Originally published more than thirty years ago, this work has frequently been cited and utilized in recent scholarship dealing with Aztec society. It was one of the earliest of the modern works of revision, the result of which has been to discredit the Morgan-Bandelier concept of Aztec social organization and to substitute for it the more concrete, less theoretical, views of our own generation. The original edition of 1931 has long been out of print. This second edition is a republication of the first, without textual change.
The essential point in the political analysis is that Aztec government was not a military democracy, as Bandelier argued, but a unique system, military, theocratic, oligarchical, and with clear tendencies toward monarchy. In the analysis of society, Moreno questions the terms and units of Bandelier’s reconstructions, and describes the tribal and family organization in a way that derives directly from colonial sources. Bandelier, following Morgan’s lead, first elaborated a theory and then searched the sources for corroborating evidence, the result being a palpable distortion. By contrast, Moreno’s method is empirical and straightforward. It would be an error of another kind, of course, to regard Moreno’s as the definitive study of Aztec society, for it itself is now out of date, and its bibliographical substructure is limited. But it deserves attention as the major departure in the new direction and it remains an essential book for modern interpretations.
