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Peru Changing Role Over Time: Preconquest
Military establishments have played a significant role
in the
different societies and polities that have operated in
Peru over
the centuries. Before the Incas gained prominence in the
region
in the fifteenth century, hundreds of native American
groups
controlled small areas of the coastal valleys, the small
fertile
intermontane plains of the highlands, and the banks of the
jungle
rivers. Armed conflict was an integral part of society to
resolve
disputes among groups or to deal with issues of
territorial
expansion. Hundreds of years later, local folk dances and
ceremonies continued to portray many of these pre-Incaic
battles.
The Quechua-speaking Inca were, for the thirteenth and
fourteenth
centuries at least, one more of these many native groups,
based
in the Cusco (Cuzco) valley of the south-central Andes.
During
the fifteenth century, however, the Incas embarked on a
major
campaign of conquest by military force, which resulted by
the end
of the century in the hemisphere's most extensive empire
(see The Incas
, ch. 1). Conscription provided the resources for
initial conquest and for the
mita (see Glossary)
system to
construct public works--roads, granaries, rest stations,
and
forts. This infrastructure allowed for consolidation of
these
rapid advances. The latter were aided by several devices:
the
reeducation in Cusco of conquered nobility and their
return to
their communities; the stationing of lesser Inca nobility
and
military detachments in newly acquired territories; forced
resettlement of obstreperous groups and communities to
areas
where they would pose less of a risk; and inculcation of a
common
language (Quechua), government organization, tribute
system, and
religious hierarchy
(see The Incas
, ch. 1).
Data as of September 1992
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