Challenge: Incan Empire survives smallpox

If you want the Incas to survive, find a way of avoiding the destructive civil war that was raging when the Spanish first arrived. That way, the Spaniards who come to Peru encounter a strong, united country under one ruler. This makes it more likely that they will be beaten back.

Secondly, there's no way to avoid the epidemics which decimated the Inca in real life. Even if we remove the most common varient of smallpox and replace it with something less serious, there are still a wide variety of souped-up Eruropean diseases just waiting to be unleashed on the natives of the Americas. If smallpox doesn't kill Huayna Capac, measles will.
What you really need is for this pestilence to hit the Incas quietly, at a time when there are no Europeans around to take advantage. Whatever happens, the empire is going to be demographically crippled for decades. The best that can be hoped for is that the Spanish don't use it to their advantage.

Suppose that things pan out as in OTL, but Pizzaro never catches that gold-laden trade barge. He hacks his way down to the north of Ecuador, not knowing what exactly it is he is looking for, but never makes it: some horrible fate befalls the Spanish at the hands of the natives before they can penetrate too deeply into the empire. Meanwhile, smallpox and a range of other European disease push down the Andean coast, killing hundreds of thousands of Incas. The royal family is decimated, leaving Huascar sole, undisputed ruler of the Empire (Atahualpa dies of flu).

In the face of the mass-die off of his family, Huascar hears reports about an aggressive invasion of viracochas from the north, which was cut to pieces by the garrison in Quito as it attempted to cross the Empire's boundaries. Not, however, before inflicting massive casualties on the soldiers who opposed them.

The Emperor makes the leap of logic which allows him to conclude that the Spaniards and the diseases are linked, and that the Spanish are, therefore, a very bad thing. As a result, the Empire goes into a type of lockdown, with European encroachment met by massive Incan armies who know, to some extent, what to expect from these mysterious harbringers of doom. There's no misplaced trust in these scenarios: the Spanish are killed on sight.

If Huascar and his descendents can keep this up for a hundred years, they get the one thing that they didn't have in real life, which was time. I see no reason why they wouldn't adopt the use of firearms and horses if they find a way to access them. Eventually, it may well be that another European power, attempting to reach the Inca by more peaceful means, could give them assistance in modernising their armies in return for trade concessions. (God knows the Spanish had enough enemies). England would be a good candidate.

In such a scenario, the Empire continues, weakened demographically but revitalised technologically. With access to firearms and steel weapons, the Incas can fight the Spanish on a more equal basis. Even allowing for the inevitable demographic colapse, an Inca Empire with the knowledge of what it is fighting against is going to be a formidable foe, particularly for the periodical 100-200 man expeditions the Spanish will be throwing at them. Eventually, it may well come to a point where the Spanish simply throw in the towel, and content themselves with expansion elsewhere.

The Inca Empire of this timeline, then, remains backward, and is periodically ravaged by epidemics. It is, however, acquiring knowledge about the rest of the world rapidly, so there is no longer the same 'element of surprise' which Pizzaro deployed so effectively in OTL. The fact that the empire doesn't fall has massive, massive butterflies - no Inca gold flows into Spain, just for starters.

All this is very hypothetical, of course and, more to the point, very unlikely. Sad to say, the Spanish were almost inevitably going to ahve the upper hand in this particular fight.
 
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Horses are not as much of a winning factor in Peru as they were in Central Mexico. Peru ain't a bunch of hills, it's the Andes. All things considered, horses only helped conquistadors in Central Mexico. In Yucatan, they were quite useless, in Peru the Indians would simply hide up on the slopes and the horses had trouble on the roads. As for your Indian example, they got conquered for the same reason the "Indians" in America did, by the exploitation of political divisions and regional conflicts. In both India and America, the invaders had armies of mostly local troops serving a king who wanted his rivals gone, only to be betrayed by his foreign allies of course.

That's a very good point. The Conquistadors were fairly lucky in conquering the Aztecs, as their neighbors didn't like them. The Incas should have a good chance given the terrain advantage.
 
Oh well, there are some ways for the Incas to win, make sure that the Incas have a form of writing by the time the Europeans arrive and it is widely used. In otl due to lack of writin message travelled slowly by mouth so the Spaniards were easily able to destroy the Incas. With writing the Icas could potentially crush the Spanish.

Um...writing doesn't operate like a telephone or telegraph. A written message would travel no faster between two points of the Inca Empire than an oral one (or one sent via quipu, which may itself have been a form of "writing" capable of transmitting detailed information...scholars are STILL trying to figure out exactly what the quipu did). So having writing would have given the Inca no clear advantage over OTL.


In otl one major reason for the Incas fall was due to their differing ideologies in otl te Incan emperor did not know the Spaniards were out to kill him and the Incas got fooled multiple times but did not learn. Why because they had absoulutly no idea of trickery or deceit which the Spaniards had, this was one major reason why the Spaniard won, with Writing widespread across the general population of the incas the Spaniards would have most likely been crushed.

What evidence is there that the Inca were not familiar with "trickery or deceit?" The fact that Atahualpa fell into an ambush doesn't prove that. Many non-Inca the world over have fallen into ambushes over history. And how would writing have solved this problem?
 
What evidence is there that the Inca were not familiar with "trickery or deceit?" The fact that Atahualpa fell into an ambush doesn't prove that. Many non-Inca the world over have fallen into ambushes over history. And how would writing have solved this problem?

Indeed, Manco Inca seemed to be perfectly able to trick the Spaniards into letting him leave their captivity to "conduct some religious ceremonies" when he was actually going to meet up with a massive army to drive the Spanish out. And he came pretty close to succeeding.
 
Even if the Incas drive out the Spanish they will only come back with more men and more guns.

The Spaniards would never give up if they knew there was a kingdom without gunpowder and cavalry that was rich in gold and silver.
 
The problem with the Incas was they were a hierarchical Stone Age empire. The empire was fairly new, full of different types of people the Incans conquered. There was not alot holding them together. Once the Emperor was killed the empire broke down. Same story with the Aztecs actually. The Andean people would've been harder to conquer if they were independent tribal enclaves like Afghanistan.

The Incans might have done better to expand east toward the Pampas in Argentina instead of north to grab more of the Andeas. The Incans did invade parts of Argentina in the 1480s, but this should have been their early focus. The Pampas region is extremely fertile and suitable for civilization of scale. Yet the actual people who lived there were among the least sophisticated in the New World, thus unable to benefit from their fortune.
 

birdboy2000

Banned
The problem with the Incas was they were a hierarchical Stone Age empire. The empire was fairly new, full of different types of people the Incans conquered. There was not alot holding them together. Once the Emperor was killed the empire broke down. Same story with the Aztecs actually. The Andean people would've been harder to conquer if they were independent tribal enclaves like Afghanistan.

I think rebellions are inevitable in any empire, stone age or no. But the Incas did do a fair bit to reduce them. They had excellent road networks, grain stores which were used to relieve famine, and even today there are movements (and not just among the Quechua, the dominant ethnic group) which harken back to the memory of the Inca state.

Admittedly, the empire *did* have trouble holding together, but that was more often over succession than over conquered ethnic groups seeking independence - working out a better succession system might help. You might also want to have some refugees walking around telling stories about why Spanish rule would be even worse.
 
Well, Jared posted somewhere something that, if there was a variola minor outbreak, instead of variola major outbreak, the Sapa Inca could survive, which means no civil war. That, I think, would make the Incans able to defeat Pizzaro and his forces.
 
The Spanish continuing to come back after being defeated repeatedly, particularly if one or more of those defeats is costly (as in, we're looking at more than a few hundred men lost)...I don't buy it.

"We'll never give up! Even if this costs more than we can afford, even if there are easier opportunities elsewhere! DEATH TO THE INCA!"

What is this, some kind of Warhammer 40,000 Imperial Guard "We Have Reserves" trope-based crusade? :rolleyes:
 
One possibility might be the Chinese deciding to stop backing their currency with silver, which they had done before. With the largest market for silver dropping out, some of the Spanish colonies are not going to be paying for themselves any more. A successful rebellion in an expensive-to-maintain colony in Peru might see the Spanish deciding to cut their losses and concentrate on Mexico. A restoration of the Inca may be possible in that scenario.
 
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