Split Inheritance.

                In every empire, expansion in inevitable.  Expansion may play a major or minor role in the politics of an empire but none the less a part.  Internal factors will also produce a need for expansion.  So the questions then becomes, what factors lead an empire to expansion?  Territory, labor, wealth, and a list of a hundred other reasons come to mind.  But in the specific cases of the Aztec and Incan empires, religion was the most influential factor that contributed to expansion.  The Aztecs saw the need for expansion as a quest for blood.  Human sacrifices were the leading influence.  In as simplistic a phrase as possible, the Aztecs expanded for blood.  The Incas on the other hand expanded for survival.  The leading influence that impacted this expansion was the religious practice of split inheritance.  Split inheritance allowed the newly deceased king to retain all of his private holdings (land, servants, property, ect.).  

Although this may seem great for the newly deceased king, it created a huge burden for his successor.  “The obvious effect of split inheritance was to reduce the supplies of land and labor available to a newly crowned Inca ruler” (p. 121).  Eventually a great deal of the available land and labor became tied to deceased kings and created a need for new lands and labor.  Internal forces, i.e. the religious practices, created a need for expansion.  Without expansion, the empire would have created a downward spiral of political and religious conflicts.  A king’s need for land and labor would conflict with the Incas religious practice of split inheritance.  Without expansion, these religious practices would have potentially destroyed the empire from within.  Religion then becomes a double edged sword.  It created a system that needed to expand to survive but also created the potential for the empire to fall before it even began.