he said they could've just given them to their commanding officers, which out of an army of 80,000 would've probably been around 2-5k depending on how high the rank we're talking about.

Manpower is a hell of a weapon. They likely would've begun producing their own weapons and armor with the help of the Spanish over time. All that Gold would've made it a lot easier to supply those allies as well.

There weren't any real wars except maybe for a few cannibal tribes giving trouble for a good 50-60 years. By the time the conflicts started there were already plenty of bilingual people able to translate.

EVERY SINGLE EUROPEAN CONQUEST IN THE AMERICANS was thanks to one common thread: indigenous allies. Whether we are talking about the Spanish in Mexico/South America, the Portugese in Brazil, The French in Quebec, the English in North America, The Russians in Alaska or Americans in the west, ... ALL OF THEM had guidance and assistance in the form of native allies who were enemies of whatever other culture that was being defeated.

What English allies? The north american tribes hated the europeans.

so how did they know to divide and conquer?

when the spanish arrived it is not like they spoke the same language. have history books described how they brokered a truce with these allies?

"Achoo" - Spanish Conquistador under Hernán Cortés, 1519
This phrase led to the downfall of the native peoples of South America

They didn't, stop assuming native american is a catch-all term for people who all liked each other and tough the same things. Native tribes had their own power struggles, and while some were negatively affected by the Europeans, others greatly benefited from their arrival.

This. Tlaxcala is barely a city even nowadays

What is the Seven Years War?
I'll take inbred royalty for 400 Alex.

Admitelly I don't know much about them, but i'm fairly sure all 13 English colonies were already big and prosperous by then.

>when they pumped in a ton of europeans into the americas to settle

When did this happen? Spanish colonies were relatively unsettled.

Just like Rome conquered most of her holdings. Wait for a place to be fucked up and intervene, then take control.

But they didn't fuck them, tlaxcalans greatly benefited from their decision to support Spain.

According to wikimemedia about 750.000 Spaniards came to America during the entire colonization period. Give or take 20% between people who only came for crop season and people who didn't liked it and went back.

Oh, and that number also includes french and Italians under Spanish rule.

They didn´t fear the Aztec warrior.

>Not really considering they're genetically very distant from them
The conquest took less than 3 years.Again this is not civ.The Spanish won some key battles mostly on their own like in Otumba and the rest of the natives just joined the bandwagon

>Spanish colonies were relatively unsettled
Mexico alone had a bigger european population than the 13 colonies.What are you even talking about?

I think you got your responses mixed up lad.

holy fuck. 500 spanish beat 100,000 to 200,000 aztec warriors?

You do know Tlaxcala refers to a confederacy not a city right?
They did instruct some however to replace their weapons with metal before the final siege of Tenochtitlan took place.

I believed that the reason that the USA and Canada are mainly white while most of latin anerica isn't was that Spain didn't have enough people to settle her colonies unlike Britain?

Firearms, Flus, and Folded Alloys

>when the spanish arrived it is not like they spoke the same language

Except Cortés had interpreters with him and one of them was even mentioned in this thread.

Populations PC1 IQ Predicted IQ Z_RES Top4Height
Bantu -2.415 67 67.42 -0.068 2.46
San -2.069 71.15 2.42
Biaka -1.634 75.86 1.83
Mbuti -1.848 73.55 2.02
Yoruba -2.213 71 69.60 0.226 2.01
Mandenka -1.896 62 73.03 -1.793 2.05
Mozabite -0.557 84 87.49 -0.568 0.45
Bedouin -0.386 89.34 0.83
Druze 0.282 83 96.58 -2.209 0.08
Palestinian 0.153 95.19 0.22
Adygei 0.437 98.26 0.27
Basque -0.199 97 91.36 0.850 0.63
French 0.152 100 95.17 0.784 0.55
CN Italians 0.370 101 97.53 0.563 0.66
Orcadian 0.881 100 103.05 -0.497 0.38
Russian -0.345 97 89.79 1.090 0.14
Sardinian -0.513 94 87.97 0.978 0.34
peer-reviewed) is the author/funder. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
bioRxiv preprint first posted online Aug. 14, 2014; doi: dx.doi.org/10.1101/008011. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not
Burusho 0.302 96.79 -0.02
Kalash 0.614 100.16 -0.25
Pashtun -0.239 90.94 -0.01
Mongolian 1.194 106.44 0.14
Balochi 0.244 96.17 -0.15
Brahui -0.027 93.23 -0.6
Hazara 0.867 102.90 -0.17
Sindhi -0.317 84 90.09 -0.990 -0.75
Dai 0.546 99.43 -0.99
Daur 1.589 110.71 -0.89
Han 0.947 105 103.76 0.200 -1.05
Hezhe 1.377 108.41 -0.88
Japanese 0.725 105 101.37 0.590 -1.18
Koreans 1.135 106 105.80 0.031 -1.17
Lahu 0.568 99.67 -0.94
Miao 0.634 100.38 -0.99
Naxi 0.210 95.80 -0.4
Oroqen 0.717 101.28 -0.68
She 0.416 98.03 -1.3
Tu 0.726 101.37 -1.03
Tujia 1.299 107.57 -0.98
Uyghur 0.805 102.23 -0.74
Xibe 0.896 103.21 -0.97
Yi 0.977 104.09 -0.92
Cambodians,
Khmer
0.129 94 94.93 -0.151 -0.65
peer-reviewed) is the author/funder. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
bioRxiv preprint first posted online Aug. 14, 2014; doi: dx.doi.org/10.1101/008011. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not
Papuan New
Guinean
-1.399 83 78.40 0.665 -0.54
Melanesian,
Nasioi
-0.225 85 91.09 -0.990 -0.47
Yakut 0.606 100.08 -0.4
Pima, Mexico -0.284 90.45 -0.52
Maya, Yucatan -0.945 83.30 0.6

It was just not worth it

Over the time span Spain controlled Central and South America millions of Spaniards emigrated to todays Latin America. Overpopulation was a big problem in Spain, so an easy way of getting rid of excess landless and unemployed population was giving them free or cheap land in the New World.

>They were outnumbered thousands to one
They weren't. They led armies of natives against other natives.

Aachen is barely a city nowadays and it was the capital of Charlemagne.

Not an argument.

Its a thought that started with bad education. Of course a slave has no responsibility to be loyal towards its master. And she was basically raped by Cortes and passed down to other soldiers as well.

Please explain the natural or artificial circumstances that provoked selection for lower IQ.

Superior tactics and technology. The aztecs didn't have an effective answer for close-ordered formations and cavalry charges, or for steel weapons/armor and crossbows/arquebuses. Also, having a few thousand native allies to build causeways and carry your shit for you helps a lot.

Like shit even when euros were conquering places with the full weight of their armies and sophisticated logistics divide et impera was still their political modus operandi right up to Galula's theories of counter-insurgency.
It's almost always preferable to have other people do your killing for you.

I can't speak for any of the other south american conquests, but the conquistadors managed just fine without native allies, at least for cortez. The natives more frequently served in support roles than anything else, especially during the sack of tenochitlan.

They were highly mobile, highly motivated, and didn't have to worry about protecting their homes or families, unlike the natives who were on the defensive. Their steel swords were more effective than any native weaponry (guns and horses didn't matter much though) and didn't adhere to any local customs or taboos concerning proper conduct in war, giving them enough of a military edge that some native groups thought they could make valuable allies. So, they basically just wedged themselves into local conflicts in different areas, helped tip the balance in favour of their allies, and came out as the new elite while the old ones died of disease.

>Best comment ITT
>goes unnoticed
Veeky Forums is shit

Disease:
Killed the Sapa Inca, thus the sucesion war started.
90% of amerindians dead, making the control and organization over the conquered cities harder to communicate with. The food system and management of monthly projects, suspended and revolts happened.
After the sucesion war finished, Pizarro kidnapped the Inca who won the war, then killed him.
Most battles against the Inca were between natives. Cajamarca "battle" was actually a massacre against unarmed men.

The rests of warriors found on the zones were the battles were fought have native weapon-made injuries. There is no injury made by fire-arm or steel weapon on any rest of most battles.

The Spanish "conquest" of America is always exaggerated. 70% of what is today my country was never "conquered" by the Spaniards, they came here, allied themselves with a local Kingdom, fucked up their organization causing other Kingdoms to take land from them, and that was it. They either got fucked by the tribes who were smart enough to stay together and don't trust the Spaniards, or simply traded with those tribes "isolated" enough to not being "conquered".

Sometimes I felt the Spaniards fought more against the British and the French for the "control" of America than against the actual people living on said territories. Also, the Amerindians were not retard, many of them realized that opposing the Spaniards was near to impossible so it was better to play they cards and "join" their system.

You know that you're not a special snowflake and that you're describing every pre-industrial empire ever, right?

they kept on coming after independence in several waves

I never implied my opinion was somehow "special" nor I feel my post deserves such a defensive reply.

But Spain is empty and full of ghost towns.

750.000 people in 400 years. The majority of them in Mexico and Peru. You make your own conclusions about whether it was a lot or not.

It's a meme answer.

Wrong, that's not how British and french operated in America. Or how the Romans operated in any of their conquests, or even China or the Mongols for that matter. It is however how the British operated in India.

Yes but that's outside the scope of the Spanish colonization.

There were some like the Iroquois. Each colony had different relations with the Indians around them until the French and Indian war..

Whatever it was, it was enough to stop them for simply being run over by sheer numbers. They were their anvil.

No. Race mixing was considering ok by the Spanish mostly because the pope decided the natives were people.