>>17900662
cont:
In short, as I said, I don't think the Mexica are especially, uniquely bad: They were maybe more classist and sexist and prudish then other Mesoamerican groups, but it's a difference of degrees, and not worse then how I understand much of Europe and parts of Asia were like in those respects at the time
They were absolutely conquerors, but compared to other big militaristic kingdoms or empires, they were not especially brutal in their campaigns nor were they particularly oppressive in how they ruled those places after the fact, both by Mesoamerican standards (the Classic Maya seems to have done total warfare/sacks more often, the Purepecha Empire did more hands on administration over conquered regions etc) and as I understand it Eurasian standards
They did more human sacrifice then probably any other society in history, but then you get into the question of if it's really any worse then other forms of religious killings (the Cathar purge or especially the Thirty Years War almost certainly killed more people each then the Mexica ever sacrificed), how much of Mexica sacrifices were a distinct total from general casualties of war, and religious killings in general are worse then other ones etc
But, like, they did still sacrifice people and did still wage tons of wars, so they're not "good" either
Also I forgot to talk about slavery (pic related and my last image make more sense for the opposite posts now): it was a notable part of Mexica society but in contrast to say the Romans or the US, it was not as big an institution, in that a lower percentage of Tenochtitlan's population were slaves (1-2%, IIRC), slaves were domestic servants rather then laborers, and slavery was, at least in theory, a non-permanent social status rather then a firm class: You could buy yourself out of (or sell yourself into) slavery, slaves could still own property, had a decent amount of rights, etc, tho there's debate about how much of that really worked in practice
3/?
