Looking only at the case of the defeat of the Inca Empire
(as opposed to other societies like the Aztecs), the role of disease was that disease
made the Inca Empire disunited at the time when Pizarro came to South
America.
Not long before Pizarro's arrival, the Inca
emperor and most of his court, along with his heir, all died of smallpox. When that
happened, Atahuallpa and his half brother Huascar got into a fight over who should be
emperor next. This civil war divided the empire and made it much weaker than it would
have been if the disease had not hit.
Thus, disease helped
to split the Inca Empire by killing the emperor and causing a civil war over who should
be the next emperor.
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