[niels_bom]

[flagged]

[IdiocyInAction]

I think the idea of shaming people for being successful conquerers is ironically very western. Ask what the Mongols think about their conquests or the Han or what the Turks think about the Ottomans or the Russians about their history…

[keybored]

Yes it is very Western. That national chauvinists think differently doesn’t make it wrong.

[cyberax]

"100 million"? That's really overinflated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_the_Indi... - pre-Columbian population figures are highly disputed. And the majority of the population decline happened before 1600-s, mostly from diseases.

None of the Spanish conquistadors were nice people, but neither they plan mass genocides.

[vintermann]

What's striking to me is that despite the Spanish conquistador's well-earned reputation for brutality, the Americas south of the Mexican border is genetically extremely native. The average American who says they have native ancestry, maybe has something like 3-5% precolumbian American ancestry I would guess... but if a Mexican says they have no native ancestry, they may well have ~50% native ancestry and just don't know it.

I haven't read a good explanation for why it is so.

[jajko]

> Estimates have varied widely from as low as 8 million to as many as 100 million, though many scholars gravitated toward an estimate of around 50 million by the end of the 20th century.

At least check the articles you link yourself, ffs.

Not sure why the apologism here, genocide was done through and through, intentionally by outright murder and slavery and unintentionally via diseases (but even that was spread with intent once found out their immunity is weak against old continent diseases)

[keybored]

Isn’t that awesome?

> The Spanish conquest of the Aztecs was terrible. It was a prolonged period of pestilence, famine, torture, rape, plunder, destruction, conquest, cultural eradication, and general misery, with a short term death toll of something like 600,000 (including military and civilian casualties), and a long term death toll in the millions.

> And yet part of me thinks it was totally awesome.

https://mattlakeman.org/2020/06/25/polygamy-human-sacrifices...

[anthk]

The Aztecs were hated from the rest of the tribes. The rest of the Natives joined the Spaniards against them. Guess why.

Hint: human sacrifices and slavery.

For the rest of the Natives, they were like the Nazi Germany, or, a better comparison, the Imperial Japan in Asia.

[lurk2]

> And yet part of me thinks it was totally awesome. That portion of my brain that grew up on Total War and Civilization games thinks the concept of a small number of hyper-technologically sophisticated foreigners led by a verified psychopath waging war on an empire of pyramid-dwelling, polygamist, slave-owning, human sacrificing pagans with the fate of a largely uncharted landmass at stake is incredibly cool. And no one can convince me otherwise.