The discovery of the Aztecs and Incas are delayed to the 16th and early 17th century

I may be getting a little carried away here. I just joined a few hours ago and I've already posted quite a few messages. I'm going to stop now and mostly lurk for a few days, mostly just responding to people who address points I've made. Is this mostly useful?

Okay. You may regret encouraging me.

The core of this question is whether or not a hundred or two hundred years would be enough to make a difference in terms of how well the Aztecs and Incas did against the Europeans when the Europeans did come. Two issues there:

1) How much would the Aztecs and Incas, or whoever took over if those empires fell, advance in a couple hundred years. Answer: There would be advances, but they would be subtle. Take the Aztecs and Tarascans, for example. They almost certainly wouldn't be in a full-scale bronze age by 1602 or even 1702 and they certainly wouldn't be in an iron age. Why not? It takes time to overcome inertia and figure out the potential of new materials. The Tarascans made bronze ornaments and a few tools like tweezers, but they hadn't, as far as I can find, started using bronze in weapons or larger tools. The Incas had bronze longer and they were starting to use it in weapons, but those weapons were basically stone weapons done in bronze, not weapons that took full advantage of the potential of bronze. Use of bronze in Mexico would probably follow about the same path it did in Peru, but a few hundred years behind. So the Tarascans and probably the Aztecs would be starting to experiment with larger bronze tools and weapons, but at time of contact wouldn't have bronze swords or armor. Having bronze technology in a larger way WOULD probably let them imitate European weapons like swords in bronze if they had enough time before conquest.

Probably more significant: The Aztecs and Tarascans would probably both be significantly better at using bows and arrows. Bows were fairly recent to the Aztec area of Mexico and while they used them, they weren't great archers--far from it. The Tarascans were better and there was actually a North/South gradient in how sophisticated bows were, with the nomad Chichemics north of the civilized area considerably better than the Tarascans and the Apaches north of them even better. Good bows would diffuse and that would probably be the biggest military difference you would see with a later European entry.

If there was still an Aztec empire though, it would have the same major problems the Aztecs had historically. (1) The Aztecs ruled over a conquered empire by fear. With few exceptions, their subjects viewed the Spanish as liberators until it was too late. (2) European diseases were going to gut the Aztec populations, cutting the population to at best 25% of pre-contact numbers. (3) The Aztecs were particularly vulnerable because their capitol and much of their power was based on Lake Texcoco. If someone else gained control of the lake, the Aztecs were toast. Historically, the Spanish built gunboats that quickly defeated Aztec canoes and were actually the single most important key to the conquest.

The Incas would undoubtedly continue to get better at using bronze. They might or might not get better at using bows. The Incas themselves rarely used bows, relying on spear-throwers and slings mostly. They did hire poison arrow bowmen from jungle tribes on the fringes of the empire and during the Spanish conquest those jungle bowmen were the one type of Indian the Spanish feared. The rest of the Incas armies? They could only very rarely kill Spaniards except in very special circumstances, like catching them going through a mountain pass and killing them in an avalanche. There was a case where the Incas trapped fifty or so Spaniards in an ideal tactical situation for the Indians--neutralizing the advantage of their horses and mobility and outnumbering them at least 20 to 1. Result: a lot of Spaniards got bruises and maybe even a few broken bones, but if any died it was on the order or one or two. If the Incas made more use of bows themselves or hired more of the jungle tribesmen, they would be better at fighting Europeans.

There was a danger to using the tribesmen, though: the tribesmen would learn a lot about military tactics from the Incas and would also register that the Incas really weren't very good at fighting bowmen. So mercenaries could easily become raiders.

I should probably add a fourth weakness to the Incas: They split at the top much more than the Aztecs did—within the Inca top leadership. There was the civil war that was just ending when the Spanish arrived, which allowed the Spanish to put a survivor of the losing side (Manco) on the throne and then, when Manco revolted against the Spanish, his half-brother Paullu sided with the Spanish against the revolt. At no time were the Incas united against the Spanish, either during the conquest or during the post-conquest revolts, which, by the way, resulted in a fugitive Neo-Inca state near the edge of the rainforest that survived as a remnant of Inca power until 1572.

You may have figured out by now that the Incas and Aztecs were almost mirror images of each other in terms of what they did poorly and what they did well. The Incas had the political theory to integrate their conquests more effectively. They had more advanced use of bronze. They had beasts of burden (llamas) and roads to tie an empire together more effectively. On the other hand, the Aztecs were better at fighting the Spanish due to more effective use of bows and their obsidian swords, which weren’t the equal of what the Spanish had, but were still formidable. So the natural question is: What if the two societies made contact during the spare hundred years or so and each of them gained the advantages that the other one had?

Not regret it, it seems you know your stuff about the Aztecs, seeing this thread reminds me of a very old PC game i still play called The Aztec: True History of the Empire.

Very true about the fact that Europeans would advance too and faster than the Aztecs and Incas. One factor though: Europe would not advance as fast without contact with the New World as it did with that contact. Lots of reasons for that: (1) New World food items made Old World agriculture much more productive, especially corn and potatoes, but also several other plant foods (2) The gold from the New World injected a lot of much needed liquidity into the European economic system. It pretty much ruined a lot of Spanish industry by causing inflation that pushed Spanish prices way above neighboring countries, but it stimulated industry in a lot of the rest of Europe, as Spain bought ships, cannons, etc from all over western Europe.

More later. I'm getting called to lunch.

Also all very true, with some caveats. On the issue of who discovers the Aztecs: I think the key here isn't so much who discovers them as it is whether or not the people who discover them have a solid grip on the major West Indies islands. When Aztec gold started appearing in Europe historically, why didn't Spain's rivals jump in and try to grab a share? Mainly because Spain had already consolidated their grip on the major West Indies islands and any competitors would have had to deal with already large Spanish settlements in their path. Ironically, the mainland conquests eventually eroded Spain's grip on the West Indies by stripping them of many of their settlers and other European powers were able to lodge themselves on some of the islands, but by that time Spain had a solid grip on Mexico.

What if say France, England and Portugal were all competing for West Indies colonies when one of them makes contact with the Aztecs or whoever is in control in Mexico. That leads to a very different set of scenarios, with the European powers competing for Aztec gold. How would that competition play out? Probably rival trading posts that raided each other and a search for Indian trading partners/allies. Unless someone sewed up control of the major power very quickly, you would probably see competition even within the European powers. A few hundred Europeans could become very rich and very powerful raiding the Aztecs or allying with a rebellious group of Aztec subject people or becoming mercenaries of the Aztecs or some other group. The result might not be any better for the Aztecs in the long run, but it could easily be if they become adept at playing European groups off against each other. This kind of scenario, by the way, would be a very good setting for an AH novel, something I'll have to keep in mind.

BTW: If we're being realistic about the impact of delays in finding the Aztecs and Incas, almost nothing about European politics and economics after 1540 at the latest can be counted on as happening. Counter-reformation? Powered in large part by Spanish money, which was almost entirely derived from the New World. Dutch rebellion against the Hapsburgs? Fueled in part by Flanders getting very rich as the workshop of the Hapsburg empire--where New World gold paid for ships and cannon going to Spain.