The Peculiar Institution, pt. 4

The transatlantic slave trade takes shape

The debate over whether history is driven by great individuals or impersonal trends and forces has existed for millennia, and the answer tends to reflect the dominant cultural and economic forces of any given era. There must be truth on both sides of any debate that has carried on so long without resolution. Napoleon, a Great Man of History if anyone was, might have disagreed with his biggest fans about the role he played in history when he said, “I am the instrument of Providence, she will use me as long as I accomplish her designs, then she will break me like a glass.” Of course, one could argue that it takes a Great Man to recognize that about himself, and, while it may be true that even the Greatest Man needs the backing of Providence to decisively shape human affairs, Providence needs him too.

The conquest and colonization of the Americas provides some of the most compelling evidence for arguments on both sides. Writing about the fall of the Old Mexico to Spanish conquistadores, German historian Oswald Spengler seemed to defend the Great Man theory:

For, as it happens, (Mesoamerican civilization) is the one example of a Culture ended by violent death. It was not starved, suppressed, or thwarted, but murdered in the full glory of its unfolding, destroyed like a sunflower whose head is struck off by someone passing. All these states - including a world-power and more than one federation - with an extent and resources far superior to those of the Greek and Roman states of Hannibal’s day; with a comprehensive policy, a carefully ordered financial system and a highly developed legislation; with administrative ideas and economic tradition such as the ministers of Charles V could never have imagined; with a wealth of literature in several languages, an intellectually brilliant and polite society in great cities to which the West could not show one single parallel¹ - all this was not broken down in some desperate war, but washed out by a handful of bandits in a few years, and so entirely that the relics of the population retained not even a memory of it all. Of the giant city Tenochtitlan not a stone remains aboveground. The cluster of great Mayan cities in the virgin forests of Yucatan succumbed swiftly to the attack of vegetation, and we do not know the old name of any of them. Of the literature three books survive, but no one can read them.

The most appalling feature of the tragedy was that it was not in the least a necessity of the Western Culture that it should happen. It was a private affair of adventurers, and at the time no one in Germany, France, or England had any idea of what was taking place. This instance shows, as no other shows, that the history of humanity has no meaning whatever… The accident was so cruelly banal, so supremely absurd, that it would not be tolerated in the wildest farce. A few cannons and hand-guns began and ended the drama. 

Indeed, when one reads of the exploits of a Cortes or a Pizarro, it is hard to even imagine men of such indomitable will in a familiar modern context. The ancients worshiped Thor and Hercules for lesser deeds than the destruction of a great and ancient empire. And yet, does anyone believe that if Cortes had fallen off his caravel during that first trip to the Yucatan, that Aztec society would have survived contact with Europe? Probably not. Like Napoleon, Providence needed Cortes to carry out her will, but he could be easily replaced if he proved unable or unwilling to carry out the task she set before him. Men have agency, but their actions are empowered by the momentum of history, and it’s hard to imagine a set of circumstances that might have preserved the Incan and Aztec cultures after their discovery by the West.

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It is of great significance to all subsequent events that the Spanish and Portuguese happen to have been the first European kingdoms to embark on the Age of Discovery. Muslims conquered the Iberian peninsula by 711 AD, but the battle to retake it and drive the Moors back into North Africa began immediately. It would take Christian forces almost 800 years to achieve that. The Reconquista was accomplished in stages, and by the time it was consummated in 1492, the Moors only maintained control of a small strip of southern Spain, but still, large chunks of the peninsula were under Muslim control for four, five, six hundred years. For perspective, only 532 years have passed since all of Spain returned to Christian rule. The long period of Muslim rule (and heavy Jewish intellectual influence), and centuries of back and forth religious war, created a nexus for cultural exchange rivaled in Europe only by the Byzantine Empire on the other side of the continent.

The Reconquista over time

The Spanish and Portuguese states and peoples were built for war. This is the first thing to understand about them. Their institutions, their social structures, everything was geared toward the centuries-long task of driving the Moors out of Iberia, and once that task was accomplished, there remained a state and a people that was entirely built for conquest. Spanish infantry was feared as nearly invincible, and for a time their victories seemed as automatic as the Spartan phalanx, the Roman legion, or the British redcoats in their glory days. Charles V, King of Spain (after 1500), was named Holy Roman Emperor and, through skillful diplomacy backed by unmatched military strength, he built an empire that included a united Spain, Sardinia, Sicily, Naples, the Low Countries, and large chunks of territory in Germany, Bohemia, Austria, and Hungary. Charles V took the lead in establishing Europe’s defensive line against further Ottoman incursion, and his forces, composed of Spaniards, Germans, and Italians, sacked and conquered Tunis, which had been the base of Ottoman admiral Barbarossa and his Barbary corsairs. So all this is going on as the Spanish conquest of the New World was getting underway, and they must be understood as different fronts in one campaign.