there’s a couple of key points to understand regarding the “inca conquest” period to then speculate a bit on what happens.
For one, the conquest wasn’t done solely by force or by imposing oneself over the other. What Pizarro, like with hernan cortez had was a good ability to make alliances, and these alliances proved vital when the crown of Spain eventually decided to take over pizarro and almagro’s lands. And that‘s sort of the thing as well, the conquista was a private enterprise and while it had permission from the crown to go to the new world to find places to evangelize, it did not fund a cent to any of the conquistadores.
But essentially the inca and the spanish were allied by hand, and the place became by the official title of “the kingdoms of Peru”. The 24 royal panacas retained all their power, land, riches throughout the entirety of the viceroyalty period and made to be on the same level as the nobles over at Spain. Alongside the fact that spain during this time at the hapsburg period being a composite monarchy, giving the viceroyalty a level of autonomy as if it were its own thing. And given that it is so far away from the peninsula, that is essentially what occured anyways.
But now if we are talking about having no spanish in the picture, we would have to also consider the time period and context from which Pizarro got there. Atahualpa and Huascar were having a brutal civil war, and two of Atahualpa’s generals quizquiz and chalcuchimac had made a massacre out of the city of cuzco. This city being of course the capital of the huascarists, and huascar himself ended up imprisoned and his wives and children were murdered before him. Atahualpa had at this point essentially won and what he did next was making the trek from his base at Quito towards Cuzco to crown himself Inca and end the fiasco of a civil war. It was then that in OTL pizarro and his men were at Cajamarca, and Atahualpa goes there to visit ”the bearded men from floating houses”. The problem Atahualpa had though was that he was curious yet nout cautious, and he walked into cajamarca not with his troops but with dancers and other non-military men which lended him getting captured.
From here we have some interesting points. If the pizarrists were not there when this happened, Atahualpa would have finished his trek to cuzco, murdered huascar and crowned himself inca. Yet the fact that his curiousness came with that level of confidence that he didnt enter cajamarca armed, does mean if any other conquistador arrives at the very least he might get himself injured. Though if we go by history, some portuguese had already made an expedition with guarani to topple the inca when Huayna Capac was inca. The latter wouldve just said “get rid of these fools”, and this is why those conquistadores are forgotten from history.
But this also brings up the sort of thing happening within the time period. Since the conquista was a private enterprise, itd mean there would be multiple conquistadores with different goals and different men, etc. For example, Diego de Almagro was another conquistador that arrived to the incan territory but After Atahualpa was executed. He had missed his chance of getting gold already and as a result were some of the financially poorest conquistadores of this time, but pizarro had told him that south of cuzco he could own all that there. He ended up finding one of the driest deserts in the world (the atacama), and so comes back furiously to declare war on pizarro which resulted not only in both conquistadores’ death. It also ended up with the crown of spain intervening and creating the viceroyalty of the kingdoms of peru that we now know.
But that’s another interesting point to bring up wouldn’t it? Given that Pizarro before his feud with Almagro was already building lima, yet did not have an entire viceroyalty in name like in OTL. How would have this resulted in the long run if that disastrous war between conquistadores didn’t happen?
Because that’s sort of the thing as well since it was thanks to the spanish that the many ethnicities of the viceroyalty of peru got hospitals, universities, and all these other amenities that did indeed benefit the everyday populace. The local curacas of each place would end up doing so much of the work for spain without spain lifting a finger even by just baptizing themselves, as when one leader baptizes or does one act all the other followed. If we are talking about the inca without this, not only are we taking away this but also taking away the unity. The inca leading the viceroyalty of peru had their biggest expansion in land ever, and the peace within said territory was most unseen all the way up until Tupac Amaru II in the borbon dynasty era. Without this the inca would have to still contend with the ethnicities, by themselves, without any alliance glue that the spanish had provided. Added to this any chance that there couldnt be another great civil war eventually.
One other effect that I think is interesting to look at, is that china and other places like india would now then be with a significantly less influx of silver which would most definitely have some sort of effect. The mines at Potosi being no longer a thing would have an effect on the spanish empire surely, but also these other places that traded the silver wouldve been provided with less of it.
Overall its an interesting discussion especially knowing the nitty griddy to think on what couldve potentially happened.
