Best Books on the Aztec Economy and Market System

When Hernan Cortes's soldiers first saw the market at Tlatelolco in 1519, they were speechless. Bernal Diaz del Castillo, who was there, wrote that some of his companions had been to Constantinople and Rome, and had never seen a marketplace so well organized, so large, or so full of people. Contemporary estimates put the daily number of traders at 50,000 to 60,000. The Aztec economy was not a primitive barter system. It was a sophisticated commercial and redistributive network that sustained a capital city of 200,000 to 300,000 people, the largest in the Western hemisphere and one of the largest in the world. ## The Triple Alliance Economy The Aztec state, more accurately called the Triple Alliance of Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan, operated a dual economic system. Tribute flowed up from conquered territories to the capital: cotton cloth, cacao, jade, feathers, rubber, gold, and food. But markets also operated independently of tribute, with professional merchants called pochteca trading across vast distances and bringing luxury goods from as far as the Gulf Coast, the Pacific, and Central America. These two systems, tribute redistribution and market exchange, worked together. Tribute supplied the state and the elite. Markets supplied everyone else, and also provided the mechanisms by which tribute goods circulated back into the economy. Understanding how they interacted is the central question of Aztec economic history. ## Essential Reading ### The Aztecs by Michael Smith Smith's 2003 survey is the best modern introduction to Aztec society and covers the economy in detail proportionate to its importance. His chapters on markets, merchants, tribute, and daily economic life draw on extensive archaeological research at provincial Aztec sites, giving a picture that goes beyond the capital to include how ordinary farmers, artisans, and traders participated in the economic system. Smith is careful to separate what the sources actually say from what has been assumed or romanticized. [The Aztecs by Michael Smith on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1405102209?tag=31813-20) ### Daily Life of the Aztecs by Jacques Soustelle Soustelle's 1961 book, based on the major sixteenth-century sources including the Florentine Codex, is an older work but remains useful for its detailed account of economic life at all levels of Aztec society. The chapters on artisans, merchants, and the organization of the Tlatelolco market draw directly on Sahagun's ethnographic accounts of pre-conquest life, making it one of the most source-grounded accounts available to general readers. [Daily Life of the Aztecs on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0804702020?tag=31813-20) ## The Tlatelolco Market Tlatelolco was technically a separate city from Tenochtitlan, located on the northern end of the same island in Lake Texcoco. Its market was the commercial heart of the Aztec world. Goods were organized by type into separate sections: cloth in one area, food in another, pottery, tools, medicinal herbs, slaves, and luxury items each in their own zone. Inspectors circulated to enforce standards and settle disputes. Prices were set by negotiation rather than fixed by the state, though the state maintained the market's physical infrastructure and legal order. The market operated on a five-day cycle, with a major market day every five days when trade volume peaked. Beyond Tlatelolco, a network of regional markets served the broader population, with smaller markets in dependent cities operating on their own cycles to ensure that trade was accessible throughout the week across the region. ## Cacao as Currency One of the most studied questions in Aztec economic history is the role of cacao beans as currency. Cacao was used as a medium of exchange in markets, as a unit of account for pricing goods, and as a form of tribute payment. A turkey cost 100 cacao beans. A cotton cloak cost 65. A canoe load of fresh water in Tenochtitlan (the city had no fresh water source) cost 5. Frances Berdan's work on Aztec economy and trade provides the most thorough account of how monetary exchange worked in a society that had no metal coinage. ## After the Conquest The Spanish conquest of 1519-1521 did not immediately destroy the Aztec economic system. Cortes was shrewd enough to maintain the Tlatelolco market because he needed it to supply his own army. Tribute systems were adapted rather than abolished, with Spanish encomenderos replacing Aztec lords as the recipients. But the population collapse caused by epidemic disease, estimated at 50-90% over the following century, transformed everything. A commercial system that had sustained 25 million people contracted along with the population that sustained it. ## Further Reading For more titles on Mesoamerican history and ancient civilizations, browse the [history category](/category/history) on Skriuwer.