Can the Incas pull a Meiji?

Redcoat

Banned
I'm rather interested in TL's with surviving Native American civilizations, hell I'm a bit of a sucker for them. One thing is what happens next. In the few Incas-survive TL's I see, the Spanish don't roll a bunch of 6's in their attempts to conquer the Incas, and the Inca adapt enough to European tech to hold the Spanish at bay. Invasion becomes a rather costly idea to the Spanish, and the Inca ally with a European power looking to screw over Spain, while making profits off of their silver mines.

Now, let's say that they've survived as the only (or one of very few) surviving native states, all the way down to the Industrial Revolution. Could the Inca pull a Meiji in this case?
 
Tokugawa Japan was an advanced, highly literate society not far off from Western tech levels. The Inca were stone age, lacked a writing system, and hadn't even invented the wheel. If they survive, it's going to be by hiding out in the mountains for a few centuries until they get conquered.
 
I'm going to say yes, assuming they've managed to siphon off a lot of tech and knowledge off their ally. The Incas, at the time of contact with the Europeans were a very new empire. New enough that there would still have been old men around who remembered when they were just another tribe. They didn't have a lot of entrenched baggage, and they were still figuring out how to run things. If they start out in a mood of "we need to learn their secrets" it could be a cultural trait by the time the industrial revolution rolls around.

It is interesting you should mention Tokugawa Japan in the context of the Incas though...

"Our emperor is a descendant of the sun deity!"

"How amazing, so is ours! I suppose a deity may have several children"
 

Redcoat

Banned
Tokugawa Japan was an advanced, highly literate society not far off from Western tech levels. The Inca were stone age, lacked a writing system, and hadn't even invented the wheel. If they survive, it's going to be by hiding out in the mountains for a few centuries until they get conquered.
Well the thing is the hardest part isn't making the wheel, it's the axle, that's neither here nor there though. Given access to gunpowder technology and metallurgy practices, hell even the idea of writing and using paper, they'll do fine.
 

Zachariah

Banned
So long as they've already managed to essentially pull a Tokugawa first- but to an even greater extent, whilst still managing to advance their level of technological development and catch up to the Old World nations- sure, why not? The butterflies of not controlling their silver mines, though, would have already set back Spain a great deal compared to OTL, and as a result, European colonialism in general. Without it, and the wealth they got from trading it to the Chinese, the Europeans would be far poorer; and if the Incans manage to find a way to trade with the Chinese, and the Far East, without going through the Europeans (either themselves, requiring them to build their naval capabilities practically from scratch, or more feasibly, through the Chinese, Japanese or even the Polynesians), then they'll be a fair bit wealthier as well. Which would go some way towards making this a slightly less impossible challenge, by lowering the bar and lengthening the timeframe.
 

Tokugawa Japan was an advanced, highly literate society not far off from Western tech levels. The Inca were stone age, lacked a writing system, and hadn't even invented the wheel. If they survive, it's going to be by hiding out in the mountains for a few centuries until they get conquered.

Lol. Using the term 'Pulling a Meiji' aside since it's utterly meaningless in any context outside of Japan and achieving economic parity with the West isn't a yes/no checkmark, this is horribly off. The Inca of our TL were very Roman in nature, in that they were quick to adopt any advances that they could get their hands on, usually from those that they conquered. If the Inca survive the initial Spanish invasions, then they're almost assuredly going to be scouting any Europeans that they can bribe/persuade/extort/settle to share Western knowledge as the Inca aren't fools; they know that the Spanish can fight disproportionate to the average Quechua soldier and are going to want this information. The Inca absolutely have the capacity to pull this off considering the difficulty of invading the Andes and having the means(gold and silver) to literally buy knowledge. This is likely to take form of a large cadre of pet projects of the Emperor in Cuzco/Quito for general knowledge, and in the battlefields, mines, and a select few ayllus that are repurposed for production for anything with military applications. End result, the Inca likely manage to reach some form of military parity with the European interlopers by the end of the 16th century on land. It'd go faster but dealing with plague is going to eat up a lot of the Empire's resources. Naval parity is a big question mark as the Inca may either settle with letting European traders dominate trade with the rest of the world, or balk at it and actively seek out trade with the rest of the world on their own terms. Unlike China or India, the Inca aren't producing everything they care for or sitting on ideal trade routes where all manner of goods flow to them naturally so the impetus for naval endeavors is there.

Now, having established that the Europeans(and likely the Chinese once knowledge of China spreads through the grapevine of sailors and traders that the Inca are likely courting) know much that the Inca don't as well as a trickle of goods that catch Inca interest from both the West and Asia, the Inca are incredibly unlikely to pull a Korea or Japan and go full Hermit Kingdom/Sakoku. Incredibly, incredibly unlikely. The continued need to keep tabs on the outside world(considering the likely presence of European colonies throughout the Americas and likely hostile relationship with Spain) means that the Inca will be playing catch-up and do something similar to what the 19th century Qing did, and that's to continue to buy up the latest and greatest. Unlike the Qing, the Inca aren't going to consider themselves above the rest of the world and are going to accept expats, opportunists, and adventurers that can be bought to properly implement whatever gets their fancy, be it French-style infantry formations and officer training, galleon/frigate construction and maintenance, agricultural tools, clockmaking, court culture, etc. This shit ain't Civ where you either have it as common knowledge all over your state or you don't, it's not as though something like steel metallurgy or gunpowder production was some widely known to the general populace in Europe.

Long story short, the Inca's unique position of being relatively safe from European encroachment yet maintaining some sense of siege mentality, a lack of something that they desperately desire from others, and a established tradition of adopting the knowledge of others means that the Inca are likely to develop an upper class intimately acquainted with European social trends in the aristocracy and a labor/merchant/bureaucrat strata that's familiar with many European innovations over the course of the coming centuries as capitalism propels the world into the age of mechanization and rapid technological advancement. If anything, the Inca are probably a source of some of these innovations themselves by the time this period rolls around and a significant power due to the centuries of fostering a society where there exists people whose mission is innovation. The Inca are too rich, too populous, and too stable(if they survive the worst of the Spanish invasions) to simply be irrelevant on the world stage for too long. Between the abundant source of most metals, niter, high agricultural output, large consumer base, some of if not the largest fisheries in the world, and the most robust and ambitious social safety nets in the world, the Inca would keep themselves at worst relevant, at best competitive, maybe even dominant within South America and the Pacific in the global economy come the Victorian Era or its theoretical equivalent
 
So long as they've already managed to essentially pull a Tokugawa first- but to an even greater extent, whilst still managing to advance their level of technological development and catch up to the Old World nations- sure, why not? The butterflies of not controlling their silver mines, though, would have already set back Spain a great deal compared to OTL, and as a result, European colonialism in general.
It would be interesting to see a timeline where the Spanish Empire completely implodes with the other Europeans descending on it like vultures. The 30 years war never happens and we end up with literally millions of surplus Germans that are needing to go somewhere. All before 1700!
 
It would be interesting to see a timeline where the Spanish Empire completely implodes with the other Europeans descending on it like vultures. The 30 years war never happens and we end up with literally millions of surplus Germans that are needing to go somewhere. All before 1700!

IMO you'd probably see a far more richer Russia and a more densely populated Eastern Europe with German settlers out the wazoo. You'd also see the German pockets in Hungary become way more numerous, maybe even dominant. And IMO if the Spanish Empire implodes before 1600 Europe'd never get a foothold in most of it as you'd probably end up seeing hybrid European/Indigenous states headed by opportunist Criollos, native revolters, or states nominally under Spain that behave independently that are near parity with Europe militarily, even if they're substantially less developed and likely still demographically screwed from the Criollo perspective.

That said, I think a Spanish Empire sans the Andes would likely be far more stable and Spanish in nature as more Spaniards would be redirected away from South America south of Quito and instead end up in a Spanish colonial empire centered on the Caribbean rim.
 
Without it, and the wealth they got from trading it to the Chinese, the Europeans would be far poorer.

How much poorer, do you reckon? All the actual estimates I've seen show it closer to "drop in the bucket" than "sine non qua".

End result, the Inca likely manage to reach some form of military parity with the European interlopers by the end of the 16th century on land. It'd go faster but dealing with plague is going to eat up a lot of the Empire's resources.

Being the only people in the entire period to achieve that, I hope you do realize? This is a big ask. Not fun though, I know.

Incredibly, incredibly unlikely. The continued need to keep tabs on the outside world(considering the likely presence of European colonies throughout the Americas and likely hostile relationship with Spain) means that the Inca will be playing catch-up and do something similar to what the 19th century Qing did, and that's to continue to buy up the latest and greatest.

So like Siam or Kongo, then. Or any of the Indian states. Except starting from a baseline that's very very different, to put it mildly.
 
How much poorer, do you reckon? All the actual estimates I've seen show it closer to "drop in the bucket" than "sine non qua".
The main problem in European economy at this point was the lack of precious monetary metals, such as gold and silver. Note that American gold didn't got used in Europe before the XVIIIth, altough direct trade with China probably prevented this to happen earlier.
I'd guess the immediate change would be a lesser budgetary wide margin for Habsburgs, limiting (but not cancelling) their bankrupcy capacity.

Note that without western South America, you'd possibly the historical efforts to takeover North-Western and Western Africa maintained ITTL, at least by Portugal and Spain, both for markets access and development of plantation economy, mirroring a still probably existing european Brazil.
 
The main problem in European economy at this point was the lack of precious monetary metals, such as gold and silver. Note that American gold didn't got used in Europe before the XVIIIth, altough direct trade with China probably prevented this to happen earlier.

I'd guess the immediate change would be a lesser budgetary wide margin for Habsburgs, limiting (but not cancelling) their bankrupcy capacity.

And that's a valuable thing to seek out, with resources that are already there in Europe regardless of American silver and gold or the Chinese trade. I am highly skeptical of the entire scenario where the Andes are both game-changingly valuable and defensible against three centuries of European expansion, basically. Even if they survive the Spanish who keep the Portuguese out, there will come the Dutch (no 80 years war if Spain can't finance it without the liquidity - probably better long-term for both Netherlands and Spain, come to think of it), and then there will come the 18th c. where quite a few of the previous tough survivors that I mentioned earlier got conquered right at the peak of their power.
 
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Being the only people in the entire period to achieve that, I hope you do realize? This is a big ask. Not fun though, I know.

In the New World, sure. That's completely untrue outside of the New World. Parity with the Europeans in 1600 AD isn't a huge ask if that means developing metallurgy able to produce muskets of a quality comparable to European arms when the Inca have a history of very robust craftsmanship in metal. If you can manage to instruct a few metalworkers, then by the natural inertia of demand muskets will be produced en masse and knowledge of gunsmithing will spread. It also helps that the Inca were something reminiscent of a command economy and can quite literally order metalsmiths to be instructed by whatever instructors the Inca are able to bribe into service and produce what they're taught. Horses aren't exactly a must-have in the Andes though they'd be quite useful for projecting Inca military power along the coasts and in the Southern Cone's pampas. So all in all, I'd say that ~1600 AD parity isn't only not impossible, but quite likely akin to how Japan ended up being one of the largest gun producers in the world after Europeans poked around with them. It also helps that the Inca have ready access to the components needed to produce gunpowder.

So like Siam or Kongo, then. Or any of the Indian states. Except starting from a baseline that's very very different, to put it mildly.

Key difference here is that the gap being as wide and having had to go directly to war with a European state that put the state under threat of collapse is going to keep the Inca on their toes and more intent on whatever Europe magics out of their butts. Not to mention the established tradition of embracing the advancements of others adding natural inertia to keep the Inca competitive with other states. This also means that the Inca are likely to foster a class of people resembling an early intelligentsia to facilitate this. I'd also add the caveat that putting Kongo in the same tierage as Siam or India is very questionable. For one, Europe wasn't an existential military threat to these states until the latter half of the 18th century at the earliest. You also cut off the second sentence there which explains exactly why the Inca would differ from the Qing, or the Kongo.

And that's a valuable thing to seek out, with resources that are already there in Europe regardless of American silver and gold or the Chinese trade. I am highly skeptical of the entire scenario where the Andes are both game-changingly valuable and defensible against three centuries of European expansion, basically. Even if they survive the Spanish who keep the Portuguese out, there will come the Dutch (no 80 years war if Spain can't finance it without the liquidity - probably better long-term for both Netherlands and Spain, come to think of it), and then there will come the 18th c. where quite a few of the previous tough survivors that I mentioned earlier got conquered right at the peak of their power.

Why wouldn't they be defensible? Have you seen the geography of the Andes? It's basically a stretch of chokepoints that are interconnected by narrow paths and bridges, leading to highlands and valleys. The coasts are either bordered by mountains(like near the Chimu), deserts, or the mountains have only a few paths through which to access the interior. The Europeans can certainly stunt the development of the Inca coast by terrorizing it and keeping it under constant threat(see France due to England), but the ability of the Europeans to assault the Incan core in the Andes once they have access to gunpowder and have an idea of how to defend against cannons and muskets is going to be impossible. Even the best case scenario for an invading European state where you get defectors ala Manchu invasion of Ming China is just going to result in the next chokepoint over being unassailable instead of flatlands and farmland. And once the Inca bounce back from the worst of the plagues it'd be demographically infeasible, there'd be no wearing down the Inca when it's so cheap in manpower to defend. The Dutch ain't doing shit beyond forcing the Inca to abandon the already underdeveloped coasts, and that's ignoring the fact that the Dutch MO wasn't conquest anyways bar a few specific(and heavily one-sided) cases. Giving up the vast fisheries will hurt but the Inca barely made use of them anyways IOTL.

Anyways, this ignores the big factor in the room that is 'If the Inca never fall, European perspective on non-European states is drastically different'. Why and how and who is going to push the Inca around so severely, and why is European supremacy so assured when Inca gold and silver is no longer flowing there, drastically altering the economics of the region and likely having ramifications on the spice trade, the slave trade, etc.? Let's not forget that IOTL, Portugal's Indian Ocean empire was hanging on by a thread which is why the Dutch swept it so decisively. Who's to say the Dutch are able to do even this much if the flow of trade from Antwerp to Sevilla and Lisbon is weakened due to greatly lessened Spanish demand, as they're now unable to afford it. Less prosperous Dutch, less equity, less private ventures, no Dutch private funding of their colonial ventures, no or drastically different colonial empire. Hell, everything is thrown into the question, Dutch independence included. People love to put the carriage before the horse whenever it comes to European ascendancy when a large contributor to its rise has been disrupted.
 
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Lol. Using the term 'Pulling a Meiji' aside since it's utterly meaningless in any context outside of Japan and achieving economic parity with the West isn't a yes/no checkmark, this is horribly off. The Inca of our TL were very Roman in nature, in that they were quick to adopt any advances that they could get their hands on, usually from those that they conquered. If the Inca survive the initial Spanish invasions, then they're almost assuredly going to be scouting any Europeans that they can bribe/persuade/extort/settle to share Western knowledge as the Inca aren't fools; they know that the Spanish can fight disproportionate to the average Quechua soldier and are going to want this information. The Inca absolutely have the capacity to pull this off considering the difficulty of invading the Andes and having the means(gold and silver) to literally buy knowledge. This is likely to take form of a large cadre of pet projects of the Emperor in Cuzco/Quito for general knowledge, and in the battlefields, mines, and a select few ayllus that are repurposed for production for anything with military applications. End result, the Inca likely manage to reach some form of military parity with the European interlopers by the end of the 16th century on land. It'd go faster but dealing with plague is going to eat up a lot of the Empire's resources. Naval parity is a big question mark as the Inca may either settle with letting European traders dominate trade with the rest of the world, or balk at it and actively seek out trade with the rest of the world on their own terms. Unlike China or India, the Inca aren't producing everything they care for or sitting on ideal trade routes where all manner of goods flow to them naturally so the impetus for naval endeavors is there.

Now, having established that the Europeans(and likely the Chinese once knowledge of China spreads through the grapevine of sailors and traders that the Inca are likely courting) know much that the Inca don't as well as a trickle of goods that catch Inca interest from both the West and Asia, the Inca are incredibly unlikely to pull a Korea or Japan and go full Hermit Kingdom/Sakoku. Incredibly, incredibly unlikely. The continued need to keep tabs on the outside world(considering the likely presence of European colonies throughout the Americas and likely hostile relationship with Spain) means that the Inca will be playing catch-up and do something similar to what the 19th century Qing did, and that's to continue to buy up the latest and greatest. Unlike the Qing, the Inca aren't going to consider themselves above the rest of the world and are going to accept expats, opportunists, and adventurers that can be bought to properly implement whatever gets their fancy, be it French-style infantry formations and officer training, galleon/frigate construction and maintenance, agricultural tools, clockmaking, court culture, etc. This shit ain't Civ where you either have it as common knowledge all over your state or you don't, it's not as though something like steel metallurgy or gunpowder production was some widely known to the general populace in Europe.

Long story short, the Inca's unique position of being relatively safe from European encroachment yet maintaining some sense of siege mentality, a lack of something that they desperately desire from others, and a established tradition of adopting the knowledge of others means that the Inca are likely to develop an upper class intimately acquainted with European social trends in the aristocracy and a labor/merchant/bureaucrat strata that's familiar with many European innovations over the course of the coming centuries as capitalism propels the world into the age of mechanization and rapid technological advancement. If anything, the Inca are probably a source of some of these innovations themselves by the time this period rolls around and a significant power due to the centuries of fostering a society where there exists people whose mission is innovation. The Inca are too rich, too populous, and too stable(if they survive the worst of the Spanish invasions) to simply be irrelevant on the world stage for too long. Between the abundant source of most metals, niter, high agricultural output, large consumer base, some of if not the largest fisheries in the world, and the most robust and ambitious social safety nets in the world, the Inca would keep themselves at worst relevant, at best competitive, maybe even dominant within South America and the Pacific in the global economy come the Victorian Era or its theoretical equivalent

A surviving Inca state would mean surviving Mapuches and other tribes from the south? If that's the case, would a modern Mapuche country be born?
 
Tokugawa Japan was an advanced, highly literate society not far off from Western tech levels. The Inca were stone age, lacked a writing system, and hadn't even invented the wheel. If they survive, it's going to be by hiding out in the mountains for a few centuries until they get conquered.
The Inca weren't Stone Age, if you we really want to classify them by Old World standard not even really used to classify Old World civilization they would be among Classical Antiquity top civilizations.
 
People love to put the carriage before the horse whenever it comes to European ascendancy when a large contributor to its rise has been disrupted.

Respectfully, your thesis is the one putting the cart before the horse. The inability of any European power at all to do what was blatantly a common occurrence because of a single setback - all the way to 1860s - is frankly extraordinary. By the time Pizzarro and co. arrived to the Andes the Spanish and Portuguese already had decades of success in conquest and overcame several setbacks. That's both your material necessity and your psychological effects arguments done for. All that's left us arguing that the Incas are utterly unique and unlike hundreds if other societies that were conquered at the time. I don't think your scenario is impossible by the way but it's on the low to very low likelihood side to me.
 
I'm going to say yes, assuming they've managed to siphon off a lot of tech and knowledge off their ally. The Incas, at the time of contact with the Europeans were a very new empire. New enough that there would still have been old men around who remembered when they were just another tribe. They didn't have a lot of entrenched baggage, and they were still figuring out how to run things. If they start out in a mood of "we need to learn their secrets" it could be a cultural trait by the time the industrial revolution rolls around.

It is interesting you should mention Tokugawa Japan in the context of the Incas though...

"Our emperor is a descendant of the sun deity!"

"How amazing, so is ours! I suppose a deity may have several children"
Good Lord, imagine all the fringe religions/cults that could spawn.
 
A surviving Inca state would mean surviving Mapuches and other tribes from the south? If that's the case, would a modern Mapuche country be born?

That'd depend on when the Inca return their attention to the Mapuche, likely dependent on the severity of the damage caused by the Spanish invasion and the length of time it takes for the Inca to adopt their newfound weaponry. If the Mapuche raid into the Inca and grab the attention of the Sapa Inca, it's likely that that'll be sooner than later. It could be anywhere from 20 years after the invasion to several centuries, and depending on the results of said warfare either there's no Mapuche state(the Inca'd break them up via resettlement) or the Mapuche survive them just like they did the Spanish. Depending on how things go(and how bad relations between the Mapuche and the Inca remain) you could see something similar to OTL where the Mapuche remain tribal well into the 19th century, or a Mapuche state organizes itself around the most prosperous of the Mapuche clans. But the key thing is just like the Inca remained in the Mapuche as a nation, the Mapuche remained in the Inca as one of the only instances where the Inca failed militarily. IMO this is likely to lead to the Mapuche being used as a sharpening block for the Inca military, as a proof of concept of the Inca's modern arms.

Good Lord, imagine all the fringe religions/cults that could spawn.

I've always thought that the interactions between the Inca and the Japanese/Chinese would be incredibly interesting and something that the Inca'd likely relate more to than to Europe's systems of governance and faith. It'd probably be long past the point where it's feasible but the Inca adopting Chinese Hanzi would be a sight to behold.
 
It occurred to me when someone here pointed out that the Inca derives his authority from descent from a pagan god, and a heathen religion. This would likely have been a deal-breaker for the Spanish or heavily religious European power. (Not necessarily for a more pragmatic ruler, but over time it'd be a distinct problem for relations with Europe).

But to the Japanese, it could have been hand meet glove.
 
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