The Incas’ heliocentric religion gave rise to the demand for gold as the beautiful reflection casted by gold gave the appearance of the bright, shining sun. However, this passion with gold became their greatest weakness. Small civilizations on the coasts of South America told the Spanish the Inca Empire is so rich and powerful even their walls were made of gold. By coincidence, a Spanish galleon encountered an Inca raft with crew carrying gold, silver, and precious minerals. Francisco Pizarro, overcome with obsession for gold, decided to start an expedition to the Inca Empire.
Pizarro first made contact with at Tumbes in 1526. In circa 1528, the Inca emperor Huayna Capac died from European introduced smallpox, igniting a civil war of succession between his two sons, Atahualpa and Huáscar. Around the same time, Pizarro returns to Spain where he is grated the license to conquer Peru; he quickly returns and starts his invasion.
Although the arrival of the Spanish was the proximate cause of the collapse of the Inca Empire, the overexpansion during Topa Inca’s rule, the subsequent civil war between Huascar and Atahualpa, and the decimation of the native population due to European diseases, most notably smallpox, contributed most to the decline of the Empire. Overexpansion and the civil war were the most important causes of the demise of the Inca Empire.
The overexpansion of the Empire during Pachacuti to Huayna Capac’s rule is a noteworthy reason for the collapse. From 1438 to 1527, the Sapa Incas Pachacuti, Topa Inca, and Huayna Capac conquered 1,200,000 km squared of land. Although the Inca as an empire in name, it was actually a patchwork of languages, cultures and people. At the peak of the Empire, there were more than twenty e...
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...adores. Another significant effect on the native population was the spread of Christianity. The Spanish forcefully converted many to Christianity. Those Inca natives who wished to escape exploitation and forceful conversion after capture usually committed suicide. However, indigenous population are now gaining more rights from the government and stepping up. The indigenous established the Movement in the Amazon for Tribal Subsistence and Economic Sustainability (MATSES), an indigenous rights organization working towards the cultural survival of the indigenous people in Peru. The Peruvian government has also signed and ratified international laws concerning indigenous people, such as the Indigenous and Trial People Convention. Although the Incans have been heavily exploited after the Spanish conquest, they are now developing a stronger presence in Peruvian society.
Huayna Capac made sure that there was no such question over who had unreserved control nor allow his future heir to be afflicted with opposition to his legitimacy. Like all Incan Emperors, after first coming into power, each went on an expedition around his kingdom and its peripheries, in its entirety, to understand exactly where his boundaries are. After his excursion, he continued the expansion that his father began, and did so through a 5 step c...
Inca women autonomy was destroyed by empirical conquest. There was an inherent loss of feminine spirituality with every re-mapping of the empire’s boundaries. They lost their powerful female deities and were repaid with gendered predetermination. Men allowed conquest to detach them from the Inca belief system of balance and equality that pre-dated any need for expansion. Conquest hierarchy was enforced and unquestioned. An all though the Inca political people gained power, they lost social harmony.
Janos Gyarmati’s Paria la Viexa and an expanding empire: Provincial centers in the political economy of the Inka Empire proved that the Inca’s built an empire unlike another. From 1440 to 1532 A.D. the Inca Empire dominated the Americas. Known as “the fastest growing and largest territorial empire”(Gyarmati 37) of its time the Inca Empire left a mark with their complex, perpetual and innovative economic, road, and settlement system. The Inca’s were advanced for their time, however they lacked a system that would guarantee the survival of their kin. In order to strive, for the long-term, the Inca’s created provincial centers that would ensure their growth and economy for the generations to come. Provincial centers served as
Soon, some people went back to Spain and the commentaries and questions were presented like: if Pizarro had the legal right to invade Peru, to take Atahualpa hostage, to kill thousands of people and to take their gold. So the excuse was that Atahualpa, usurped the throne to his old brother Huáscar, but this was false argument because the age didn’t matter.
It was a complex society located in the Andes Mountains of South America. The center of the Incan Empire, and it’s capital was Cuzco. They were attacked by neighboring Chancas, they all fled but one of the emperor’s sons, Yupanqui, led an army to against the Chancas. They defeated them and the victory made his people the strongest group in the area. The Incas had several ways of bringing groups of people into their empire. If they did not accept their terms, the other alternative was war. The Emperor of the Incan Empire lived in splendor. Everything in the empire belonged to the emperor. The wonders: fine gardens, golden statues, and jars made of gold and silver studded with emeralds amazed the Spanish when they came to Cuzco. In the 1500s, Francisco Pizarro, led a conquest, seeking riches, to the Incan Empire. Francisco Pizarro invaded the Inca Empire. With them, they brought European diseases and it spread throughout the Incan empire. The Incan Empire was already being weakened by two ruling brothers. Pizzaro conquered the Incas and gained wealth and brought riches as well.
The Inca quickly became a successful empire, a relative ethnic minority which controlled a diverse region of peoples. Conquered groups were allowed to maintain local chiefs, cultures, religion and language, bound together only through payments and work for the Inca. The mita (forced labor) system facilitated the lives of common laborers and recruited soldiers while vast tracts of roadways allowed for trade between the high and lowlands. The Inca accumulated great wealth, thus significant artistic and architectural achievements were made with textiles, metal working, and the practice of fitting stones together for building without the use of mortar. Many of these walls survive today. Although the Aymara attem...
The Aztec Empire stood for many years but never expanded much, only conquering small neighboring civilizations. The Aztec Empire was founded in the 6th century and didn’t fall until 1525. The Inca Civilization was a bit different. The Inca Civilization conquered as many lands that it could but quickly fell after just 100 years. In this essay I will be comparing the government, economics, and culture in the Aztec Civilizationand the Inca Empire.
Francisco Pizarro, Diego de Almagro, and Hernando de Luque led the Spanish discovery and conquest of the Inca Empire (Hudson and Hanratty Page 7). After many years of Incan conquest, the empir...
Before any conquistador had ever step foot in Inca lands, issues that would lead to the Inca’s downfall had been buil...
This reading was an excellent collection of articles, because it presented seven different views of the Incan empire. It does a good job of trying to idealize the Incas, justify their conquest by the Spanish, and label their government using modern terms. In retrospect, it is easy for us to look back at history and study it, but it is always a necessity to learn from what we study. If there is one thing to learn from the European conquest of the America's, it is that destroying a race of beings and their culture is an injustice to the conquered, and the conquerors.
The remarkable feat of contouring the Aztec and Inka empires were persuaded by the Spanish in the 16th Century. Three key foundations affected the outcome of these conquests. Religious passion and belief in a higher order was one key component to the Spanish success. Another invaluable factor was help from indigenous allies. Finally, the spread of small pox was crucial in weakening the mighty Empires. These three dynamics cemented victory for the Spanish over the Aztec and Inka empires.
In 1532, the Spanish arrived in the Andes and began their campaign of conversion and colonization. Because of widespread Spanish rule over the following centuries, about 90 percent of the modern Peruvian population identifies as Catholic. But Catholicism in Peru is distinct from Catholicism anywhere else, blending with much older indigenous practices and holidays.
The Spanish conquest of the Inca in the 1500s A.D. was an event that significantly changed the peoples of South America by leading to the decline of the Inca Empire. This essay discusses why in the last millennium the Europeans were the people who were able to conquer so many of the world’s great civilizations and control so much of the world. While there were other Europeans that conquered other groups of people, this essay focuses on the Spanish and the Incas. Motivation to conquer and ability to do so (such as steel and immunity to diseases) are the key aspects in Europeans gaining power of much of the world that this essay discusses.
In this essay I will tell how the Aztec and Inca empires ended, and also I will compare the fall of both empires, using for a point of departure the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors in the land of Mexico. Wherever the Spanish went always the same thing happened, from my point of view. Innocent people were killed for no good reason, cities were massacred, civilizations were destroyed or forced to convert to Christianity. And so, I think now is the time to reevaluate the actions of the European explorers who subjugated the native American peoples and their civilizations. Undoubtedly the most glorified and heroically portrayed of these figures of the European conquest of the New World were the conquistadors, the Spanish conquerors of Mexico and Peru in the 16-th century. These men, under leaders such as Hernan Cortes and Francisco Pizzaro nearly eliminated the Aztec and Inca peoples. Surely many of these soldiers were extremely cruel and intolerant of the native populations. But it is important to consider, with the push of both sides toward territorial expansion, how these groups (European and American) could remain isolated from each other. Furthermore, with meeting of these two imperialist cultures, it must be considered whether it would be possible for the two to peacefully coexist.
This help was not required however, and the Spanish intervention and, ultimately, assimilation spoiled the Incan society beyond repair. The Spanish perceived the Inca as primitive, barbaric, and in need of assistance. This could not have been further from the truth. While the Spanish saw the Incan people as primitive and barbaric, in reality the Inca were much more advanced and organized than the Spanish’s initial perceptions. One particular area of society that showed specific characteristics of the Incan Empire’s modernization is the social structure of the Incas as a whole. The Incas showed particular elements of a structured society in their organization of social classes. In addition, the Incan Empire was concerned with women’s rights far before even Europe, and treated women as equals. Finally, the Inca people were advanced in their willingness to submit to authority, whether this authority is a fellow Incan in power or a perceived deity in the complex Incan religious