Tenochtitlan 1519–21 : Clash of Civilizations

H.G. Wells was using science fiction to make a serious point. His saga plays out in a contemporary England invaded – and defeated – by the superior technology of an alien expeditionary force that arrived unheralded in a fleet of ships from a point of origin unimaginably distant. What ensues is a war of extermination; the interlopers are the vanguard of a colonial project intended to reshape our world in their image. Wells was trying to bring home to Victorian readers, the beneficiaries of imperialism, what life was like on the receiving end of that process.

The indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica needed no such literary
metaphor. They had been living that reality for generations, ever since their mightiest nation, the Mexica of Tenochtitlan, had been humbled by the superior technology of an alien expeditionary force that arrived unheralded in a fleet of ships from a point of origin unimaginably distant.