The Incas: Political History and Notable Figures

1200 - 1230 - Mano Capac (All Facts)

• According to Incan legend, he led his followers to the Cuzco Valley in Peru, where he established Cuzco as its capital and founded the Incan Empire

1438 - Pachacuti (All Facts)

• 1st Ruler and Founder of the Incan Empire

  • Tribal leader whose name means “transformer” or “shaker” of the earth

  • He conquered tribes living near modern-day Cuzco, Peru and his military victories and those of his son, who combined the many small tribes there into a full-fledged state, culminated in the establishment of the Incan Empire

Topa Inca Yupanqui (All Facts)

• 2nd Ruler of the Incan Empire

1200 - 1230 - Manco Capac (All Facts)

• First Governor and Founder of the civilization and city of Cuzco

1350 - 1380 - Inca Roca (All Facts)

• Sixth Ruler of the Inca

• He expanded the city of Cuzco

• He built a bridge across the Apurimac River

1410 - 1438 - Viracocha Inca (All Facts)

• 8th Sapa Inka of the Chiefdom of Cuzco, Ruler of the Incas

• Under his reign, the Inca Empire expanded and its rigidly hierarchical structure of society grew more formalized

1438 - 1572 - Inca Empire (All Facts)

• The namesake society was quite suitable for empire-building

• Society whose population was austere and rigidly, even militaristically, organized

• Society which had little concern for art (except perhaps for the art of war)

• Society in which political and sexual deviance was punished with torture and death by varying methods of execution

• Society in which loyalty to the emperor, the representative of the sun god on earth, was absolute

• Empire whose administrative class was divided between of the namesake “by blood” and of the namesake “by privilege” (collaborators drawn from subject peoples)

• Thus, its leaders expanded the namesake empire based on what was already there available to them

1438 - 1471 - Pachacuti (All Facts)

• Founder of the Inca Empire

  • 9th Sapa Inka of the Kingdom of Cuzco, Ruler of the Incas

  • He was a descendant of Manco Capac

  • Upon assuming the throne, he pledged to extend the Incas’ territory, thus building an empire throughout the southern Highlands

  • He was the divine representative of the sun on earth

• He conquered and incorporated the Chimu Empire, having extended Incan control over all of Peru

• His capital of Cuzco dominated the Andes Mountains

• His government’s administration was well-organized and perfectly capable of expanding into an imperial bureaucracy power deriving from the emperor

  • A hereditary aristocracy made policy decisions and local subject aristocracies (“Incas by privilege”) enforced them

• Under his reign,

  • There were strict rules prohibiting the accumulation of luxury goods, which discouraged crime and selfishness

  • The population provided labor instead of being taxed

  • The sick and the old were cared for by the state

  • Manchu Picchu was constructed as an estate for the namesake

1471 - 1493 - Topa Inca Yupanqui (All Facts)

• 2nd Ruler of the Inca Empire

  • He was the son of his predecessor

• Under his reign,

  • the Inca army defeated, overran, and incorporated the Kingdom of Chimor / Chimu, which brought an end to eight years of war prior that

    • This made the Incas / Inca Empire the dominant power in South America at the time, stretching from the Andes Mountains to the Pacific Ocean

    • He then led Inca armies north into the rest of the Andres Mountains and west onto the coastal plain

  • the Inca completed their conquests, taking control of parts of modern-day Bolivia, Argentina, and Chile

1493 - Huayna Capac (All Facts)

• 3rd Ruler of the Incan Empire

  • He focused on consolidating and managing the many lands conquered by his predecessors

• Upon his death, the Inca dissolved into civil war and conquering by 1532 by the Spanish