Similarities between Incan and Spanish conquests

Steven Azouqha

The one thing that really struck me while reading the Conrad and Demarest book about the Incas entitled “Religion and Empire,” was the similarities between the methods the Inca used to conquer various groups living in the Andes at the time, and the Spanish  conquistadors like Pizarro who brought down the Inca Empire.

Further disproving the myth from the Restall book that the indigenous Americans were completely innocent, “Religion and Empire” shows the Inca were little better than their European counterparts. The Inca used similar justification for imperial expansion, claiming that the people whom they conquered were uncivilized savages. The Inca cited their religion as a source of their superiority, and exploited it to mask their real intent, which was primarily economic. Likewise, the Spanish conquistadors, while claiming they were colonizing Latin America to convert these supposedly backwards and barbaric peoples, they really appear to be more interested in extracting wealth and natural resources from the native population of the continent.  

The authors do not use these examples to excuse the avarice and seemingly insatiable greed of the Spaniards, but rather to illustrate that these were not isolated incidents, and that the Spanish techniques of colonization and conquest, while unspeakably vicious and cruel, were not unique. Many have argued that religion, nationalism, “national defense”, “sovereignty,” or other reasons given for going to war are used to mask and obscure the real reason, which is almost always economic, the desire to gain wealth and power. Karl Marx was probably the person to articulate this best, declaring famously that “the history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles.” One can make the case then, that the Spaniards were no more malicious than their Inca counterparts, but perhaps simply more successful.

Another interesting feature to note is that the same way in which Inca civilization did not decimate the existing cultures of the societies that preceded it, Spanish culture did not completely eviscerate Inca culture, but rather, both imperial empires built on the traditions, religion, language and culture of these people. Other colonizing powers did this too, notably the French, in diverse places like Indochina, Lebanon and the Congo. Rather than try to rid their colonies of the existing culture, French Colonialism stressed the importance of “assimilation”, trying to incorporate elements of French culture into their own, while keeping local power structures intact.