Conquistadors!, page 40
I returned to the basic concept many years later, after I was engaged in a discussion about alien invasion stereotypes. The Americans have a tendency to draw on their experience with the Native Americans, in which the earlier failure to prevent the Europeans from landing on their shores and establishing secure colonies ensured their eventual defeat and effective destruction. This experience is often cited in such discussions, but I have never been very fond of it. It is quite hopeless, and suggests no way in which they could fight back against an unexpected invasion. We might be at a significant disadvantage, when facing a much more advanced enemy, yet we are not primitives and we are far more capable of understanding and countering advanced technology than our ancestors.
There is another set of experiences to draw on, in my view, and that is the Spanish invasion and conquest of Aztec Mexico. It is often difficult to understand, looking back from over four hundred years, just how the Spanish thought they had the right to invade, and how they actually succeeded. The original invasion force was tiny, and while it had a technological edge over the natives the edge was not that pronounced. Our study of these events is hampered by the destruction of some of the historical record, leaving much of our early understanding dependent on the accounts of the original Conquistadors (who often praised themselves and damned of their enemies; the suggestion the Aztecs saw Hernán Cortés as a god owes much to Cortés’s own accounts of the invasion) and on the limited historical research conducted afterwards by Spanish missionaries, who had some motive to suggest the success of the invasion was divinely ordained. The concept that there might be something wrong with invading and colonising Mexico was not one that occurred to Cortés and his early successors. It was not until comparatively recently that we tried to take a more balanced look at the historical record.
On paper, the invasion should never have succeeded. The Spanish were grossly outnumbered. Their enemies were not - contrary to earlier claims - rendered helpless by suggestions it was truly the end of the world, and the gods had come to claim their due, although Montezuma appears to be a singularly weak ruler. The Aztecs came very close to wiping out the Spanish several times, and if they had succeeded they might have had a chance to come to grips with the impact of disease and advanced technology (such as it was in those days) before it was too late. So why did the invasion succeed?
The Spanish had a number of advantages that tipped the balance in their favour. First, the Aztec Empire was relatively new and had terrorised the vast majority of neighbouring powers into submission. They had very few true friends in the region, and most of their neighbours hated and resented their dominance. When the Spanish arrived, they had no shortage of potential allies; indeed, given how brutal the Aztecs had been, they would have seemed the better choice for quite some time after the invasion. Second, the Aztec leadership was not up to the task of handling the invasion; it is notable that the Aztecs did a great deal better after Montezuma was killed and replaced by a far more capable leader. Third, the Spanish accidentally infected the Aztecs with European diseases (most notably smallpox) that significantly weakened the Aztecs and made it impossible for them to wipe out the Spanish before it was too late. It is true that the Spanish had better technology, and Cortés was playing from a more advanced political-military playbook than his enemies, but those factors were less important than the simple fact that the Aztecs were deeply unpopular. Their empire is a byword for cruelty and savagery for a reason, and Cortés had no trouble finding allies to do the heavy lifting.
And I wondered, how would this work out today?
Cortés didn’t just bring devastation, destruction, and (more) religious intolerance. He was no Hitler. He held out the promise of a better life to locals groaning under a very oppressive yoke. It is easy to say, in hindsight, that many of the Mexicans who sided with him were nothing more than traitors, but - viewed from their point of view - their actions were not wrong. Why should Dona ‘La Malinche’ Marina refuse to serve Cortés when she had been sold into slavery, and had absolutely no reason to love the Aztec empire? Why should the Tlaxcallans side with the Aztecs, when the Aztecs constantly attacked them and the Spanish had done nothing to them? Many of the flaws in Aztec Mexico are mirrored in our present-day society. Would a modern-day Cortés find a way to use them against us?
This is not the end of the story, of course. Watch this space.
I hope you found this book satisfactory. If you did, and would like to see more, please go to the place you bought it and leave a review. It has grown much harder, alas, to make a living through indie authorship, so a review - or even a rating - would be very helpful indeed. So would following me on social media, and my blog.
Thank you for your time.
Christopher G. Nuttall
Edinburgh, 2023
Appendix: The Protectorate
The Protectorate is probably best described as a combination of military dictatorship and a democracy with a very limited franchise, although such terms rarely convey the true structure of the system. It is both an authoritarian state in many ways, and also surprisingly responsive to the voting population; it is a strict hierarchy designed to channel the ambitious and capable, regardless of their origins, into careers that both benefit them and the state itself. It is capable of being incredibly ruthless, and quite willing to crush all opposition with methods that run all the way to de facto genocide, but also willing to allow its lessers – degenerates, clients and primals – to live as they please, as long as they do not cause problems for the state. Indeed, ruthless pragmatism is effectively the Protectorate’s watchword.
The governing system is two-tier. A person who enters a lifelong career in the military or civil bureaucracy starts on a path that can eventually lead them to the top, gaining more influence and respect as they rise through the ranks. There are more checks and balances, largely unwritten, in this structure than you might think. A military regiment, for example, has the right to elect and impeach its officers (in peacetime; doing it under fire is regarded as a major disciplinary issue and almost always leads to court-martial and death sentences.) A wise senior, whatever his rank, will listen to his subordinates and at least try to justify his decision to them. Assuming a successful career, a person can rise to the highest levels, perhaps even a seat on the Council itself. There are strict term limits once a person reaches the highest levels which are harshly enforced. It is rare for a Council member to serve more than one term on the Council, as it’s only tolerated in times of emergency.
By contrast, a person who serves a sole term in government service (in theory, everyone is required to serve; in practice, draft-dodging is rarely penalised directly) is enfranchised upon leaving the service, and is granted – amongst other things – the right to vote. Citizens (in stark contrast to civilians) elect MPs to Parliament and their local Assembly, serve on juries and provide a manpower pool to be called upon in the event of an emergency. The MPs are not empty suits; they have the right to debate legislation, a certain degree of control over tax and spending and serve as arbiters if power struggles within the state get out of control. They can, and sometimes do, impeach councillors when they get too far out of hand. Again, there are term limits. It is rare for an MP to serve more than two terms in Parliament.
The planet itself is divided into three sections. The incorporated states are part of the Protectorate itself; they’re considered citizens or civilians, they have the right to vote and attempt to rise in the ranks, and – most importantly of all – they have Assemblies of their own. The client states are nominally sovereign but exist under a form of indirect rule; they are permitted a certain degree of independence, as long as they don’t cause trouble for the Protectorate. These states often come across as being frozen in time, with no room for development, and many locals choose to take service with the Protectorate instead of remaining in their homeland, a trend the Protectorate sees as absorbing the ambitious and capable into their own ranks (and therefore limiting the risk of a client state becoming a genuine threat). The primal states are not under any sort of direct control, and regularly find themselves targets for live-fire training exercises. None pose any serious threat to the status quo.
For the Protectorate’s citizens, life isn’t that bad. The basic necessities are provided. There is a certain degree of political and personal freedom. Those who start their own businesses and prosper can expect great honour, even a sudden rise in the ranks. There is even a remarkable amount of freedom of speech and social mobility. For the military, there are also opportunities to show your talents and win promotion, first through skirmishes in the dominions and then through interdimensional invasions.
That said, the dominant culture is unmistakably dour. Popular entertainment is designed to educate and indoctrinate more than entertain or open the mind. Most books, plays, and films are bland, with little room for ambiguity or nuance. There is no suggestion, now or ever, that there might be something wrong with dominating the world or invading other timelines; there are few grey characters, and little dissent. Pornography is banned, and possession of even the mildest of softcore porn can get someone sent to a penal camp.
The Protectorate is generally very good at assimilating immigrants from client and primal states, if only because there is little open racism and the government comes down hard on anything that might threaten social harmony. An immigrant who has completed his term in service is regarded as a full citizen, with all the rights and responsibilities it entails; an immigrant who can’t or won’t serve a term is regarded with a certain degree of suspicion, and is sometimes threatened with deportation if they take a step out of line. It is rare for immigrants to keep anything of their former culture, although it is not unknown. It can even serve as a career, if they’re lucky.
The Protectorate will never admit it, but there is a small underclass of citizens – “degenerates” who cannot or will not fit into society. Some of them are considered harmless and are largely ignored (drug addicts, for example, or internet trolls); others, who start preying on the rest of society, are rapidly arrested and transported to penal camps, where they can either work or starve. Actual subversives are rare, to the point the handful who do pop up are often ignored too. The ones who do draw attention from the security forces are normally offered a flat choice between exile or the camps.
Outside the Protectorate and its clients, life is often rough. The primal states offer few comforts for outsiders, provoking bitter hatred and resentment; it is clear, to anyone with eyes to see, that the policy is effective cultural genocide. (The Protectorate’s official position is that anyone who refuses to accept civilisation deserves everything they get.) Tech levels are low – Protectorate policy is to ban anything that might have military applications – and medical care very limited. There are persistent uprisings, but none of them come close to posing a real threat and, to some extent, they are actively encouraged to blood newly raised military formations and wipe out potentially dangerous agitators.
The Protectorate is extremely technologically advanced. The development of basic antigravity technology opened up the skies, allowing vast numbers of citizens to be transported to orbit. The technology is still quite limited, but the military uses it for both hovertanks – capable of flying over rivers and seas, if not levitating above a certain height – and flyers (effectively supersonic VTOL aircraft). Antigravity tech is far from perfected – oscillations in the field can tear the generator apart, forcing an emergency landing or, more likely, the flyer simply dropping out of the air and crashing.
The core of the Protectorate military is the formidable Cromwell Hovertank – a giant beast, armed with heavy plasma cannons, laser point defence and strobe pulsars designed to cause everything from panic to convulsions amongst unprotected targets. (The Protectorate uses them for crowd and riot control.) The Cromwell carries a platoon of unarmoured soldiers within its hull – armoured soldiers ride on top – as well as a three-man crew. In theory, one person can operate the tank; in practice, this is only attempted under dire circumstances.
The Cromwell is backed up by the Knight Battlesuit – an armoured combat suit worn by infantry – and Angel Flyer, a supersonic aircraft armed with plasma cannons and EMP bomblets (designed to fry unshielded) electronics. They are also capable of carrying and deploying fusion nukes. The fighting units are backed up by extremely capable support units, ranging from electronic warfare teams capable of hacking almost any primitive database to repair crews and intelligence teams trained to extract information from unwilling primals.
The Protectorate’s greatest invention, however, is the Crosstime Transpositioner, a device capable of swapping a piece of land in the Protectorate’s timeline for one in another dimension. The device is far more efficient than interdimensional gates – which are extremely difficult to keep open permanently without gateway generators on both sides of the dimensional walls – but is so costly and requires so much power to operate that it cannot be used very often and rarely more than once every two months. The Protectorate’s standard procedure, therefore, is to use it to shift a military base – roughly the size of a small town – into the target timeline, which is then on its own until the Transpositioner can be repowered or a gateway set up to allow for steady contact between the two timelines. These bases are extremely well-equipped and, at least in theory, capable of surviving long enough for contact to be established.
(In the event of there being natives transposed into the Protectorate timeline, they are rapidly seized and interrogated by intelligence teams to determine what sort of world exists on the far side. They are rarely returned, unless they prove willing to assist in the conquest and take high position in the post-conquest world.)
The Protectorate’s medical technology is also very advanced, with almost nothing beyond its power to cure if it isn’t immediately fatal. Genetic engineering of more advanced humans has been discussed, but the general consensus is that it should be avoided beyond the very basics (improvement of human immune systems) as it would make it difficult for newcomers to rise if they were competing against their genetic superiors. The nastier members of the government have been openly speculating about plagues to wipe out outsider populations, but as of now such discussions haven’t gotten beyond the theoretical.
That may, of course, change.
From its earliest days, the Protectorate either destroyed and rebuilt enemy societies or effectively took them over and started to reshape the country from there. The Dutch, for example, preserved much of their cultural background from the pre-conquest days for quite some time afterwards (as Dutch society was partly compatible with the Protectorate) while France and Spain had their societies rebuilt. India, and to some extent Japan, had the Protectorate either replacing the top-most layers of society or subverting them, inviting the former rulers to join the Protectorate and work towards full assimilation. This is, to a very large extent, the Protectorate’s preferred approach. It not only allows the Protectorate to make use of the enemy society’s structure and resources without a major war, but also allows enemy citizens to self-select into Protectorate society, skimming the cream from the top. Compared to Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan or the USSR, the Protectorate is a very enlightened conqueror.
That is not to say conquest is desirable. The Protectorate has no qualms about crushing opposition, be it military or civilian. It dislikes using nuclear weapons, even ones that leave no radiation behind, but will do it if it feels the need. It is very experienced in ferreting out insurrection and willing to do whatever it takes to crush it. Worst of all, while it would prefer to capture a society more or less intact, it is willing to destroy it in order to take it. (“We had to destroy the village to save it” is perfect logic, as far as they are concerned.) The more a society resists, the more inferior it is and the more willing the Protectorate is to smash it flat and rebuild from scratch.
It is, in short, an opponent to be feared.
This owes much to its success, in war and technological development. It has been at the forefront of the Industrial Revolution from its very first days, and now – having crushed all opposition – there are no competitors. Indeed, it is convinced that without the Protectorate the Industrial Revolution would never have taken place at all, a conceit seemingly supported by the discovery of three populated timelines that never had their own Industrial Revolutions (although there is an open question over the origins of the Lockjoint Plague). It sees itself as the standard bearer for humanity’s development, and it has little reason to question it.
Again, that may be about to change.
Appendix: A Brief History of the Protectorate
Of all the various ideologies that sprang out of the tumultuous years of the British Civil Wars (1642–1651), one would not have expected Mechanism to rise from nothing to become the dominant ideology of the entire world and solar system beyond. Many people expected, even after King Charles was stripped of his title and beheaded, that the kingdom would eventually have another king or collapse into chaos in the absence of a strong monarch. Instead, the groundwork for the transition to a whole new society was laid – partly by accident – and Mechanism became a political movement that undermined its enemies to the point long-term resistance was simply impossible.
Mechanism was born from the fertile mind of Admiral Lord Treathwick and his two children, General Arnold Treathwick (eventually Lord Protector) and Sarah Treathwick. Lord Treathwick was, at the time, a high-ranking naval officer who sided with Parliament in the opening years of the civil war (ensuring that Mechanism had a powerful backer right from the start) while Arnold was a young man who joined the Parliamentary cause, became a close personal friend of Oliver Cromwell and eventually assisted him to construct the New Model Army that won the first round of conflict. Sarah Treathwick, unusually for her era, was one of the most educated women in the country, and the inventor of the first steam engine and advanced guns. She was, in many ways, the true founder of Mechanism. She was certainly the one who took the time to analyse the political issues being discussed during the era and forge them into a workable ideology. In later years, it would be claimed Mechanism had many fathers but only one mother.
