Encompassing the areas of high civilization extending from Central Mexico to northern Honduras, Mesoamerican societies during Aztec times were overwhelmingly either city-states or empires. And the nature or warfare, peace, and alliance differed between them.
While city-states are often viewed as the fundamental building blocks of empires, the latter are not simply the former writ large or in aggregate but qualitatively different. Briefly, there were a series of differences between city-states and empires in Mesoamerica. City-states in Mesoamerica were, of course, significantly smaller than empires, each controlling a hinterland within a radius of approximately eight miles (Hassig 1997). This radius was defined by the diurnal cycle within which the center can exercise effective political and economic control4 over the 40 percent of the population that was rural (Cook and Borah 1971:9-10), which rose to over 50 percent in the densely populated Valley of Mexico (Sanders 1976: 150). Thus dominating relatively discrete hinterlands, city-states engaged in a variety of economic and social interactions among themselves. While city-states occupied independent territories, battles were common between them but they did not aim at conquest.5 They were fought to legitimate the ruler’s position, to maintain the boundaries of the city’s hinterland against encroachment by neighboring cities, and to insure domination of its tributary towns. Both of these ends, ruler legitimacy and boundary maintenance, could be achieved by raids rather than outright wars. The goal in the case of ruler legitimacy was for the king to achieve enough success to boast of his feats and thus elevate himself. And for boundary maintenance, raids were sufficient to uphold the appearance of strength and thus insure that towns did not shift their loyalties to the seemingly stronger rulers of neighboring cities. Failure to maintain boundaries could mean the weakening and demise of the city-state as an independent kingdom. So while city-states did not generally engage in wars of conquest, there were persistent, albeit intermittent, wars and a certain tension between neighbors. Trade and other forms of social interaction, such as religious rituals, created some regional coherence, but integration at the political level was rare.
As a consequence of their own rather limited military goals, with only rare exceptions, Mesoamerican city-states differed from empires in a series of ways. First, they were generally ethnically homogeneous, if not among the entire population, then certainly among the nobility.6 Second, they trained and relied on nobles for soldiers, relegating commoners to the role of cannon-fodder, much like the peasant supporters of medieval European knights (Hassig 1992:101-02). Third, they frequently engaged in the torture and humiliation of captives since their goals were to demonstrate their dominance over enemies and thereby elevate themselves. Consequently, captives in city-states are often depicted as humiliated - nude, bound, and trodden underfoot (e. g. Baudez and Mathews 1978: 32; Flannery et al. 1981: 75-77, 80, 87,90-92). All these practices are tied directly to city-states engaging in wars to maintain boundaries, secure tributaries, and glorify and legitimate their rulers, but not to conquer and expand.
World History
