Why did the Spanish Conquer the Inca and Aztec Empires.?

The Aztecs had it coming. Their society was in decline and they were hated by all their neighbours who were just waiting for an opportunity to even up the score. The Spanish really just acted as a catalyst to accelerate their collapse.

The Inca conquest is a far more unlikely and astonishing event in my opinion. The Aztec Empire covered a portion of modern day Mexico, the Inca Empire covered the whole backbone of South America. The Inca were a more advanced society both socially and technologically, and to me their fate is rather more saddening.

So, why did the Spanish do it? Well I suppose the flippant answer is because they could, but there's still a certain degree of truth in that.

In Europe the Spanish were a warrior people fresh from conquering the Moors and they were used to winning. They were a wealthy Kingdom on the ascendency and utterly brimming with self confidence. Their adventures in the Caribbean had been utterly one sided so they were entering the American mainland already expecting the natives to be primitive and inferior. The Spanish, and specifically Cortez were in the New World believing passionately in two things:

1: This land was full of riches.

2: God had meant for the Spanish to Christianise and rule the heathens.

Not a good combination when dealing with any aggressive society.

Spanish military technology and tactics were significantly more advanced than those of their quasi-stone age opponents but that played rather less of a role than is often portrayed. Cannons and horses certainly made a great impression on the natives but were usually far too few in number to make a significant difference in battle. Cortez made easy allies of the Aztec's local enemies and had many thousands of natives fighting alongside them. It was sheer bloody mindedness on the part of the Spanish that carried them forward in their eventual war. They fought with a brutality and tenacity with which the garland warriors of the Aztecs were not accustomed. Many Aztec wars were fast moving engagements concerned with gaining tribute and prisoners. The Spanish used shock tactics, and siege warfare to stun and then wear down their opponents. In the battle for Tenochtitlan, the Aztecs were at something of a loss in the face of a old world style siege out and they quickly began to die of famine as their city was reduced to rubble around them.

With Francisco Pizarro and his conquest of the Incas, a small bunch of Spanish treasure hunters somehow managed to bring an ancient empire crashing down overnight. They did it by meeting and then kidnapping the Inca Emperor and exposed the one fatal flaw of the whole regime - total centralisation. Without it's ruler to govern the whole Inca state just seemed to fold up as the Spanish walked over it. By the time the remaining Inca had woken up to the existential threat posed by the Spanish mounting a desperate resistance, the Conquistadors had bolstered their ranks with local warriors and moved quickly to take the Inca capital of Cusco. The Spanish used what remained of the Inca civil service there to seize control of the reigns of power.

Because when Columbus arrived many years before, he brought with him diseases that the native population had no immunity to. So for a generation BEFORE the Spanish conquest, disease ravaged the populations of North and South America. Between syphilis and small pox most of the population was wiped out and the empires were only a shadow of their pre 1492 power and were easily overwhelmed.

they had things... they wanted things.. the stereotypes of how spanish and africans steal is traced back quite a ways.. not racist just ironic

The "Three Gs"... Gold, God & Greed.

Because they were asking for it.