Tyranny or Ideal Society

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Tyranny or Ideal Society

Many arguments have occurred over the centuries since the Spanish marched into the Andean highlands and took over the Incan empire, over whether the Incan's were part of an ideal human society, or just a group of tyrannical rulers. While the Incan society had created a stable political, economic, and social system in the Andean world it was far from being an ideal society. On the same note, the Incan's were not tyrannical rulers, did not exploit their subjects or take away their land for no reason. The reading entitled "Was Inca Rule Tyrannical?" discusses this argument about the Incan empire, tries to classify the form of government the Incan's lived under, and searches for the truth about what the Incan empire was really like. The truth about the Incan empire lies somewhere between the romanticized views, and the views meant to justify the Spanish conquest, while it is impossible to classify in modern terms the form of government the Incan's had.

The reading, after giving a brief introduction to the ideas behind the separate articles, is split into three different sections. The first of these sections is the section meant to idealize the Incan empire and cast doubt onto the appropriateness of the Spanish conquest of the Incas. The first two articles were written by conquistadores, Pedro de Cieza de León, and Mancio Sierra de Leguízamo. They both offer a romanticized view of the Incan culture. Cieza de León tries to paint a picture of the Incas as a ideal culture that tried to avoid war at any cost, while Sierra de Leguízamo paints a picture of a trusting uncorrupted society of Indians. These views are obviously slightly skewed, because it is hard to believe that anyone who was there at the time ...

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...ialism, an ideology that was created in 19th century Europe, does not mean that it can be labeled. The government of the Incas was created through natural evolution, and it cannot be labeled by something that was created in the mind of some European that lived 200 years after the empire was destroyed.

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.

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