Mesoamerican empires differ markedly from city-states. The most obvious characteristic is their control over significantly larger areas than city-states. Empires were themselves controlled from capital cities, so the question is both how and why empires emerged from those cities and not from others.
“Why?” is perhaps not answerable in any general sense, as the instigating cause may be historically particular and rest on a specific constellation of persons and circumstances that cannot be generalized from example to example.7 But “how?” is more general and its mechanics can, i believe, be explained.
The enormous costs of distance limited the ability of city-states to conquer and exploit their neighbors, but Mexican empires were not as constrained by this limitation as all of them arose in especially favorable and densely populated regions. In the case of the Aztecs, the adjacent cities did not lie outside the sixteen miles distance that would make their control by another center enormously difficult and thus insulated them from conquest. In and around the densely populated Valley of Mexico, they were far closer to each other. As a result, the city-states that became empires already possessed at least the nucleus of the political and military machinery needed to control nearby cities. Being far closer, distance offered them little protection from conquest and control. And this proximity could operate not merely between adjacent cities within the valley, but throughout its expanse, as its vast lakes permitted quick and inexpensive control via canoes that would have been virtually impossible over similar distances by land (Hassig 1985: 28-40, 56-66, 133).
While empires contrast with city-states in many ways, there are a series of differences that can be meaningfully discussed in relation to the characteristics noted above. First, drawing on far larger populations and intermarrying with the rulers of the conquered towns, they are ethnically heterogenous, even at the elite level. Second, empires rely on far larger armies than do city-states and, consequently, tend to rely on both nobles and commoners, training the latter to have nearly to the skill of the former (Hassig 1988: 59-72). Third, they do not generally conquer to humiliate or degrade the enemy, who are accordingly not depicted that way.8 Empires do sometimes sacrifice captives, but these are not shown nude or degraded and the goal is a political one, to demonstrate power to the tributary rulers, not to denigrate their people. The reason for this contrast lies in the goal of the empire, which is expansionistic, to incorporate the conquered at least economically as tributaries. once such a system was successfully begun, the influx of tributary wealth allowed the capital city-state to expand its internal political system to a size adequate to the increased areas it now controlled.
World History
