Jim Devine wrote: > Were the Incas mere "victims," as in the one-dimensional story of > European immorality sketched above? or is the world more complex than > that?
I vote one-dimensional. > In sum, the Incas _did_ conquer other peoples, allowing them to > collect tribute from them. The answer to my alleged "gotcha question" > is thus "yes." No, it was actually no. > Why did the Inca empire lose to the Spanish one? If it's not geography > which put them at a disadvantage, allowing Spanish to conquer the > Incas, what was it? Did the Incas have a greater unwillingness to > conquer other peoples that was based in their genes? (after all, their > "imperial army wore the clothing and when it conquered a new tribe, > they presented the victims with a new wardrobe!" I read this as saying > that they were nice guys in some way!) Did the Incas have an > inherently less expansionist culture than the Spaniards? or was it due > to a combination of a bunch of causes? Or what? The Incas lost mainly because of disease and because the Spanish exploited resentments against them but people in their Empire, just as they did in Mexico. > If I were to try to answer this question, I wouldn't rule out > geography as one of the causes, along with the specifics of the Inca > mode of production. I have been reading your messages defending Jared Diamond for over 13 years now. I could understand a misguided infatuation with "Guns, Germs and Steel" early on but at this state of the game I find it difficult to understand why a Marxist professor would be so enamored of a man who libels Papuan New Guinean peoples in the New Yorker magazine and writes encomiums to Chevron Oil and Walmart in the NYT op-ed pages. Love is blind, I guess. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
