onkings

by Faun Rice

  that represent the submission of distant peoples. Strategically redistributed,

  conspicuously consumed, or offered to the gods, the valuables of the aristocratic

  economy sustain the greater order of the kingdom—not least by sustaining its

  ruling powers-that-be.7

  6. Likewise. the merchants usually owned their stocks-in-trade and craftsmen owned

  their tools, workshops, and raw materials (Calnek 1974: 194).

  7. “Those who create and/or acquire goods and benefits from some dimension of the

  cosmological outside are not only providing goods and benefits per se but also are

  presenting tangible evidence that they themselves possess or command the unique

  qualities and ideals generally expected in persons who have ties with distant places

  THE STRANGER-KINGSHIP OF THE MEXICA

  233

  I have indulged on this account of stranger-kingship particularly because, as

  will be described presently, the Mexica of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries

  underwent a revolution from above that produced a classic version of it. The

  summary of the galactic polity which follows will also be useful in this regard,

  since its structures and dynamics were clearly in play in this creation of a Toltec

  aristocracy ruling over a Chichimec peasantry.

  Stanley Tambiah introduced the galactic polity as a worldly realization of

  the cosmological mandala form well known in South and Southeast Asia.8

  Here was a scheme of creation spreading “from a refined center outwards and

  a refined summit downwards, each outer reality or circle being a progressively

  weaker representation of the preceding . . . grosser in constitution and more

  imprisoned on sensory pursuits and desires” (1985: 322). By further reference to

  famous Buddhist and Hindu texts on universal Cakkavatti and Devaraja kings

  of kings, Tambiah transposed the cosmic dynamics to a political register:

  We are told that the wheel-rolling emperor solemnly invokes the wheel to roll

  outward; the wheel rolls successively to the East, the South, the North, and the

  West. As the mighty monarch with his fourfold army appeared in each quarter

  following the wheel, the rival kings prostrated themselves in submission. The

  cakkavatti allowed them to retain their possessions on the condition of obser-

  vance of the five moral principles binding on Buddhist layman. (1976: 45–46)

  When Tambiah still further objectifies the model in terms of actual galactic

  polities, more needs to be said: for instance, some further notice of the progres-

  sive reduction in the imperial center’s hegemonic power as it moves to periph-

  eral sectors of the galaxy, where tributary dues may have to be exacted by force.

  In this respect, the reach of the center is typically beyond its political grasp:

  not only in that the galactic potentate usually claims a greater domain than he

  rules; but also in that his grandeur and divine potency are known to the peoples

  of supernatural origins and, therefore, are themselves ‘second creators.’ Evidence of

  inalienable connections with places of cosmological origins thus conveys a certain

  sacrality which readily translates into political-ideological legitimacy and facilitates

  successful exercise of power” (Helms 1993: 49–50).

  8. The galactic polity as Tambiah described it is essentially the same as the core–

  periphery “world systems” of premodern civilizations analyzed by Ekholm, Friedman,

  and colleagues, and the “segmentary state” concept developed by Aidan Southall,

  among other, similar regional hierarchies otherwise identified (see chapter 6).

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  ON KINGS

  beyond, in distant and uncontrolled hinterlands. This imagined imperium of the

  galactic outer reaches is an important factor in the attraction and movement of

  peripheral peoples toward the “high cultures” of core regions—like the move-

  ment of the Chichimecs into the Valley of Mexico, apparently taking advantage

  of a weakening Tollan.

  Among Tambiah’s historical examples of galactic polities is the fourteenth-

  century realm of Sukhothai (Sukhodaya), a kingdom in the Upper Chao Phraya

  Valley of Siam that flourished under immigrant Tai rulers who had replaced an

  earlier Mon dynasty (Tambiah 1976). Incidentally and coincidently, a number

  of Tai peoples had poured into and taken over Southeast Asian valleys from

  their original homeland redoubt in the southern borderlands of China, rather

  in the same way (and the same direction) the Chichimec groups established

  themselves in the Valley. In certain respects, Sukhothai’s own success was also

  like the Mexica’s god-driven ascent to power, including a history of competi-

  tive relations with other kingdoms within its own galactic system and beyond.

  Aided by the importation of Sinhalese Buddhist concepts of universal kingship

  and a famous image of the Buddha that became the palladium of their rule, the

  Tai sovereigns of Sukhothai transformed their realm from a tertiary outpost of

  the Khmer kingdom of Angkor Wat in Cambodia to the independent ruler of a

  number of other principalities in the region, even as they developed pretensions

  of empire in regions beyond.

  The Sukhothai capital was a mandala in itself: centered in the royal pal-

  ace and principal temples, quartered by roads laid out in the cardinal direc-

  tions, and encircled by three concentric ramparts. This was the area of direct

  administrative control by the Sukhothai king. Beyond were further concentric

  zones marked by diminishing powers of the center and weakening versions of

  its royal forms and practices. The sphere immediately outside the capital zone

  consisted of four major provinces ( muang), governed by sons of the king from

  secondary centers situated in the cardinal directions. Beyond lay an outer ring

  of more or less independent kingdoms controlled by their own traditional rul-

  ers—whose allegiance to the Sukhothai ruler was often problematic. For all

  that the layout of the Sukhothai realm in the cardinal directions signified a

  universal extension of the ruler’s authority, the monarch’s hegemonic ambitions

  exceeded his real-political powers. For that matter, like all the Southeast Asian

  potentates claiming to be the king of kings, the Sukhothai monarch periodi-

  cally sent tributes to the Chinese emperor for the purpose of legitimating his

  authority relative to rival princes and vassal kings within his own domains as

  THE STRANGER-KINGSHIP OF THE MEXICA

  235

  well as the rulers of rival galactic regimes—who likewise affected cosmocratic

  titles: for example, the erstwhile tributary kingdom of Ayutthaya—reputedly

  founded by a Chinese merchant prince—which defeated and absorbed Suk-

  hothai in the early fifteenth century. The Ayutthaya rulers created a Siamese

  imperium of their own, achieved recognition from the Chinese emperor, and

  claimed authority over such distant realms they could not rule as the important

  sultanate of Melaka in the Malay Peninsula. A great commercial empire in its

  own right, Melaka was ruled by descendants of Alexander the Great in his Ko-

  ranic persona of Iskandar D’zul Karnain (C. C. E. Brown 1952). That is another

  story, illustrative of many aspects of stranger-kingship, includ
ing the practice

  known in Mesoamerica where, rather than strangers becoming native kings,

  native kings sometimes become strangers: that is, they take on the identities of

  legendary world-historical rulers.

  If you will forgive the English pun, galactic systems are marked by a politics

  of “upward nobility,” whereby the chiefs of satellite areas assume the politi-

  cal statuses, courtly styles, titles, and even genealogies of their superiors in the

  regional hierarchy—who for their part imitate the galactic hegemon, while the

  latter, in invidious contrast to ambitious vassals and rival emperors, claims to

  rule the world. In the event, the structural effect is a certain “galactic mime-

  sis,” insofar as peripheral groups assume the polities and cosmologies of their

  regional superiors. Recall Edmund Leach’s descriptions in The political systems

  of Highland Burma (1954) of hinterland Kachin chiefs who “become Shan,”

  acquiring the cultural trappings and political backing of Shan princes—even as

  the Shan princes retire to their Burmese or Chinese palaces and the lifestyles of

  their own imperial paragons. For all the apparent delusions of grandeur, these

  pretensions could be calculated political moves, as when a highland Kachin

  chief marries a daughter of a lowland Shan prince, perhaps acquiring a Shan

  title as well as making himself a client of his princely father-in-law. As Leach

  tells, this did not make him any less a Kachin chief, but potentially too much of

  one in the view of his countrymen—who would then be inclined to rebel and

  return to an egalitarian state.

  These upward moves in the galactic hierarchy are typically motivated by

  competition with immediate rivals in a given political field, who are thus

  trumped by the chief who goes beyond the shared structures of authority by

  adopting a politics of higher order. Gregory Bateson (1935, 1958) called this

  “symmetrical schismogenesis,” a type of conflict that works on the principle that

  “anything you can do I can do better.” Competition of this kind occurs within

  236

  ON KINGS

  and between groups at all levels of the galactic system, including the attempts

  of subordinate groups to displace their superiors. As we shall see momentarily,

  it marks the ascent of the Mexica of Tenochtitlan from their contest for supe-

  riority with the fraternal town of Tlatelolco to the overthrow of their Tepanec

  imperial predecessors, the Mexica rulers taking progressively greater titles at

  critical junctures along the way. Such practices of galactic mimesis suggest that

  the upward and inward movement of groups such as the Mexica or Banyoro

  from the barbarian periphery to the imperial core may well be anticipated in

  structural form before it is achieved in historical practice. Indeed, the Mexica of

  the long march from Aztlan were an agricultural people, not simply Chichimec

  hunters, and they had paramount leaders before the institution of a Toltec king-

  ship. Taken together with the imposition of kingly forms and practices from the

  center in the course of extending its rule, the dynamics of galactic polities are at

  once centrifugal and centripetal, involving displacements of power and culture

  in both directions.

  In the event, the galactic polity becomes a main forcing ground of stranger-

  king formations, both as emanating from the politics of the center and as emu-

  lating the center from the peripheries. Regarding the former, the fal out from

  fratricidal battles royal among princes contending for the rule of the center

  is a major source of the spread of stranger-kingdoms to outlying sectors of

  galactic regimes—and beyond that, into the barbarian fringe. At least some

  of the princes who fail to win the crown, including some for whom discretion

  was always the better part of valor, are then likely to move to peripheral regions

  where they can establish kingdoms of their own, whether as dependencies of

  their homeland or as autonomous realms. Hence the constitution of society

  as previously implied, consisting of a single royal kindred or lineage spread

  over a set of diverse native communities. A similar effect is achieved where the

  galactic hegemon establishes his sons as rulers of dependent provinces. This

  practice is usually confined to areas in and near the capital, however; in the out-

  er regions, particularly among peoples of other cultural and ethnic identities,

  the local kings are normal y left in charge of their traditional domains. (The

  long-reigning ruler of the Tepanec empire, Tezozomoc, seems to have been

  an exception, instal ing many of his sons as kings of subordinate cities such as

  Tlatelolco, where they gave rise to new dynasties.) Here it is worth remarking

  that the greater galactic systems often called “empires” in the historical litera-

  ture were primarily regional systems of tribute collection rather than unified,

  bureaucratically ruled regimes. Apart from the supervision of tributary dues,

  THE STRANGER-KINGSHIP OF THE MEXICA

  237

  they were not directly administered by officials from the capital; even in the

  aftermath of a conquest, it was often more politic to leave the kings and chiefs

  of the outlying sectors in place.9 The only problems came when these chiefs did

  not know their place and defiantly took on great ambitions and exalted titles

  of their own.

  Another mode of stranger-king formation from below is what Fijians call

  “to beg a chief ” ( kere turaga), that is, to solicit a ruling chief of their own from

  a higher and greater power, most commonly a son of a renowned ruler of the

  region. Perhaps the best-known African example concerns the ruling dynasty of

  Benin, founded by a Yoruba prince who had been granted by the ruler of fabled

  Ile Ife on the request of the Benin elders (Bradbury 1967). Then there were the

  elders of Israel, who, when besieged by dissension within and enemies without,

  petitioned Samuel to have a king, “that we may be like all other nations; and

  that our king may judge us, and go out before us, and fight our battles” (Samuel

  I 8:20). Put out because he was not deemed sufficient to rule his own chosen

  people, God instructed Samuel to tell the Israelites if they got a king they’d

  be truly sorry; and although Samuel laid it on about the evils of kingly power,

  the Israelites insisted, and the omnipotent God had to give in. You will recog-

  nize the origins of the Mixteca stranger-king in the person of Acamapichtli,

  solicited by the elders from the ruler of Culhuacan in (suspiciously) similar

  terms: “We are all alone and forsaken by all nations. We are guided only by our

  god. . . . We must have a ruler to guide us, to direct us, to show us how we are

  to live, who will free us, who will defend us and protect us from our enemies”

  (Duran 1994: 49). Alternatively, a native chief may simply claim membership in

  a dominant or legendary foreign dynasty: the way that certain “barbarian” rulers

  on the Chinese borderlands took on prestigious Han ancestry (Backus 1981);

  or certain Gaulish leaders claimed descent in the Julian or Augustan line of

  Roman emperors (Drinkwater 1978). Nor were the Mexica kings the only rul-

  ers of Chichi
mec origins to appropriate a Toltec identity, but as that ambitious

  move was most fateful for the history of Mexico, I conclude by considering it

  in a bit more detail.10

  9. This was certainly the case of the Mexica “empire” (cf. Calnek 1982).

  10. Cf. Ixtlilxóchitl (1840); Tezozomoc (1853); Sahagún (1953–82, 8 and 10); Soustelle

  (1964); Davies (1974, 1977, 1980); Bray (1978); Clendinnen (1991); Nicholson

  (2001); E. de J. Douglas (2010).

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  ON KINGS

  CHICHIMECA AND TOLTECA

  The stranger-kingship developed by the Mexica in the fourteenth century was

  not only typical in form; it was motivated, at least in part, by a classic dynamic of

  galactic systems: a schismatic rivalry among compatriot adversaries, leading one

  faction to put down the other by appropriating a higher political form drawn from

  the larger region. I mean Tenochtitlan’s conflict with the fel ow Mexica commu-

  nity of Tlatelolco. That Tlateloco originated by splitting off from Tenochtitlan

  indicates their relationship had been antagonistic from the beginning (Duran

  1994: 47). As recounted in the Codex Ramirez, when the elders of Tenochtitlan

  decided they needed a king of their own, and such as they had never had, it

  was because of “the seditious activities of their co-citizens at Tlatelolco” (Ranirez

  1903: 37). According to Frey Duran, the Tenochca feared that Tlatelolco was out

  to dominate them, and by obtaining a king they proposed rather to turn the tables

  and rule their Mexica fellows. Although that didn’t happened for some time—the

  Tlatelolco people refused to acknowledge Tenochtitlan’s rule, and soon enough

  they solicited their own stranger-king in the person of a son of the Tepaneca

  ruler Tezozomoc—by a characteristic process of symmetrical schismogenesis, the

  Tenochca did get a king like the other nations. And apart from the quarrel with

  Tlatelolco, this king could stand the Tenochca in good stead in relation to the

  Tepanec rulers of Azcapotzalco on whose land they were squatting.

  The problematic relation of the Mexica to their Tepaneca overlords in Azca-

  potzalco was the other part of the motivation of the Mexica elders in begging

  a ruler from Culhacan. At least the Tepaneca must have thought so, for they

  promptly doubled the Tenochtitlan’s tributary obligations, including imposing