But then, it wouldn’t be a proper AOE Forums thread if it remained on topic, would it?
3 Likes
To be fair you need some level of technical expertise to build that. Most “mevieval” devices were actually from later centuries, some like the famous Iron Maiden were a victorian fabrication.
I don’t know what type of torture the Aztecs had, but when you look at what the Assyrians and Chinese could do, that was nasty…
Them too sure but nobody is calling them primitive or savage monsters
Didn’t follow the full conversation, who were called “savage monsters” ?
For China and Assyria they were for a long time on the cutting edge of development so it’s hard to see them as barbarians, for the same reason I surely wouldn’t quality the Aztecs as such, sure they were behind Europe but definitely one of the most advanced peoples in the Americas at the time.
It is possible for an advanced culture to also be savage. I would classify the Aztec and Mayan societies as such, since while they had astonishingly advanced technology by non-Old World standards, they also practiced human sacrifice and other barbaric practices. If they hadn’t been so ruthlessly evil, the Spanish probably would’ve been okay with keeping their culture intact and allowing Christianity to coexist peacefully with it. But they were rightfully disgusted by what they saw and put an end to it. They had no intention of carrying out mass murder, but things got out of hand and there ended up being a massacre. That’s what La Noche Triste basically was.
I firmly believe that the Spanish fully intended to just convert and not wipe out the natives, but disease did 90% of the work, and the other 10% was easy to subjugate. I think Mexico would look very different today if Aztec culture were still intact.
2 Likes
Indeed the level of understanding about diseases at the time was such (the best “treatments” against the plague were flagellation to ask God for forgiveness, and sending some Jews at the stake… we since then found methods that actually work) that an accidental spread is most likely. No one could predict the Natives had little to no immunity to disease due to not having farm animals.
It’s also strange that people who demonise conquistadores that way, don’t seem to point the finger at the Mongols who did use the plague as a weapon, launching dead bodies with catapults. Which is believed to have spread the Black Death.
2 Likes
Another thing that was vital for Cortez’s success was finding some Native allies. At the peak of the conquest of Mexico they only had a small core of Spanish troops, the mass being local armies that were glad to find someone willing to overthrow the Aztecs.
I know it’s shocking for most, but waging war to get captives for human sacrifices (and the Aztecs needed a lot) is not the type of foreign policy you want if aim at good relations with your neighbours.
Do you think the fanatical Portuguese or Spaniards, fresh off the Reconquista and their staunch endorsement from the Papacy would be content to “co-exist” with local cultural/religious traditions willingly. Their record in the Americas, Asia (Goa, Malacca, Philippines, Japan, etc) and Africa proves the answer to this being no.
1 Like
Yes, in AoE 3 it says this:
The term “wokou” is a combination of the Chinese word “wo,” referring to Japanese, and “kou,” meaning bandit or invasion.
Beginning in the thirteenth century, no group of sailors was as feared or as mighty as the plundering wokou pirates, a clan of Japanese raiders and smugglers who terrified the Chinese and Korean coasts. The first attacks occurred in 1223, triggering immediate calls for the Kamakura shogunate of Japan to corral these scoundrels and prevent further attacks on the Korean coast. In 1227, as a show of strength, the shogun had ninety suspected wokou pirates decapitated before the visiting Korean envoy.
During the Mongol invasions of the mid-thirteenth century, wokou attacks fell in number, most likely due to a heightened military preparedness on the part of both the Japanese and Korean governments. But this did not last. In the late fourteenth century, as central authority in Japan weakened, the wokou took full advantage, even branching out to initiate attacks along the coast of China. They profited highly from a severe trade embargo forced on Japan by the Qin and then Ming Dynasties of China, reaping rewards as black markets flourished. The wokou experienced periods of rise and decline, even attacking China with a makeshift fleet in 1419, but they ultimately became obsolete.
At its peak, the wokou culture was enough to threaten even the most powerful Asian rulers, and to appeal to the most ordinary of citizenry. Many men left behind their lives to seek fortunes at sea. Chinese merchants, militiamen, smugglers, Korean pirates, Portuguese sailors, traders, and even missionaries joined up with the notorious wokou pirates.
Yes, you are right about human sacrifice, but not that they did not achieve complex societies… you have the Mississippians who were the largest civilization in North America and who were similar to the Aztecs, you have the Puebloans who lived in towns within the canyons of Nevada and New Mexico and that had architecture similar to the Malians… in Central America the Pureperechas who were enemies of the Aztecs and in South America the Chimu who were enemies of the Incas…
The Ryukyuan people (Okinawan: 琉球民族 (るーちゅーみんずく), romanized: Ruuchuu minzuku or どぅーちゅーみんずく, Duuchuu minzuku, Japanese: 琉球民族/りゅうきゅうみんぞく, romanized: Ryūkyū minzoku, also Okinawans,[9] Uchinaanchu, Lewchewan or Loochooan)[10] are a Ryukyuan-speaking East Asian ethnic group native to the Ryukyu Islands, which stretch between the islands of Kyushu and Taiwan.[11] Administratively, they live in either the Okinawa Prefecture or the Kagoshima Prefecture within Japan. They speak one of the Ryukyuan languages,[12] considered to be one of the two branches of the ######## language #####################################################es), the other being Japanese and its dialects.[11] Hachijō is sometimes considered by linguists to constitute a third branch.[13]
Ryukyuans are not a recognized minority group in Japan, as Japanese authorities consider them a subgroup of the Japanese people, akin to the Yamato people. Although officially unrecognized, Ryukyuans constitute the largest ethnolinguistic minority group in Japan, with more than 1.8 million living in the Okinawa Prefecture alone. Ryukyuans inhabit the Amami Islands of Kagoshima Prefecture as well, and have contributed to a considerable Ryukyuan diaspora. Over a million more ethnic Ryukyuans and their descendants are dispersed elsewhere in Japan and worldwide, most commonly in the United States, Brazil, and, to a lesser extent, in other territories where there is also a sizable Japanese diaspora, such as Argentina, Chile and Mexico. In the majority of countries, the Ryukyuan and Japanese diaspora are not differentiated, so there are no reliable statistics for the former one.
Ryukyuans have a distinct culture with some matriarchal elements, native religion and cuisine which had a fairly late (12th century) introduction of rice. The population lived on the islands in isolation for many centuries. In the 14th century, three separate Okinawan political polities merged into the Ryukyu Kingdom (1429–1879), which continued the maritime trade and tributary relations started in 1372 with Ming China.[11] In 1609, the Satsuma Domain (based in Kyushu) invaded the Ryukyu Kingdom. The Kingdom maintained a fictive independence in vassal status, in a dual subordinate status to both China and Japan, because Tokugawa Japan was prohibited to trade (directly) with China.
It says that they are a subgroup of the Japanese, which would be the Yamato people (there is a reason why Yamato is a civ in AoE 1)…
Yes, many Amerindian peoples were very civilized (Mayans, Missipians, Puebloans, Diaguitas and a long etc.)…
Yes, it’s not that Europe was wow the eighth wonder of the world and super civilized… there is an alternative history novel where Montezuma arrives in Europe in 1520 and sees that Europeans live by killing each other (as in flower wars) and burning to the people to appease their god (human sacrifices)…
That’s true… the same thing always happens…
I beg to differ. The ancient Sinitic people weren’t that advanced. They were pretty average or maybe even slightly below average by Eurasian standards.
I don’t want to ignite a polemic and deviate from the topic of this thread too much, but just to give an example the ancient Sinitic people struggled with geometry and consequently also with building large structures out of stone and bricks. Most of their structures were made out of wood or rammed earth. That’s why you rarely see ancient Sinitic structures still standing today because most of them got destroyed either by natural disasters or burned down by men.
I had a less ancient period of China in mind. Lingchi (“death by a thousand cuts”) was still used in a recent enough time that there are photos of that.
1 Like
Yep, they had some of the most severe and inhumane death penalties and punishments in the world.
Foot-binding, another very barbaric practice, also survived long enough to be seen in photos.
4 Likes
All that because an emperor liked women with small feet, starting the trend… also “convenient” this makes the wife utterly dependant on her husband by crippling her, so that she won’t have the possibility of leaving.
Some Chinese emperors make Caligula look like Marcus Aurelius. A Ming emperor took bathes in maiden period blood as he thought it will stop ageing or something like that.
1 Like
Mayans: None.
Mayans interacted with literally none of the other civs. Different place and time than the rest.
Their empire collapsed around 900 but the population kept existing, mayan languages still exist to this day.
So at least put the Aztecs and Spanish
3 Likes
Yes,at least Aztecs from the 14th century (1325), Incas through explorers at the beginning of the 16th century (1525) and finally Spanish until 1697…in Drake’s scenario of 1572 you can add British and French explorers and Maroons from West Africa (Malians)…
Based on what??
From the start the Spanish practices of colonization were overwhelmingly focused on supression of native cultures and excessive violence to maximize labour output.
Just look at the story of Enriquillo, a Taino leader from before the Spanish conqyered Mexico which was outraged by the treatmemt he got and wanted to force the Spanish to treat his peope better. The people from the Inca Empire, which rarely performed Human sacrifice, got their extremely efficiemt administrative system slowly replaced by the Spanish one because the Spanish wanted to expand their culture
Also in pagan Europe
If that’s the criteria quite literally everyone has met everyone and this thread is pointless. Every culture has either been assimilated into a greater one, maintained pockets of isolated culture or passed forward something significant be it technology, language, storytelling, etc.
The Aztecs and Byzantines met because I know a greek guy who went to Mexico City in 2016.
Limiting to the time of AOE2 so end around 1500 or 1600, may use a sliding scale depending on the area (it feels like it ends earlier in Europe). That’s what I used for my list for the Franks.
Yes if we limit today, even without the modern world in the 19th century France fought wars against Mexico (may kinda still count as Aztecs) and Korea, colonised Vietnam and Cambodia, helped modernising Japan, supporting the Shogun in the Boshin War, fought some colonial wars in China, still had some presence in India, colonised much of Africa notably Mali… none of that was in my list.
So yes if you end in 1600 you can at least count the Aztecs & Spanish for the Mayans.