Video: Guns, Germs, and Steel - Episode 2: Conquest
Summary:
Episode Two : Conquest
Episode Two |
Transcript
On November 15th 1532, 168 Spanish conquistadors arrive in the holy city
of Cajamarca, at the heart of the Inca Empire, in Peru.
They are exhausted, outnumbered and terrified – ahead of them are camped 80,000
Inca troops and the entourage of the Emperor himself.
Yet, within just 24 hours, more than 7,000 Inca warriors lie slaughtered; the
Emperor languishes in chains; and the victorious Europeans begin a reign of
colonial terror which will sweep through the entire American continent.
Why was the balance of power so unequal between the Old World, and the New?
Can Jared Diamond explain how America fell to guns, germs and steel?
Two Empires
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Pizarro, leader of the
Spanish conquistadors
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Spaniard Francisco Pizarro has gone down in history as the man who
conquered the Inca. Leading a small company of mercenaries and adventurers, this
former swineherd from a provincial town in Spain managed to demolish one of the
most sophisticated Empires the world has ever seen.
From Pizarro's home town of Trujillo, Jared Diamond pieces together the story of
the Spaniards' victory over the Inca, tracing the invisible hand of geography.
On the surface, the Spaniards had discovered a foreign empire remarkably similar
to their own. The Inca had built an advanced, politically sophisticated,
civilization on the foundations of successful agriculture. They had ruthlessly
conquered their neighbors in South America, and by 1532 governed a vast
territory, the length and breadth of the Andes.
But as Jared discovers, the Inca lacked some critical agents of conquest.
Horses vs Llamas
Eurasia boasted 13 of the 14 domesticable mammals in the world as native
species. Among these was the horse.
As Diamond learns, the horse was fundamental to the farming success of Eurasian
societies, providing not only food and fertilizer but also, crucially,
load-bearing power and transport – transforming the productivity of the land.
The only non-Eurasian domesticable animal species in the world was the llama –
native, by chance, to South America. The Inca relied on llamas for meat, wool
and fertilizer – but the llama was not a load-bearing animal. Llamas can't pull
a plow, nor can they transport human beings.
And unlike horses, llamas could never be ridden for war.
Spanish horsemanship, based on principles of cattle-herding, was famous
throughout Europe for its manoeuvrability and spontaneity – skills learned by
Pizarro's conquistadors in their youth. Horses could charge, mounted soldiers
could slay with brutal efficiency. Diamond realizes that, to a people like the
Inca, who had never seen humans ride animals before, the psychological impact of
these alien mounted troops must have been huge.
Steel vs bronze
But Pizarro's men only brought 37 horses to Peru. So where did the rest
of their shock value lie?
Well, once again, the Europeans had something the Americans didn't – they had
steel.
For thousands of years throughout Eurasia, metal-working technology had evolved
from the simplest ore-extraction of the first Neolithic villages, to the
highly-sophisticated forging of steel, in cities like Toledo and Milan.
Geography had endowed Europe with rich sources of iron and wood, and a climate
conducive to high-temperature metallurgy.
Thanks to the geographic ease with which ideas spread through the continent of
Eurasia, discoveries like gunpowder could also migrate thousands of miles, from
China to Spain.
And political competition within Europe fuelled a medieval arms race. Pizarro's
conquistadors were armed with the latest and greatest in weapons technology –
guns, and swords.
The Inca, by comparison, had never worked iron or discovered the uses of
gunpowder. Geography had not endowed them with these resources. Nor had they
received technologies from other advanced societies within the Americas. This
included a technology even more critical to Spanish success than their weapons,
writing.
Writing
On the eve of battle, Pizarro and his men discuss how to tackle the vast army of
the Inca. It seems an impossible task. But they have a secret weapon up their
sleeve – the weapon of past experience.
Jared Diamond travels to the library of Salamanca University, to read for
himself the published accounts of Hernan Cortes' conquest of Mexico.
Only twelve years before Cajamarca, Cortes and his men had faced similar odds
against the vast army of the Aztec Empire. But somehow Cortes had captured the
Emperor and conquered the land for Spain.
Cortes and his soldiers sent their written accounts back to the general public
in Europe, where they were widely published. Diamond discovers a repository of
dirty tricks at Salamanca – a collection of handbooks for would-be
conquistadors. And on the eve of battle, it was the printed lessons of Cortes
that inspired Pizarro and his men.
By contrast, the Inca Emperor Atahualpa had never heard of Cortes, or even of
his own neighbors, the Aztecs. Thanks to the geography of the Americas, it was
practically impossible for any ideas, technologies, or even news, to spread from
north to south. So whilst the Mayan civilisation of Central America had invented
a form of written communication, it had never got as far as Peru. The Inca were
isolated – and Atahualpa had never even seen a book before.
Showdown
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Inca Emperor Atahualpa
had never seen writing
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So, when presented with a copy of the Bible on November 16th, 1532,
Atahuallpa throws the alien object to the floor, prompting a furious and
surprise attack from the conquistadors. The combined impact of mounted troops,
gunpowder and sharpened steel lead to a massacre, and Atahuallpa is personally
seized by Pizarro himself.
In a matter of hours, the Inca Empire lies in ruins. But the story of Eurasian
triumph isn't over.
Lethal gift of livestock
Seven thousand Inca died at Cajamarca. Over the course of a generation, the
Spaniards killed tens of thousands more. But Diamond learns that up to 95% of
the native population of the entire Americas were wiped out after the conquest.
Genocide alone can't account for this number.
Instead, he discovers, native Americans fell victim to European germs –
infections which they had never encountered before.
And Diamond realizes that European diseases like smallpox were a fatal
inheritance of thousands of years of mammal domestication – the lethal gift of
livestock.
European farmers, rearing cattle, pigs, sheep, goats, horses and donkeys, lived
in close proximity with their animals - breathing, eating and drinking animal
germs. Eventually some diseases crossed over to the human population and the
resulting epidemics wiped out millions of Europeans.
But each time, a few people would survive and the immunities they'd developed
passed through their genes to the next generation. The conquistadors who sailed
to the Americas carried immunities like these.
But in Peru, the llama was never brought indoors, and never milked so the
prospect for the spread of disease was severely reduced.
But then the Europeans arrived and a single Spanish slave arrived, infected with
smallpox and the consequences were devastating. The disease emptied the
continent, killing millions of indigenous people who lacked any prior exposure,
and therefore any immunity. The European triumph was complete.
So Diamond has shown how guns, germs and steel had conquered the New
World. But will his theories work in every corner of the globe?
Where to next?
Read the
full
transcript of Episode Two.