The Aztec Trading System

When the Spanish arrived in Mexico, they found that the mighty Aztec Empire controlled a vast territory and subdued many of its neighboring tribes. Unlike the empires the Spanish were familiar with, the Aztec Empire was not built on trade. Indeed, the Aztecs had a much smaller merchant class than the Spanish were used to in Europe. Why didn’t the Aztecs have more extensive trading networks and how were they able to organize such an empire without trade?

The Aztec Empire was built by brute force and held together with the violent repression of the Aztec’s neighbors. As conquerers, the Aztecs exacted tribute from neighboring tribes. This ritualistic tribute system was responsible for most of the exchange of goods within the empire. Obviously, the were a free market because the Aztecs had to move foodstuffs from the country to the cities. Cities of tens of thousands of people cannot feed themselves without trade. This trade was limited, however. Most goods ended up in Tenochtitlan and many more goods went there than came from there.

The Aztec traders were limited by their lack of beasts of burden. An individual can only carry so much on the backs but without many navigable rivers or port cities or any beasts of burden, this was the only way to get goods to market. The only pack animal native to the Americas is the llama of South America. There are no animals useful for trade native to the former Aztec Empire. They might have been able to substitute animal power for human power if they had made better use of the wheel, but they never developed carts or wagons either. One of the great ironies of the Aztecs is that they had the wheel, but used it only in children’s toys. It apparently never occurred to them to use it to make transportation easier.

Further, Aztec traders did not have as much incentive to trade as did their European counterparts because they did not stand to make much of a profit. For the most part, they were agents of their governments and participated in a tributary, not commercial, system of trade. They did not even have a standardized monetary system to work with. Obviously, these obstacles, some environmental, some cultural made it difficult for the Aztecs to maintain control of the trade once the Spanish arrived.

Intuitively, one would think that the Aztecs would have built cities along the coasts so that they could at least trade by boat up and down the coast. They did not, however, and stayed mostly in the mountains despite the hindrance the geography was to trade. This illustrates that trade was not that important to the Aztecs. As long as they could maintain control of their neighbors and continue receiving tribute from them, they did not care if it is difficult to get that tribute to the capital.