The Aztec Empire

The people we call Aztec called themselves Mexica. They migrated into the Valley of Mexico in the 13th century, eventually founding their capital Tenochtitlan around 1325 on small islands in Lake Texcoco. By the late 1400s, the Mexica and their allies (the Triple Alliance with Tlacopan and Texcoco) controlled an empire across central Mexico, ruling 5 to 6 million people through tribute extraction. The empire was held together by the threat of military force; conquered peoples paid tribute in goods (gold, cocoa, cotton, feathers) and human sacrifices. The system created enormous wealth at the imperial center but also widespread resentment that the Spanish would later exploit.

Tenochtitlan, the capital, was an engineering marvel. Built on islands and connected to the mainland by causeways, it had perhaps 200,000 inhabitants at its peak, larger than any European city of the time. Aqueducts brought fresh water from springs. Floating gardens (chinampas) grew food in the surrounding lake. The Templo Mayor, a massive stepped pyramid at the city center, was the focus of religious life. When the Spanish arrived in 1519, conquistadors compared the city to legendary Venice and Constantinople. After the conquest of 1521, Spanish settlers demolished much of Tenochtitlan and built Mexico City on its ruins; many archaeological finds have been made beneath modern Mexico City in recent decades.

Aztec religion centered on a complex pantheon including Huitzilopochtli (god of war and the sun, the patron of the Mexica), Tlaloc (rain), Quetzalcoatl (the feathered serpent associated with knowledge and wind), and many others. The Mexica believed the sun needed human blood to keep moving across the sky; this theological framework justified large-scale human sacrifice, particularly of war captives. Modern scholarship has debated the scale of sacrifice (some Spanish accounts almost certainly exaggerated to justify conquest, while archaeology confirms it was substantial). However interpreted, religion was central to imperial ideology and to the political relationships among Mexica, vassals, and rivals.

The Aztec Empire was one of the most powerful states in the Americas at the time of European contact. The next lesson covers the Spanish conquest and what came after.