When Hernando Cortes and his soldiers crossed the causeway and entered the is­land city of Tenochtitlan in 1519, they were overwhelmed by the size and opulence of the metropolis and the busy crowds that filled its streets and markets.

With a population estimated at close to 200,000 inhabitants, this was the largest city ever to flourish in the Pre-Columbian Americas. The size and wealth of the city were direct consequences of its role as capital of the Aztec Empire.

Although the mechanisms of the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs are complex and much debated,¹ scholars agree that the organizational structure of the Aztec Empire provides part of the explanation. This was an empire that relied largely on the indirect control of its provinces. Its “infrastructural power”² in provincial areas was quite low, and subordinate provincial kings wasted little time joining with Cortes on his march to Tenochtitlan. The military success of the Aztec armies had been variable, and several major unconquered enemies also joined the attack on the capital.

These “weaknesses” in Aztec imperial organization have often been cited in claims that this was not really an empire at all. We are told that Aztec armies terrorized their realm to demand payments, without developing formal imperial institutions or practices.³ Yet while the Aztec rulers did rely largely on indirect control of their provinces, they pursued several distinct strategies of expansion and control.⁴ They instituted a sophisticated fiscal system involving regular taxation,⁵ and they sent officials to the provinces to both rule and collect taxes.⁶

Michael Mann⁷ describes four strategies used by early empires for “genuine im­perial domination”: (1) rule through clients; (2) rule directly through the army;

¹ Graulich 1995; Hassig 1994; Smith 2012, ch. 13.

² Mann 1984.

³ Conrad and Demarest 1984, 53; Goldstone and Haldon 2009, 11.

⁴ Berdan et al. 1996.

⁵ Smith 2015.

⁶ Sergheraert 2009.

⁷ Mann 1986, 143-161.

Michael E. Smith and Maelle Sergheraert, The Aztec Empire In: The Oxford World History of Empire. Edited by: Peter Fibiger Bang, C.A. Bayly, Walter Scheidel, Oxford University Press (2021). © Oxford University Press.

DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197532768.003.0024.

(3) compulsory cooperation; and (4) development of a common ruling class struc­ture. The traditional model of Aztec imperialism, which has emphasized the in­direct nature of provincial control, has focused on strategies (1) and (4).^[1703] Recent research, however, suggests a more active administrative role in many of the exte­rior provinces.^[1704] In Mann's model, this suggests a larger role for “compulsory coop­eration” than described in the traditional model. In terms of Mann's discussion of state power, we suggest that the Aztec emperor and administration were increasing both their despotic power and their infrastructural power in the decades prior to the Spanish conquest.