Negotiated Empire: Alliance Building during the Inca Civil War

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Crises are critical temporal nodes which offer unique, and perhaps clearest, views of how imperial projects function, as they present acute stresses to the institutions that define them, whether these stresses are overcome or not. As the Inca Civil War shattered the largest Indigenous American empire through tremendous loss of life in battle, political fragmentation, and erosion of the legitimacy of the Inca imperial project, it offers a unique view into the mechanics of the Inca state. During the dynastic war, Atahualpa controlled the semi-professionalized Inca army, despite Huascar sporting a stronger initial claim. Alliance building and constant negotiation between the two claimants and provincial leaders were critical in the course of the conflict. In the process of alliance building ideology, governance, and military strategy were all inextricably intertwined. Huascar went so far to link his entire legitimacy narrative of “return to origins” with his alliance with the Colla of Lake Titicaca, which pointed to his relationship with long-term history of power in the Andes. This Inca case speaks to the nature of empires, understanding such states not merely as hegemons and imperial subjects not merely as resisting, but as intertwined in continuous negotiations.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 51795