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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mongo2116 who wrote (886482)	9/10/2015 12:17:31 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1576262

they had nothing as advanced in europe Not true, and only partially relevant if it was true. There may have been some things the Spanish saw that didn't exist back home, but overall the Spanish had more advanced technology and more resources at least back in Spain. The conquistadors had more advanced technology but lower numbers and less resources then the Incas and Aztecs. They won not primarily because of disease (they had their own problems with disease, and the differential mortality that was in their relative favor would have taken too long to be decisive) or even technology (it was more advanced and powerful then what their opponents had but not enough to make up for the numerical and other disadvantages), but through confusion and poor tactics by their enemies, and from recruiting local allies (so that in a number of cases the numbers where similar, rather then their enemies having a vast numerical advantage). In North America the locals were less advanced, and less centralized. The later meant they wouldn't put up as large and unified of force against their enemies, but it did give them the advantage that one serious defeat couldn't cause opposition to end. Importantly in North America (except in the very early days), the locals had a numerical disadvantage. The conquistadors could have been defeated. It didn't work out that way but it was quite possible. (Although if they did defeat them that might not have been the end of the story, attempts at conquest likely would have continued.) The North American colonization would have been much more difficult to defeat. The Europeans had superior numbers, and technology. Disease was probably a more important in North America (not because it killed at a higher rate further North but because the settlement and expansion and eventual domination happened over a much longer time). But except for some of the earliest settlements the enterprise as a whole was never seriously at risk, and wouldn't have been even if the locals faced no more impact from disease then did the Europeans.