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Contents contributed and discussions participated by Lauren Wilson

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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"
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.
blonabocker

Wikispaces... again.... - 5 views

started by blonabocker on 09 Apr 13 no follow-up yet
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