No detailed description available for "War and Society in Ancient Mesoamerica".

War and Society in Ancient Mesoamerica

By Ross Hassig

University of California Press

Copyright © 1992 Ross Hassig
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0520077342


Chapter 1
The Approach to War

Warfare has greatly shaped the cultures and histories of much of the world, including Mesoamerica.1 Yet, with few exceptions, military explanations of Mesoamerican prehistory have been either cursory or generalized on data from the era of the Spanish conquest. To redress these shortcomings, this book has three major purposes. The first is to clarify Mesoamerica's military past, which was not a simplified version of Aztec practices but differed in weapons and tactics through time and between societies. The second goal is to explain the role of war in Mesoamerican societies. No single rationale can account for how, when, where, and why wars were fought throughout the roughly three thousand years under consideration here. Yet through focusing more consciously and conscientiously on Mesoamerica's martial past, important features and dynamics emerge that promise a better understanding of what did occur. The third goal is to place military matters in a broader social and historical context to show their role in individual societies and in creating and maintaining Mesoamerica as a culture area, thereby providing the indispensable basis for linking and integrating much of the region.

Warfare studies have frequently excluded broader social history because of their specific military focus and, for the West, the assumption that the general historical outlines are already known. This will be partly true here, for some selectivity is vital to maintain the focus of the study. Because precolumbian Mesoamerica is not as well known, more

Mesoamerica with major sites discussed in text.

emphasis will be placed on broader social history. The object is not to distort the general picture by eliminating inconvenient data, but to highlight the military aspects so they may be seen more clearly. However, isolated cultures cannot be the primary focus. Military history necessarily concentrates on the relations between societies and emphasizes the importance of relational developments over internal ones.2 Moreover, as a practical matter, the emphasis will be primarily on the expanding groups which show the military state of the art at that time and on the processes of their expansion: imperialism.3

Despite the frequency with which the term is used, imperialism has been defined in various ways.4 A thorough analysis of these definitions is beyond the scope of this book, but, simply put, an empire is a relationship in which one state controls the effective political sovereignty of another polity, and imperialism is the way in which an empire is established and maintained.5 Three broad groups of theories purport to explain this phenomenon. The first type sees imperialism as based on an inherent need of the center to expand, as, for instance, capitalism has been viewed as necessarily expanding in search of new markets. Thus, imperialism is seen as arising from a given social structure. The second type sees imperialism as a consequence of the weakness of the periphery where stability cannot be maintained, forcing stronger polities to impose order that allows predictable relations. While social structures are also causal in this view, these lie in the periphery rather than in the center. Although aspects of both of these theories apply, I have adopted the third type as most appropriate, in which expansion is seen as a natural consequence of power differences between polities rather than as arising from a particular social structure.

International relations are basically anarchic, with no guarantee of stability between polities. The greater a society's dependence on others, the weaker it is.6 Because access to essential external resources cannot be guaranteed, polities expand their domination to bring resource-producing areas within the polity, thus making the costs and benefits of various actions predictable.7 According to this view, imperialism springs from the existence of competing national sovereignties that expand in relation to their relative power. However, the resources that polities expand to control are culturally determined: some, such as cotton and obsidian, are material improvements, if not necessities, but others, such as cacao and quetzal feathers, are materially nonessential though often highly valued.8 In the Mesoamerican case, many

...

Mesoamerica with modern national and state boundaries: I—United States of America II—Guatemala III—Belize IV—El Salvador V—Honduras VI—Nicaragua States of Mexico (left to right and top to bottom): 1—Chihuahua 2—Coahuila 3—Nuevo Leon 4—Tamaulipas 5—Sinaloa 6—Durango 7—Zacatecas 8—San Luis Potosi 9—Nayarit 10—Jalisco 11—Aguascaliente 12—Guanajuato 13—Queretaro 14—Hidalgo 15—Veracruz 16—Colima 17—Michoacan 18—Mexico 19—Tlaxcala 20—Puebla 21—Morelos 22—Guerrero 23—Oaxaca 24—Tabasco 25—Chiapas 26—Campeche 27—Yucatan 28—Quintana Roo The Federal District, bordered by the states of Mexico and Morelos, is unmarked.