The rule of empires : those who built them, those who endured them, and why they always fall (26 page)

Similarly, the relatively simple Iberian economy was ill equipped to

handle the fl ood of New World precious metals. This unearned wealth

pushed up the cost of living and discouraged economic diversifi cation

as cheaper imports drove local products out of metropolitan markets.

While most Spaniards had no direct stake in the Americas, conquistadors such as Cortés and Pizarro profi ted enormously from the new

empire. Working through Pizarro’s brother Hernando as their representative in Spain, the Pizarrists acquired extensive farms, pastures,

and urban holdings in their home region of Trujillo. Most of them,

including Francisco, died violently in Peru, but Hernando brought the

family into the ranks of Spanish aristocracy. Nobles detested these

common upstarts, but money trumped lineage in the new Spain.

The Pizarrists typifi ed the special interest groups that enriched

themselves through self-serving imperial adventures at the expense

of the metropolitan population. Many contemporary Spaniards were

openly critical of their new American empire. They did not share Las

Casas’s concern for the rights of indigenous Americans; rather they

charged that speculators and foreigners were bleeding Spain of its

rightful patrimony. In 1548, a Castilian councilman unknowingly

acknowledged the exploitive and infl ationary nature of Spanish rule

when he complained that “Spain has become an Indies for the foreigner.”20 In other words, just as the conquistadors wrung treasure

out of New World populations, the imperial interests drained this

same wealth from Spain, albeit through far less brutal tactics.

In the New World, the Inkas were equally outraged over the reversal of fortune that made them imperial subjects. Far from being in a

state of decay at the time of Pizarro’s arrival in Peru, they were the

ruling class of a dynamic empire that was solidifying its hold over

newly conquered lands stretching from modern Ecuador to Chile.

The Pizarrists could never have ruled the enormous population of

the central Andes if the Inkans had not fi rst transformed them into

exploitable imperial subjects. The Inkas’ rapid fall illustrated one of

the fundamental realities of empire building: empires themselves

were particularly vulnerable to conquest and subjugation. By necessity, imperial states created well-ordered bureaucratic and extractive

machinery that could be taken over easily by even more powerful

conquerors. Moreover, an empire’s disenfranchised subjects had little

incentive to risk their lives and property defending an oppressive

Spanish

Peru 133

foreign regime. This was a lesson that the Inkas learned well in the

aftermath of Cajamarca.

Although the Spanish conquest made it appear fragile and

short-lived, the Inka Empire was actually the product of centuries of

imperial consolidation in the Andes. Prior to the Spanish conquest,

the peoples of the highlands identifi ed themselves primarily on the

basis of their home region. These local ethnic polities or
ayllus
were

paramount, and each had its own protecting spirits, known as
wakas
,

that inhabited the rivers, lakes, forests, and mountains around the

community. Despite their local particularism, Andeans also shared

a common social framework that made their individual cultures

mutually intelligible. In this sense, the Andean highlands resembled pre-Roman Britain with the Inkans playing the role of imperial

conquerors.

The Inkans were not the fi rst empire builders in the Andes. While

the Umayyads were overrunning most of the Mediterranean world

in the early seventh century, a centralized power that archaeologists

have labeled the Wari Empire was expanding throughout southern

and central Peru. Further south, a civilization known as Tiwanaku

built stepped pyramids and agricultural terraces around Lake Titicaca in a region roughly corresponding to modern Bolivia. Able to

mobilize labor on a substantial scale, these were centralized, if not

imperial, states. Together they developed many of the bureaucratic

and technological innovations that facilitated Inkan empire building.

Unfortunately, they left no historical records, but archaeological evidence suggests that central authority in the highlands collapsed in

the tenth or eleventh century, thereby allowing subject states and

ayllus
to reclaim their autonomy.

It seems that the Inkas were originally one of these small ethnic

polities. Archaeological remains of warfare and fortifi cations reinforce Inkan oral traditions suggesting that they expanded gradually

but militarily from their central city of Cuzco during the anarchy and

disorder of the twelfth century. Overall, there seems to have been a

trend toward political recentralization, but it is diffi cult to determine

precisely what inspired Andean empire building in the centuries

before the Spanish arrival. The endemic warfare of the period appears

to have been driven by population growth, drought, and competition

for productive land, but dynastic ambitions of individual rulers were

probably also factors.

134 THE RULE OF EMPIRES

Andean tradition held that a legendary ruler named Manqu

Qhapaq founded the Inkan state in Cuzco and that the following

eleven Sapa Inkas built it into an empire during the fi fteen and

sixteenth centuries. But archaeological evidence suggests that Manqu

Qhapaq and the next seven rulers were mythical fi gures and the process of state formation in Cuzco took longer than a mere ten generations. Either way, Pachakutiq Yupanki, the ninth Sapa Inka, was the

fi rst historically verifi able sovereign. Coming to power in 1438, he

conquered most of the region around Cuzco and established many

of the ideological institutions that underpinned Inkan empire building. His claim of direct descent from the sun god provided moral and

political legitimacy for the imperial regime, as did the deifi cation of

previous Sapa Inkas, whose cults and mummies continued to play a

role in court politics.

Pachakutiq’s son and grandson drew on these divinely sanctioned

imperial ideologies during the Inkan conquest of the Pacifi c coastal

plain and the rest of the Andean highlands. By the time Pizarro

arrived in Cajamarca in 1532, the Inkas had an empire encompassing most of the Andes and more than one hundred million subjects.

They accomplished this feat without the wheel, a system of writing,

or knowledge of the arch.

Like all empire builders, the Inkas assembled their enormous

imperial state through conquest. Armed with stone and bronzetipped weapons, they had no clear tactical or technological advantage

over neighboring Andean states and communities. Instead, their victories appear to have come through unalloyed aggression and superior organizational and logistical strategies that allowed them to fi eld

huge armies. Lacking the wheel, the Inkas relied on slow-moving

llama trains for their transport, but they exploited and expanded an

impressive network of roads, bridges, causeways, and drainage canals

inherited from their imperial predecessors to move troops quickly

and effi ciently. Strategically placed imperial warehouses (
qollqas
)

stocked with food, clothing, and weapons allowed Inkan forces to

travel lightly and campaign without having to live off the land.

All told, the Inkas appear to have been constantly at war for the

century preceding the Spanish conquest. Their armies overran the

highlands with relative ease, but the forests were more diffi cult.

Like the Romans, they struggled to subdue less settled “barbarian” frontier peoples. The Inkas were most successful in yoking

Spanish

Peru 135

centralized states to their imperial project. Conquest and assimilation usually began with the arrival of Inkan envoys and merchants

who distributed high-value trade goods to win local allies. In doing

so, they unknowingly copied the commercial hegemony that the

Romans used to draw Britons into their economic and cultural orbit

as a prelude to the Claudian invasion. As in Roman Europe, massed

armies followed the traders and gave Andeans the choice of accepting

Inka rule or risking the disastrous consequences of armed resistance.

The Inkas punished the Canari, a people of the northern Andes, for

their defi ance by scattering them throughout the empire as laborercolonists and soldiers. They similarly dismantled the coastal Chimor

Empire and exacted tribute from the remains in the form of skilled

artisans and their crafts.

Cooperation, however, allowed local elites to join the Inkan nobility. As there were probably no more than one hundred thousand

ethnic Inkans, their empire building depended on co-optation and conscription. As in the ancient and medieval empires of Europe, women

played a central role in this process. The Inkas seized girls from conquered communities as a form of tribute and transformed them into

acllas
, “chosen women.” Youth, beauty, and social status determined

whether the
acllas
would serve Inkan religious cults, become wives

for Inkan nobles, or labor as domestic servants, artisans, or entertainers. Conversely, the Inkas provided cooperative subject elites with

Inkan wives, thereby binding them to the imperial project through

kinship.

This “Inkanization” was comparable to Roman and Islamic processes of imperial assimilation. Like the Romans, the Inkas reinforced

their mastery over their subjects by appropriating aspects of their

culture. They took over the widely venerated Pacha Kamaq cult that

most likely dated back to the Wari Empire and incorporated regional

wakas
, the protective natural spirits guarding individual communities, into the state religion.

In terms of administration, the Sapa Inka ruled Cuzco and its

environs directly but relied on personal bonds with subject elites to

extend his authority throughout the empire. Through this, the Inkas

employed a variant of the standard imperial template of indirect rule.

Calling their realm Tawantinsuyu (the fourfold domain), they divided

its four major regions into eighty provinces split into approximately

160 districts. Members of the royal family were the equivalent of

136 THE RULE OF EMPIRES

provincial governors, and the Sapa Inka’s wives also fi lled senior

administrative positions. Subject elites, who were bound to the

Inkas through intermarriage, patronage, and cultural assimilation,

represented imperial authority at the district level.

Real power in the Andes depended on the cooperation of the leaders (
kurakas
) of the
ayllus
, which remained the fundamental unit of

identity and community in the highlands. The
kurakas
drew their

power from their capacity to accumulate and redistribute wealth.

They collected food, precious metals, textiles, and other material

goods from their
ayllu
by virtue of their standing and infl uence and

parceled them out to followers who acknowledged their authority.

In return, the members of an
ayllu
built their
kuraka
’s house, tilled

his fi elds, wove his cloth, and tended his llama herds. The Spanish

translated the term
kuraka
as “lord of the people,” but the authority of these
ayllu
leaders was anything but absolute. As community

representatives, the
kurakas
mediated disputes and upheld

social norms, but they did not have the power to govern unilaterally.

Moreover, although the Spanish falsely assumed that the
kuraka-

ship was an exclusively male position, Andean women occasionally

played this role.

Once they became Inkan intermediaries,
kurakas
of both genders

became responsible for ensuring that an
ayllu
met its tribute and

labor obligations to the empire. Ultimately, though, they still derived

their authority from their capacity to protect the interests of their

community. All Andean states, including the Inkan Empire, were

essentially based on hierarchically nested reciprocal relationships

in which
kurakas
answered to their
ayllus
and to higher lords who

rewarded their deference and cooperation with patronage, women,

and resources. The number of aristocratic intermediaries in this system varied, but larger states might have quite a few layers of higher

kurakas
and nobles between the common Andean and a ruler such as

the Sapa Inka.

The Inkas did not have the inclination or capacity to interfere in

these reciprocal relationships. Instead, they balanced their tolerance

of localism with a relatively small but effi cient centralized imperial

bureaucracy. Inkan functionaries used knotted
khipu
strings to keep

track of revenue collection, labor service, military conscription, colonization,
aclla
women, and the inventories of the
qollqa
warehouses.

Although this was not a formal writing system, it was accurate. The

Spanish

Peru 137

khipu, qollqa
, and road network were innovations inherited from

earlier Andean empires, but the Inkas improved and expanded them