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Lauren Wilson

eHRAF World Cultures - 0 views

ehrafworldcultures-beta.its.yale.edu/...dispatchSearch.do

inca government

shared by Lauren Wilson on 17 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • Early chroniclers marveled at the ordered government and favorably compared the infrastructure of administrative centers, way stations, roads, and storage facilities with that of contemporaneous Europe. Later Andeanists cast Inka rule as a despotic monarchy, an enlightened dictatorship, and a feudal, utopian, Asiatic, or socialist state. More-recent treatments have tempered conceptions of a highly controlled, standardized society with the recognition that Inka rule varied notably among regions and that life at the local level may not have changed radically in many areas.
  • Political interaction between the Inkas and their subjects thus ranged from patron-client relations with the elites of small-scale and peripheral societies (e.g., the Pasto of northern Ecuador) to treaty or favored-status relations with some internal polities (e.g., the Chincha and the Lupaqa) and intensive assimilation with a well-developed bureaucracy
  • Because the state depended heavily on local elites, the apparatus of government was tailored to use the authority of ethnic leaders among their own people. Conversely, the local political structures were modified to facilitate state rule.
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  • Initially, they needed to set up an administration that could conduct state affairs in the absence of adequate loyal personnel. Conversely, increasing the organizational abilities of subject groups and the power of subject elites magnified the potential internal threats to the empire.
  • Each province was headed by an Inka-appointed governor (tokrikoq), usually an Inka noble, who directed an array of imperial and local elites and functionaries. The vertical orientation permeated the provincial structure, because the tokrikoq administered the local elites directly below him in the pyramid, rather than the people themselves (Cobo 1956 [1653]: vol. 2., bk. 2, ch. 25, pp. 114–15). The officials from the provincial governor up were recruited from the core Inka nobility, although the offices were not strictly hereditary and ability was considered in making appointments (
  • Whatever the structure, political control was not applied evenly across all societies. Although the Inkas exerted their tightest control near the core of the empire, regions at varying distances from the capital were integrated more fully than were other closer regions, and their human and natural resources more fully exploited.
  • initially, the Inkas found it most effective to deal with the Ecuadorian populations through a single point of native authority—a paramount chief, sometimes elevated to represent a pooled set of smaller chiefdoms.
  • In sum, the Inka political system was initially built on the authority systems of a widely diverging set of subject societies. The evidence suggests that the Inkas were attempting to apply systematic policies to subject groups within the empire. Regional variations in demography, political complexity, native social and economic forms, and security threats—coupled with limited imperial resources, transport, and communications capacities—contributed to variable imperial policies. With this review as context, we may now sketch out the major political changes effected in the Upper Mantaro region under Inka rule.
Lauren Wilson

Incas - 0 views

www.nvcc.edu/...incas.htm

inca politics

shared by Lauren Wilson on 17 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • Inca society was strictly organized, from the emperor and royal family down to the peasants. The emperor was thought to be descended from the sun god, Inti, and he therefore ruled with divine authority. All power rested in his hands. Only the influence of custom and the fear of revolt checked the emperor's power. The emperor had one official wife, but he had many royal concubines and his children by these wives often numbered in the hundreds. The emperor chose his most important administrators from among his sons.Just below the emperor came the aristocracy, which included descendants and relations of all the emperors. These pure-blooded Incas held the most important government, religious, and military posts. The nobles of conquered peoples also became part of the governing aristocracy and were considered Inca by adoption.
  • Lauren Wilson on 17 Apr 13
     
    "Political Organization"
Katherine Coppe

ANT3145Inca - Inca kinship - 0 views

ant3145inca.wikispaces.com/Inca+kinship

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  • Inca kinship groups were the basis for the social hierarchy that eventually formed the political structure of the Empire. At the top of the hierarchy was the Sapa Inca, which meant “Unique Inca”
  • The kin group or ayullu, which an Andean person belonged to, determined the social position of the person in the Empire. The ayllus were separated into tow interdependent halves known as moieties. A moiety was the kinship term that told what ranking you belonged to. There were two main in Cuzco:Hurin (Lower Cuzco) and Hanan (Upper Cuzco) (Bauer and Covey 2002: 850-852). Stephen Wernke (2006:180) defined ayullu it as being "a central to the political, social and economic articulation of territorially discontinous communities in the Andes." Common ancestral deities were at the top of the hierarchy of the ayllus. A member traced his relation to an ayullu an ancestor by myth. The ayullu member performed labor and worship towards their ancestors in the form of feasting and other rituals in order to receive land and resources (Wernke 2006:180).
  • One of the major kinship traditions practiced was intermarriage. Oral history gives account of elite Inca officials marrying women from different ayullus in order to create alliances (Bauer and Covey 2002: 854). This also helped the pan-ethnic strategy the Inca emperors used. Ethnic groups provided secondary wives for the Inca nobles (Bauer and Covey 2002: 854). Unfortunately, it is practically impossible to find archaeological evidence to support this ethno-history.
    • Katherine Coppe
      Katherine Coppe on 15 Apr 13
       
      marriage
Katherine Coppe

Inca definition of Inca in the Free Online Encyclopedia. - 0 views

encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Inca

shared by Katherine Coppe on 20 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • For purposes of administration the empire was divided into four parts, the lines of which met at Cuzco; the quarters were divided into provinces, usually on the basis of former independent divisions. These in turn were customarily split into an upper and a lower moiety; the moieties were subdivided into ayllus, or local communities. Much as it exists today as the basic unit of communal indigenous society, so the ancient ayllu was the political and social foundation of Inca government. When a territory was conquered, surveys, consisting of relief models of topographical and population features, and a census of the population were made. With these reports, recorded on quipus, of the material and human resources in each province, populations were reshuffled as needed. Thus transplanted, and dominated by Quechua colonists, the subject peoples had less chance to revolt, and the separate languages and cultures were molded to the Inca pattern.
Katherine Coppe

Peru - The Incas - 0 views

countrystudies.us/3.htm

shared by Katherine Coppe on 15 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • Although displaying distinctly hierarchical and despotic features, Incan rule also exhibited an unusual measure of flexibility and paternalism. The basic local unit of society was the ayllu, which formed an endogamous nucleus of kinship groups who possessed collectively a specific, although often disconnected, territory. In the ayllu, grazing land was held in common (private property did not exist), whereas arable land was parceled out to families in proportion to their size. Since self-sufficiency was the ideal of Andean society, family units claimed parcels of land in different ecological niches in the rugged Andean terrain. In this way, they achieved what anthropologists have called "vertical complementarity," that is, the ability to produce a wide variety of crops--such as maize, potatoes, and quinoa (a protein-rich grain)--at different altitudes for household consumption.
  • The principle of complementarity also applied to Andean social relations, as each family head had the right to ask relations, allies, or neighbors for help in cultivating his plot. In return, he was obligated to offer them food and chicha (a fermented corn alcoholic beverage), and to help them on their own plots when asked. Mutual aid formed the ideological and material bedrock of all Andean social and productive relations. This system of reciprocal exchange existed at every level of Andean social organization: members of the ayllus, curacas (local lords) with their subordinate ayllus, and the Inca himself with all his subjects.
  • Ayllus often formed parts of larger dual organizations with upper and lower divisions called moieties, and then still larger units, until they comprised the entire ethnic group. As it expanded, the Inca state became, historian Nathan Wachtel writes, "the pinnacle of this immense structure of interlocking units. It imposed a political and military apparatus on all of these ethnic groups, while continuing to rely on the hierarchy of curacas, who declared their loyalty to the Inca and ruled in his name." In this sense, the Incas established a system of indirect rule that enabled the incorporated ethnic groups to maintain their distinctiveness and self-awareness within a larger imperial system.
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