>As Montaigne pointed out, early modern Europeans were at least as cruel toward enemies and captives, they just expressed it in different ways: i.e. via public executions of witches and heretics, or the tortures of the Inquisition and secular courts.
Yes, this was my instant thought. What a naive Eurocentric way to think of history to insinuate that everyone except the Europeans were just barbaric savages who killed and devalued life. As if the Europeans weren't fresh off their own multi-year killing sprees for this and that reason that equally would have baffled Native Americans.
I don't think the poster was insinuating that - if he's read Bernal Diaz, he no doubt has few illusions about medieval europeans. They literally did stuff like murdering fat people so they could use their fat to treat the wounds of their horses. Nobody could read 'The Conquest of New Spain' and come away with the impression that Cortez was anything but an absolutely awful, atrociously evil person.
>What you see is two cultures separated by an almost unimaginable amount of time, distance, and history. The clash that occurred would have been hard to prevent whenever it happened.
Because surely there was more they had in common than that made them different.
I don't know. Bernal Diaz definitely saw a lot of commonalities between the Aztecs and the Spanish. I think the two differences that stuck out for me were the Spanish were way more fanatical, and also way more likely to go back on agreements if it would benefit them. I don't know what was going on in Spanish politics at the time - but if Cortez is typical, it must have been an absolute nest of vipers.
I was not insinuating anything in particular, merely pointing out the vast differences in the cultures and, to an important extent, their inability to reason about each other in a constructive way.
As I said, the clash would have been hard to prevent. The biological consequences of foreign diseases are an important way things wouldn't have been other than tragic.
Yes, this was my instant thought. What a naive Eurocentric way to think of history to insinuate that everyone except the Europeans were just barbaric savages who killed and devalued life. As if the Europeans weren't fresh off their own multi-year killing sprees for this and that reason that equally would have baffled Native Americans.