Aztec Empire

The Aztec Empire was the dominant power of central Mexico in the century before the Spanish conquest, a tributary empire ruled by the Mexica people from their island capital of Tenochtitlan.

It originated in 1428 with the formation of the Triple Alliance, a coalition of the city-states of Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan, which together overthrew the Tepanec hegemony of Azcapotzalco that had previously dominated the Valley of Mexico. Although Tenochtitlan, founded by the Mexica in 1325 on islands in Lake Texcoco, became the dominant partner and the seat of imperial power, the alliance partners shared in the spoils of conquest. The empire expanded rapidly through a combination of military conquest, intimidation, and alliance under a succession of rulers, beginning with Itzcoatl and guided by the influential statesman Tlacaelel, who reshaped Mexica ideology and history. Rather than directly administering its conquests, the empire generally left local rulers in place in exchange for regular tribute in goods, foodstuffs, textiles, precious materials, and captives, the last destined in part for the large-scale human sacrifice that was central to Aztec state religion and its elaborate cosmology and calendar. Under rulers such as Moctezuma I and his successors the empire extended its reach across central Mexico to both the Gulf and Pacific coasts, dominating hundreds of tributary towns. By the reign of Moctezuma II, the empire was at its greatest extent, and Tenochtitlan had grown into one of the largest cities in the world, a planned metropolis of canals, causeways, chinampa agriculture, markets, and monumental temples that astonished the Spanish on their arrival. The empire fell with remarkable speed after the arrival of Hernán Cortés in 1519. Exploiting resentment among subject peoples, Cortés allied with the Tlaxcalans and other enemies of the Mexica, and after the death of Moctezuma II and fierce fighting, the Spanish and their vast indigenous allied forces, aided by devastating epidemic disease, captured Tenochtitlan and its last ruler Cuauhtémoc on 13 August 1521, ending the empire.

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