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.