“The Aztec case provides an unusually well-documented history of the process of state formation. Before Spanish conquest, the Aztecs and their neighbors preserved political histories orally and pictorially. Many histories were recorded in written narratives during the first two centuries after Spanish conquest (Gibson 1975). They provide the basic data for analysis, but they contain numerous sources of bias. Traditions from one domain tend to inflate the antiquity and splendor of its past while denigrating all others. Traditions were sometimes revised to cover up the more sordid phases of local history. Those who recorded the histories in postconquest times had their own reasons for doing so: to defend their claims to certain privileges as members of the native nobility or to raise their status in colonial society by extolling the virtues of native civilization. Against all these sources of distortion stands the fact that the traditions of several locales have survived, sometimes recorded by more than one individual. Thus, it is often possible to correct the excesses of one source by referring to the others. Together, they provide a fairly coherent outline of the events surrounding Aztec state formation, summarized below.
The 12th-century decline of the Toltec state created a vacuum of political power within the Valley of Mexico. This vacuum was filled by a score of small, autonomous, internally unstable and mutually hostile political domains during the 13th and early 14th centuries. By the end of the 14th century, warfare had resulted in the subordination of some to others. Azcapotzalco on the western side of the valley and Texcoco on the eastern side emerged as the two dominant powers. With the defeat of Texcoco in 1418, Azcapotzalco came to control almost the entire valley. However, Azcapotzalcan hegemony was short-lived. In 1430, a military force assembled by the ruler of Tenochtitlan (a client state of Azcapotzalco) and the deposed heir of Texcoco defeated Azcapotzalco. In the wake of Azcapotzalco's defeat, the rulers of Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan (representing the more accommodating nobility of Azcapotzalco) forged a military alliance, quickly consolidated their control over the Valley of Mexico, and began a series of conquests that carried them far beyond. When the Spaniards arrived less than a century later, this Triple Alliance had come to dominate much of Mesoamerica.
The defeat of Azcapotzalco, the formation of the Triple Alliance, and the consolidation of control over the Valley of Mexico together mark the beginning of a new political era. The shifting alliances and endemic warfare that had previously characterized regional politics came to an end. In their place was established a power structure durable enough to withstand severe crop failure, attempted rebellion, and several crises in succession. The birth of the Triple Alliance was accompanied by an acceleration of trends toward the centralization of political authority on the regional level, the widening of the spheres of state concern and regulation, and the expansion of the territory under state control. Thus, the era of Triple Alliance formation is identified as the era of state formation; understanding the events of this era should enhance our ability to understand the forces that bring about major transformations in political structure.
THE VALLEY OF MEXICO POLITICAL SYSTEM: 13TH AND 14TH CENTURIES
Sanders, Parsons, and Santley (1979:150) have characterized the 13th and 14th centuries in the Valley of Mexico as "a troubled era of struggle and conflict between numerous small polities." It is to the structure of these small polities and their conflicts that I now turn. By the end of the 14th century, as many as 50 small, autonomous domains had been established within the Valley of Mexico. Each contained 5,000-50,000 people and covered an area of from 80 to 200 km2. Each domain was governed by a paramount (tlatoani) who ruled by virtue of his membership in the local ruling lineage. Each paramount was surrounded by a group of nobles who assisted in the administration and defense of the domain. This group contained the ruler's own children and the descendants of past rulers (all of whom were qualified to assume the paramount office), and a number of vassal lords (teteuctin) who were ineligible for the paramountcy (Carrasco 1976 and Rounds 1977 provide extended discussions of this status). Members of the elite stratum probably constituted well under 10% of the population in each domain.
The rest of the people were commoners: food producers and craftsmen. In each domain, some commoners resided in close proximity to the ruler's palace in the central town, but others lived in surrounding villages and hamlets. Commoners provided material support to those who governed by laboring in tribute fields and providing domestic service in the residences of the elite. Commoners were also expected to serve as soldiers in time of war. These small polities resembled chiefdoms in two important ways. First, each possessed a fairly simple administrative structure. The administrative hierarchy consisted of two, or three, decision-making levels. The paramount and his noble assistants reached decisions in councils at the highest level; Tezozomoc at the lowest level, ward chiefs saw that the decisions were carried out. Vassal lords may have constituted a third (intermediate) level, responsible for the commoners attached to their noble estates. At all levels of administration, specialization of personnel by task was rare.2 With only minimal horizontal and vertical specialization, the organization of these polities more closely resembles the administrative structure of chiefdoms than states. Second, like the chiefdoms of eastern Polynesia described by Goldman (1970) and Sahlins (1968), these polities were politically unstable. Their histories are marked by numerous incidents of usurpation and regicide. There are also incidents of polities fissioning or simply disintegrating because of internal conflict. This violence is symptomatic of a political system where power is only weakly centralized and authority is easily challenged.
The paramounts of these small polities seem to have used many of the same stratagems used by Polynesian chiefs to counter the threat of revolt. Paramounts sometimes tried to strengthen political support through the distribution of wealth (particularly to the nobility and particularly in times of political crisis, sees Ixtlilxochitl 1975-77:I, 334; II, 76). In fact, royal liberality seems to have been institutionalized. Paramounts seem also to have diverted some resources into awesome display. It is hard to say how great an investment was made because not many 13th- and 14th century elite residences and temples in the Valley of Mexico have been excavated. But the gradual acceptance of "Toltec" forms of sacrifice, temple building, and royal investiture to replace the less showy "Chichimec" forms may reflect attempts to enhance the authority of office through impressive ritual activity. Both these stratagems required a ruler to expend wealth from the royal treasury. Hence, the extent to which they could be employed was limited by the size of the ruler's tribute receipts. These could not easily be enlarged because commoners had ways of resisting excessive demands. They might support the efforts of some noble competitor planning revolt. Or, commoners might find relief from a ruler who demanded too much simply by leaving his domain and seeking admittance to another.
Hence, despite the fact that these small Mexican polities were not chiefdoms (in the sense that kinship ties between ruler and ruled did not supply the ideological basis for governance, see Carrasco 1976; Hicks 1982), their political instability may have stemmed from similar structural problems. Faced with many noble competitors and restless commoners, paramounts sought to secure their positions by engaging in royal liberality and conspicuous display. But as they increased the tribute burden to finance liberality and display, they also increased the likelihood of popular revolt or desertion, and undermined the security they hoped to gain. If anything, the absence of kinship ties between ruler and ruled must have heightened instability in these small polities; if rulers were released from the constraints of the kinship ethic in dealing with commoners so, too, were the commoners in their relation with rulers. Not bound to their rulers by kinship, commoners were free to throw their support to any noble competitor who gained their confidence. I would argue that the chronic warfare that characterized relations between the small polities in the Valley of Mexico during the 13th and 14th centuries was rooted in the quandary rulers faced when dealing with noble competitors and fickle commoners within their domains. The conquest of a neighboring domain opened two new options for a paramount seeking to secure his position. First, his own close kinsman could be sent to replace the defeated paramount. Establishing such a kinsman as a ruler in his own right might satisfy the ambitions of at least one of the conquering paramount's noble rivals. Alternatively, the conquerer could incorporate the defeated polity into his own domain. This would result in an increase in the number of tribute-paying commoners within the conqueror's domain, an increase in the size of the royal treasury, and an increase in the ruler's ability to engage in liberality and display without provoking popular revolt or desertion. Hence, it is possible to view both the internal and external conflicts of the 13th- and 14th-century domains as rooted in internal political structure. I think this view is preferable to one citing population growth and population pressure as the causes of conflict because, throughout this epoch of conflict, rulers of the small polities consistently practiced a policy of extending a friendly reception to immigrant populations. For example, the ruler of Culhuacan allotted land to Mexican refugees, despite having played a major role in the attack that drove them from their homes barely two years earlier. The 14th-century rulers of Texcoco engaged in expansionary warfare, but they also admitted two waves of immigrants to Texcoco, and they tolerated the settling of two new domains within Texcoco's sphere of influence. Groups of immigrants were accommodated in Cuauhtitlan both before and after Cuauhtitlan became embroiled in a prolonged war with its neighbor, Xaltocan. And even as late as the 15th century, rulers seem to have desired to maintain or increase their populations. In two separate incidents, conquering paramounts sent messengers to defeated peoples fleeing their homes to assure them that they would be treated well and to urge them to return. If population growth had already reached a point of causing resource shortages and conflicts within and between domains, rulers would not have exacerbated the situation by granting still more people access to their local resources. If, on the other hand, rulers were primarily intent on surviving elite rivalry and commoner discontent, the open reception of immigrants becomes comprehensible. Like the conquest and incorporation of neighboring polities, it would have increased the number of tribute-paying commoners and the ruler's income without increasing the per capita tribute burden.
Warfare intensified during the 13th and 14th centuries. Its political benefits were always short-lived, and warfare itself created a situation that engendered more warfare. Over time, the nobles established as rulers in their own right gave rise to local dynasties with their own problems of internal conflict. Under the pressure of warfare, paramounts forged military alliances which decreased the number of domains available for incorporation and increased the number of individuals with whom the fruits of conquest had to be shared. Such alliances were often sealed by marriage between ruling lineages, completely intertwining the genealogies of the different ruling houses. This radically undermined the political stability of the small domains. The threat of usurpation became more serious because local nobles could draw support from their kinsmen who ruled in neighboring domains. And it became increasingly difficult to present a united resistance to attacks by outsiders because neighboring rulers bent on conquest could find allies among their kinsmen in the areas under attack. Wars of usurpation within a domain and wars of expansion between do- mains became different facets of a single phenomenon. I contend that it was the intensification of civil war, invasion, and shifting alliances that finally produced fundamental structural change in the Valley of Mexico political system.
AZTEC STATE FORMATION: STEP 1, COLLAPSE OF THE PRESTATE STRUCTURE
The late 13th through 14th centuries were a period of militaristic expansionism. Historical accident and local ecology seem to have favored the paramounts of mid- latitude domains within the valley. While the rulers of domains in the more densely settled south, the rulers of the closely allied domains of Coatlichan-Huexotla-Texcoco in the east and Azcapotzalco-Tlacopan in the west used their numerical superiority to dominate peoples of the less densely populated north (see Sanders, Parsons, and Santley 1979: 149-153 for a discussion of demographic variation within the Valley of Mexico during the 12th through 14th centuries).
Through the conquest and incorporation of the northern polities, the sizes of the mid-latitude domains increased to the point where they were able to defeat the larger southern communities. In the last years of the 14th century, Azcapotzalco defeated the northern domain of Xaltocan, and the scene was set for a final confrontation between Azcapotzalco and its allies in the west and Coatlichan-Huexotla-Texcoco in the east. The eastern powers were routed in 1418, and Azcapotzalco was established as the dominant power in the Valley of Mexico. Structurally, however, the Valley of Mexico political system remained un-changed. Azcapotzalco's hegemony was founded on an unstable complex of payoffs and alliances similar to those in the earlier petty kingdoms, and its power soon disintegrated. During the final year of Tezozomoc's long and successful reign over Azcapotzalco (1343-1426), a dispute arose among the Azcapotzalcan nobility over the preferential treatment given the rulers of Tenochtitlan and Tlatelolco, two of Tezozomoc's principal allies and both his lineal descendents (daughter's son and son's son, respectively). These rulers had enjoyed a reduction in the quantity of tribute they were required to pay the Azcapotzalcan ruler, and both had been named the recipients of tribute gathered from Texcoco, Huexotla, and Cuitlahuac. When Tezozomoc died, the factions to this dispute threw their support to different con- tenders for Azcapotzalco's paramount office. Maxtla, leader of the anti-Tenochtitlan- Tlatelolco faction and Tezozomoc's eldest son, managed to seize the paramount office, but the rulers of Tenochtitlan and Tlatelolco conspired with Maxtla's younger brother to usurp the throne. Maxtla discovered the plot and ordered the execution of both rulers. However, the structural basis of conflict between Maxtla as ruler of Azcapotzalco and the rulers of the allied but autonomous domains of Tenochtitlan and Tlatelolco remained.
In 1427, the conflict between Azcapotzalco and Tenochtitlan erupted into open warfare. Meanwhile, Maxtla lost control of the eastern side of the valley. Taking advantage of the successional disputes in the west, the rulers of Chalco supported the efforts of Nezahualcoyotl, the deposed heir of Texcoco, to recover his domain. This effort was successful. Nezahualcoyotl managed to dispose of his own half-brother and expel Azcapotzalco's administrators from the Coatlichan-Huexotla-Texcoco domains. The following year, Nezahualcoyotl and Itzcoatl (the current ruler of Tenochtitlan and Nezahualcoyotl's mother's brother) launched an offensive against Maxtla and his allies. Azcapotzalco was defeated in 1428. Itzcoatl quickly established control over the western and southern areas of the valley; Nezahualcoyotl reestablished his control in the east (where many of his nobles had rebelled in protest of the alliance with Tenochtitlan).
By 1434, the Valley of Mexico was again dominated by a single ruling clique; the paramounts of Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan had forged the Triple Alliance. The civil wars, invasions, and shifting alliances that marked the expansion of Azcapotzalco's power and its final disintegration had eliminated the cliquish nobilities of the local domains in the Valley of Mexico (Table I). Most high-ranking nobles had been assassinated, killed in warfare, or driven into exile, leaving only the low-ranking nobles of ruling families, all of whom had equally weak claims to the local paramount offices. The surviving nobles could only hope to win out against their rivals for local paramount offices by gaining the backing of the Triple Alliance rulers. Because so many high-ranking nobles had died almost simultaneously, throwing kingdom after kingdom into disputes over succession, no other alliances could be forged. Local resistance to Triple Alliance dominance was undermined as these lesser nobles competed with each other for the patronage of Triple Alliance paramounts. These paramounts took advantage of this situation to strengthen their administrations in ways that had never been possible before. This was the first step in the formation of the Aztec state.
AZTEC STATE FORMATION: STEP 2, ORGANIZATIONAL REFORM
The principle of rule by a local ruling lineage member was reaffirmed partly as a public relations gesture (Azcapotzalco's hegemony could then be disparaged as a tyranny that had deprived local paramounts of their rightful patrimonies), and partly as a stratagem for balancing the power of the nobility within Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan. Within the Tenochca sphere of influence, however, newly installed local rulers were forced to pay a price for Triple Alliance patronage: they were required to surrender rights to the produce of some of their patrimonial tribute fields to the ruler of Tenochtitlan. This loss of in- come to local rulers ensured their continued dependence on the patronage of Triple Alliance rulers and, at the same time, augmented the ability of Triple Alliance rulers to control their own nobles (for a description of the centralization of power within Tenochtitlan, see Rounds 1979).
In Tenochtitlan, loyal nobles were rewarded not with the administration of entire domains which might serve as a basis for the accumulation of power, but with the receipts of expropriated tribute fields allotted on a field-by-field basis. Tenochtitlan's ruler retained the majority of the fields for the support of the throne, but many others were distributed to individual nobles, specifically, the ruler's dynastic competitors: his sons, brothers, and the descendants of previous rulers. Thus, the ruler acquired wealth in excess of his nobles, and nobles came to share an interest in the perpetuation of Triple Alliance hegemony which would defend their access to tribute from the newly expropriated fields.
The distribution of tribute fields was determined by achievement in warfare as well as royal descent. This may have been a useful device for limiting the number of nobles who could put forward a legitimate claim to royal liberality, thus husbanding the paramount's wealth. It may also have created a division of interest among the nobles, preventing them from confronting the ruler as a unified class. At any rate, this distinction between nobles who had demonstrated military prowess and those who had not was formalized shortly after the defeat of Azcapotzalco by the award of honorary titles of distinguished noble warriors. At this time, too, the threat of usurpation by higher-ranking nobles was reduced by the creation of a four-member royal council. The members of this council were to share in the ruler's executive decision making, and all future rulers of Tenochtitlan were to be selected from among the council incumbents rather than from the nobility at large. In the first council, membership was conferred on the four men most likely to succeed: two of the paramount's brothers, and two sons of an earlier ruler of Tenochtitlan. Thus, four major collateral lines of the Tenochca nobility were given a voice in high-level decision making and prospects of succeeding to the paramount office. As designated heirs apparent, each of the council members would have jealously guarded against efforts by any of the other three to usurp rule.
Thus, the birth of Triple Alliance hegemony in the Valley of Mexico was accompanied by extensive and significant organizational reform. The reforms allocated administrative and economic power in ways that would ensure continuation of the political status quo. They did little to enhance the efficient flow of information to and the decision-making capability of the state. The administration of Tenochtitlan continued to be provided by a two-level hierarchy. The paramount and his nobles formulated policy; the ward chiefs carried it out. Communication between the paramount and the ward chiefs was effected by nobles who served as messengers of the paramount on an ad hoc basis. Regional administration did involve a three-level hierarchy; the policy decisions of the Triple Alliance paramounts were communicated to subordinate local rulers, and these rulers were expected to mobilize their own populations through communication with their ward chiefs. Still, there was little specialization of administrative personnel by task. True bureaucratic complexity did not emerge until some 30 years after the formation of the Triple Alliance, as the state began to consolidate its power by monitoring a greater range of activities.
AZTEC STATE FORMATION:
STEP 3, CONSOLIDATION OF POWER
Almost immediately after establishing control over the Valley of Mexico, the Triple Alliance initiated large-scale public works within the valley and expansionary conquests beyond. The last years of Itzcoatl's reign in Tenochtitlan were marked by the construction of a causeway linking Tenochtitlan with towns on the shore of Lake Xochimilco and by the conquest of towns in Morelos and northern Guerrero, more than 100 km south of the Valley of Mexico. Itzcoatl's successor, Moctezuma I (1440-1469), sponsored a major renovation of Huitzilopochtli's temple in Tenochtitlan, the construction of an extensive royal residence, of a dike spanning Lake Texcoco, of a canal that facilitated access to the market at Tlatelolco, and of an aqueduct that brought fresh water to Tenochtitlan from Chapultepec. Moctezuma's reign was also marked by ceaseless military activity. New conquests were made in Morelos, northern Guerrero, southern Hidalgo, the Valley of Oaxaca, Puebla, and Veracruz.
Much if not all of this activity seems to have been intended to solidify Triple Alliance power within the Valley of Mexico. As Tenochtitlan's population grew, the size of the army it could field against potentially rebellious neighbors increased and its dominance of the valley became more secure. The construction of causeways, canals, and aqueducts facilitated the transport of food and water to Tenochtitlan so that the city's population could grow and its political superiority be maintained. The causeways and aqueducts also served as dikes that defended the city's population from floods, and they enabled the Aztecs to control water levels in the southern lakebeds so that the entire area could be reclaimed for agricultural production. Lakebed agriculture came to supply over half of the food consumed by Tenochtitlan's population (Parsons 1976:250), and reclaimed agricultural land was used to satisfy the nobility's demand for individually allocated tribute receipts.
Conquest and tribute extraction from an ever-expanding area were also useful in maintaining Tenochtitlan's demographic preeminence in the Valley of Mexico. Tribute in foodstuffs from nearby provinces supplied another third of the food consumed by the city, and nonfood tribute goods such as cloth and obsidian apparently were circulated through the regional market system, which encouraged food production for market sale by the valley's rural populace. Moctezuma's conquests also included many towns that paid tribute primarily in luxury products and raw materials. These conquests seem to have been made to enable the Triple Alliance paramounts to satisfy the demand of nobles and subject rulers for high-prestige items. Such goods were acquired directly, through the extraction of tribute in finished goods, and indirectly, through the extraction of tribute in valuable raw materials that were converted into finished goods by Aztec craftsmen working under royal patronage. Luxury goods were also acquired through state-sponsored, long-distance trade, where goods procured through tribute extraction and the patronage of craftsmen were exchanged for goods originating in areas beyond the sphere of Triple Alliance conquests. State involvement in the procurement and distribution of high prestige goods may well have discouraged Tenochtitlan's nobility and the nobles of subject city-states from disrupting the existing power structure.
AZTEC STATE FORMATION:
STEP 4, BUREAUCRATIC COMPLEXITY
The initiation of public works and militaristic expansionism was accompanied by the gradual development of bureaucratic complexity. Although the native histories do not provide a step-by-step account of the process of bureaucratic elaboration, several sources indicate that significant administrative reforms were made during the reign of Moctezuma I. For example, Torquemada states that Moctezuma "ordered his house with great majesty, naming many and diverse officials and . . . increasing the number of priests and instituting some new positions and ceremonies." Tezozomoc remarks on several stages in the growth of administrative complexity in the area of tribute collection. Individuals responsible for the collection and storage of tribute (the calpixque) were at first selected by and responsible to the subordinate rulers of Moctezuma's domain. But by 1458, Moctezuma had assumed personal responsibility for naming these officials and had instituted an arrangement of Chimalpahin double staffing where two calpixque were appointed for each tribute-paying locale: one stationed at the site of tribute collection, the other stationed in Tenochtitlan, the site of tribute receipt. By 1462, the office of chief steward (petlacalcatl) had been established as a middle-level administrative post to supervise the performance of all the calpixque and to issue orders to them on Moctezuma's behalf. Durin (1967: II, 213) credits Moctezuma with having reformed the judicial system. Separate courts were established for nobles and commoners, and a high court was formed to which lower court decisions could be appealed. Moctezuma is also said to have instituted a set of sumptuary laws, among them an ordinance limiting the access of various persons to the different rooms in Moctezuma's palace. It is clear from Sahagn's (1956:II, 309-314) description of Tenochtitlan's royal residence that different rooms housed different segments of the ruler's administrative bureaucracy: the royal council and high court, the lower courts, various grades of military personnel, the constabulary, the heads of the young men's houses of the various wards, the petlacalcatl, the calpixque, and so forth. Hence, Moctezuma's sumptuary ordinance may mark the formal inception of discrete, functionally specific branches of administrative bureaucracy.”
- Elizabeth M. Brumfiel, “Aztec State Making: Ecology, Structure, and the Origin of the State Aztec,” American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 85, No. 2 (Jun., 1983), pp. 266-276.
Plates are from Codex Mendoza, 1542. Source.
