The Sons of Inti Shall Not Perish
- Thread starter King of the Uzbeks
- Start date
The fusion religion stemming from this would be interesting. The sons of Anyanwu shall not perish?
On Saturday's Edition of The Sons of Inti Shall Not Perish: Some truly exquisite, if excruciating, dramatic irony.
I've been tossing around the rise of the Afro-Quechua since I originally started getting flamed for talking back to the anti-Inca survival brigade. If the Inca have silver, the Portuguese have slaves, the Inca need manpower, and the Portuguese want silver it's quite likely that the Inca start purchasing slaves. I don't think the Inca will be able to keep Africans as slaves as
A) The Inca didn't really practice slavery. Instead every peasant in the Empire was essentially a serf at the whims of a bureaucratic machine
B) The Inca don't exactly need Africans to be forced to slave away; they're not out for plantation goods, they're out for restored crop yields, soldiers, and workers, plus it's far easier and effective to integrate purchased slaves into to their existing framework for managing new peoples
Add in time, intermarriage, stir twice, and you've got yourself a growing population of disease-resistant Afro-Quechua, an Inca Empire that's quickly learned the power of quarantine due to the increased spread of disease brought via African slaves alongside their aggressive relocation practices, and an established trading relationship with the Portuguese that's best facilitated by a specific waterway to avoid the Spanish; the Rio de La Plata.
If there are any Africans that are brought into Incan land, no doubt they’ll be spread around in medium size numbers as the Incans did with large populations of people. I’d give it two generations before the Africans would be mostly absorbed into the surrounding Quechuan/Aymara population.
The problem is altitude differences. That makes your idea completely implausible.
1. Native Andeans are basically supermen at altitude. Nobody else is going to be mining silver at 16,000 feet, because nobody's bringing over Ethiopian or Tibetan slaves. Also, women without altitude-adaption genes miscarry at higher rates the higher you go, IIRC. The Portuguese have friendly contact with the Ethiopians, they're on the wrong coast of Africa for shipping to the Americas and the connection is too tenuous. The Inca have a good chance of surviving BECAUSE of their home-turf advantage.
2. The west African disease advantage is for warm weather diseases that were imported to the Americas. Malaria, yellow fever etc. But they were equivalent to European resistance for diseases like smallpox, and in colder climates would have higher deathrates from pneumonia. This could be seen for example in the US colonies, where both Africans and Europeans had a universal advantage over Native Americans in disease resistance (except for perhaps Lyme Disease, which vanished for a few hundred years anyways). But comparatively to Europeans, the Africans thrived in the southeast (lower death rates, higher natural increase) whereas in the northeast it was opposite.
3. The diseases that hurt the Natives most were warm-weather diseases. The Mayans somehow survived, but the known cases of complete civilizational wipeout (99% death rates or so) without war are probably due to warm weather diseases. The cases I recall are the Amazonians and the Missisippians. In the Andes the native population decline is thought to be 93%, however this was linked to severe brutality to the locals, forced labor etc.
The profit-minded Spanish occupiers did not accomplish a population replacement in the Altiplano with imported slaves, despite doing so numerous other places. Instead, the majority Andean population is now Metizo, and the Andes has the highest proportion and largest populations of unmixed natives of any settled place in the Americas. They have huge majorities in the Altiplano. This is why people think some kind of Inca successor state is halfway plausible.
I think the best example of what you're looking for is the independent Brazillian mixed Native-African communities, which became quite strong and organized before slavery was abolished. But that was in an ecology where all the factors favored it. In the Andes, especially at high altitudes, it just won't happen.
What's more likely is a semi-healthy Incan successor state attracting foreign trade and intermarraige. The genes should seep in over time, they just have to live that long.
The Mapuche totally could make a new Afro-Mapuche population, but you'd have to import large numbers of Africans there in the first place. Where's the profit?
@Mightyboosh5
Esmereldas, not coincidentaly, is coastal, warm, and low-altitude.
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You wouldn't send African ex-slaves to the Inca highlands though. There's plenty more to western South America than just the Andes like the coastal deserts, the Amazon, the Llanos de Moxos, the Rio de La Plata's tributaries, etc. nevermind the parts of the Andes with valleys. Plus that doesn't negate the fact that Africans would still have better general resistances to Old World diseases that DID impact the Andes. Yes they're not as efficient as Andes-born Quechua at extreme altitudes but that doesn't seem very relevant when your options are a less efficient farmer or no farmer. The disease resistance is the cherry on top as to why the Inca would want to purchase manpower, not the goal. Throw in state-encouraged miscegenation so as to integrate and turn these new laborers into Quechua and I see all of these factors as non-issues within one or two generations
Are you saying they would purchase Africans for their low-altitude holdings?
-I think west African settlers would be demographically unproductive in the highlands. Not just be bad workers. The climate will hit them even worse than it did Europeans, and they'll suffer similarly from the altitude. There's a reason El Alto is 85% Native and 15% Metizo. The demographic heart of the Andean empires is the highlands though.
-The coastal desert is a possibility (acquire new peasants, have local peasants train them), but won't be a major demographic boost relative to the uplands.
-The Western Amazon and Moxos plain are going to be non-administrable due to being malarial death traps far from any coast. At best they'd be allied to anyone living there.
-South from there is the Gran Chaco, which to this day can't support many people.
-The Mapuche have the nice areas of Chile they could reach, and they're notably belligerent and competent. Edit: Rereading the story, in this timeline the Inca have taken about half of it.
-The mid-altitude humid areas east of the Bolivian Altiplano are another workable zone for the scheme. European settlers would probably survive better, but would recruiting them be smart?
Moreover, how would it shake out when they purchase their first, and how many would there be relative to European mercenaries and guest workers? The desert is right where the Africans would show up, and they'd probably do well there. Moving them in large numbers elsewhere would take awhile, mainly because they'd stop spreading organically at the mountain barrier. There'd have to be a deliberate scheme to plant them in mid-alt Bolivia.
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Hard disagree on your analysis of the deserts and the Amazon/Moxos as minimally productive or being ungovernable. The Pervuian coastline has some of the richest fisheries in the world and has plenty of abandoned or devolved settlements that could be repopulated. It'd also be in the Inca's interests to strengthen their coastal settlements anyways. The Moxos would be governable thanks to their African Quechua resettlement program and the matter of bringing up coastlines makes no sense when this is the Inca we're discussing. The Moxos are far more governable than Quito or Tucuman when your center is in the Altiplano and it's an outlet for the Inca's dead mummy worship pyramid scheme of an Imperial Cult that eventually has to be dealt with. Relatively easy to conquer, relatively low effort to hold due to being horribly depopulated and largely filled with second generation Afro-Quechua as they'd probably have cottoned on to their resistance to tropical disease by then.
As for West African settlers being unsustainable at high altitudes, the Northern Andes' population centers are generally at lower attitudes and have been recently depopulated by civil war, disease, and invasion. I'm not sure where you got the idea that Africans would be sent to mines at 16,000 ft. when most major Inca settlements are slightly below 3,000 ft. such as Cajamarca, Quito, Ayacucho, etc. in their mountain core. Even Potosi which the Inca themselves were unaware of is at 4,000 ft. Cuzco, Huncayo, and Laja/La Paz are some of the only major settlements sitting north of 3,000 ft. And even then, you've still got plenty of sites along the coast and sites worth settling people in like Chachapoyas which still needs to be brought to heel by the Inca, Tumebamba/Cuenca which was recently destroyed during the civil war, etc. that sit way closer to 2,000 than 3,000. The difficulties non-Quechua settlers faced were also exacerbated by attempting to import their own farming traditions to the land and failing miserably. Why do you think the Spanish spread their own livestock aggressively but were unable to dislodge the Llama in the Altiplano, for example? The answer is that their methodologies, divisions of labor, and means were flawed, their own physical unsuitability is just another one of these factors. Africans should fare far better under Quechua oversight and as a trickle into each Ayllu that can accommodate them if the Inca follow their traditional resettlement policies.
I also disagree with your premise about organic population growth because it has one big oversight, and that's that the the various peoples of the Empire would be left alone to populate their lands again when that couldn't be further from the truth as to how the Inca govern. The Inca would encourage or even enforce miscegenation by breaking apart anything other than nuclear families from the very get-go, move people around willy nilly, and likely place a large number of Africans around Cuzco as they did in the past to their recently conquered to encourage their 'Quechuafication'. Africans would be aggressively integrated like all others in the past except that Africans are (probably) far more cooperative when they're the equals of their fellow peasant laborers than if they were still slaves. The Inca assimilation package(tm) relied on integrating the conquered into existing communities to work.
You're mixing up feet and meters in your argument. That doesn't speak well to actually having a deep understanding of the region.
Settling the Moxos with a deliberately engineered population strikes me as complete crackpottery. While the 'Inca' understood the difference between highland and lowland peoples, it would take generations to make a new integrated people they could use like that, AND they don't have anyone living on the ground there.
Further, Moxos was another inhabited territory in the process of depopulation. They've got to conquer it and learn how to farm there. The administrative unit of Moxos has about 20,000 people today, thought that's not all the Moxos. Beni department, which covers far more than the Moxos plain, has 400,000. But this is with modern farming and ranching. I don't think the Inca will get near that. Historically, the Moxos plain had a stable population of about 30,000 before deliberate recolonization.
The Inca can do this, in a long, long time, if they don't have more important things to do like fending off the Spanish and avoiding administrative collapse. They're going to waste a lot of bodies going after the lowlands- this is the kind of scheme the Europeans repeatedly failed at with high casualty counts. The Inca aren't going to be given that kind of breathing room. Short term solutions, not long term pie in the sky, are what they need.
You've got enthusiasm going for you, but you're grasping at whatever straws are available without discernment.
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Slow your roll and your condescension, cowboy
Yeah I mixed up units there, I was jumping across different sources and things got muddled in the process. Doesn't discount the premise of my argument, despite you hopscotching over it, that there's plenty of lands that can support people ill suited to extreme elevations or me doubting your premise that Africans would be outright detriments under Quechua farming models. It also ignores other historical anomalies that don't line up with your narrative like the mass settlement of Spaniards in Potosi IOTL. As for the 'complete crackpottery' that is the Afro-Quechua being deliberately engineered:
A) Miscegenation is a thing that occurs naturally
B) The Inca's repopulation programs were designed to encourage social integration via miscegenation as one of its components
C) Unless the Africans are getting exceptions, they're going to be split up into nuclear families at best and settled throughout the Andes
D) Unless they're practicing incest, the vast majority of Africans will be taking local Andean spouses
I'm not using omnipotence and hindsight to artificially engineer diddly, this is the Inca's tried and true practice from IOTL
As for the point of conquering the Llanos...that's the point. The Inca's mummy worship imperial cult was something of a pyramid scheme upon which nobility was derived from maintenance of their ancestor Emperor's mummy and their conquered lands within their lifetime. Every successor to Pachacuti had something similar. The Llanos will inevitably hit a point where they're by far the easiest option of expansion for the Inca because their system's gonna push them at it even if the value is extremely questionable in the short term at which point their by now established Afro-Quechua populace starts to look mighty valuable. You're doing a disservice comparing the Inca's demographic management to Spanish attempts, to be frank.
The Llanos aren't exactly densely packed and serves as decent frontier land for the Inca to settle Afro-Quechua as the cost of conquering a handful of towns every couple dozen years and pushing onto the next notable river. Relocating <50,000 people on every push isn't going to exceed their means if they've already passed the worst of their initial slump caused by the Spanish. It's also by far the best land for the Inca to experiment with ranching cattle, horses, etc. It's quite literally the most inaccessible place in the Empire for Europeans to get to which is a big plus to incentivize the Inca
I agree that the Moxos are a long term slow project btw. I don't recall ever claiming any different. But I also think the Inca will be far more successful than the Spanish ever were in settling the region if they integrate Africans into their demographic makeup. Going by your own argument of genetic advantage, the Inca should by far have an edge on the Spanish who only ever brought Africans to Potosi and the remnants of that community ended up settling alongside the Quechua-Aymara upon emancipation around La Paz. There's almost no Afro-Bolivians in Beni today
Chapter 2.14: Smoke and Iron
Titu Cusi saught to replace old bronze weapons with more European style replacements
Titu Cusi’s power waxed and waned, depending on where in the empire one was. Obviously those in lands no longer ruled by the Tawantinsuyu were not under his sway, but even amongst those lands still under the authority of Cusco, he did not wield total power. As Inkap rantin he did hold power in all of the empire, but this power was mostly in the form of administering the decrees of the Sapa Inka, not crafting his own reforms. In what remained of Chinchaysuyu, Antisuyu, and Kuntisuyu he would face local powers. The three suyu did not have the de facto independence Quallasuyu did from imperial power, and years of rule by Cusco meant that they were not inclined towards resisting top-down pressure. But these suyus still had their own Apus, and other officials with direct lines of communication to the emperor. And, although Titu Cusi was a master of kissing up to Quisipe-Tupac, they could often be quite convincing when pleading to the Sapa Inka. In addition, while Titu Cusi sought to restablish imperial power everywhere he also wanted to ensure said power remained in his hands, and so was reluctant to do anything that would threaten Quillota’s status as the heart of the imperial revival. So Titu Cusi’s efforts must be assessed in pairs, what happened in the Quallasuyu and what happened outside of it.
Military modernization had been a key goal of the Tawantinsuyu ever since they had first captured the Spaniards. By the 1550s Spanish advantages in warfare had not been neutralized, but that had been normalized. Any man who was in any way trained for battle would not run at the sound of gunfire, and did not think Horses anything more than mere beasts. The issue was now quality and quantity, not mere knowledge of the European weapons. Horses had proliferated through the Tawantinsuyu and even beyond the empire’s borders. The Spanish still more and better horses, but the Tawantinsuyu had enough that no longer were they a precious resource to be jealously guarded at only one site. All horses in the empire were naturally the sole property of the Sapa Inka, but many were used for transport or as beast of burden instead of solely cavalry. Said cavalry was a focus of Titu Cusi’s reforms in the military. Intense training was required to ride, and still the Tawantinsuyu cavalry was inferior to the Spanish. Rectifying this would prove difficult. There was very little natural terrain for training, and there were no lands where men had been with horses since birth. Titu Cusi did his level best in training and did make some progress. He found that those Mapuche who had remained in their homeland following the conquest remained had adapted horses to suit their homeland, and so reluctantly recruited them into his forces, although he never would fully trust them and with good reason. In time Titu Cusi advanced the cavalry of the Tawantinsuyu to new heights, but they were not yet on par with any of their European counterparts. The breeding stock was lesser, they did not have years of tactical experience with fighting on horseback, and the wave after wave a plague decimated the cavalry just as it did everything else in the empire. The effects of his efforts were generally equitable over the entire empire, seeing as how there were horses everywhere. However, the best cavalry would indeed be found in Quallasuyu.
When Europeans had first arrived in the region, the Tawantinsuyu had been in an age a bronze, and since that time iron and steel had been some of the most valuable items in the empire. Indeed, the invasion of the Mapuche had been nominally aimed at securing iron deposits for the Tawantinsuyu. Such efforts proved unnecessary, as the iron deposits cultivated by the Apus of Quillota had almost entirely already been in the Empire. Several important mines were established in various locations. One was established along the coast, near beaches where a colony of dolphins often swam, and so earned the nickname “phujpuri”. Another was established further North, and was called “thalthal” after local claims of birds in the night. Finally one was established somewhat near the Maule river. A local legend soon emerged, that the mine was at the site of the famed Battle of the Maule River, which had defined the Southern border of the empire for years. This legend was almost certainly false, but it did earn the mine the nickname of “maqanakuy” for the battle that had supposedly taken place there. Finally one mine was established in Kuntisuyu, again on the coast, and not given a name save for the name of the suyu it sat in[1]. The mines were mostly manned by mita laborers, paying their debt to the Sapa Inka by way of their work, and marked the first real application of the mita system to mining in the history of the Tawantinsuyu. In theory this was only supposed to be seasonal, but in practice they were worked year round, removing worthless copper[2] and mining out the valuable iron ore. The mines were under the strict control of Titu Cusi in his position of Apu. Even ore mined in Kuntisuyu was sent South for smelting.
The Bloomery was the backbone of Tawantinsuyu iron and steel production
By decree of the Apu, all iron and steel production was to be done in Quillota. The river nearby, the Aconcagua, would be the source of power for the bloomeries that emerged, the water wheels turning and turning ore into iron. Men and women toiled, creating iron from the ore. Again and again iron was thrown into the furnaces. If steel was needed, and it often was, yet more work was required. Captured Spanish, then voluntary Spanish, then voluntary Portuguese had granted a base of knowledge, and the Tawantinsuyu had, through trial and error, begun to produce iron and steel of reasonable quality. It was not as good as in Toledo, and it was indeed quite limited in scope and quality by European standards particularly in terms of steel. The Tawantinsuyu lacked knowledge of blast furnaces, which made production far more efficient in Europe. Nonetheless, when a soldier in the imperial army drew a blade, it would not be copper and tin, but iron and sometimes carbon. But the average man would not get a true blade. Captured blades had long been a status symbol among the nobility, and Titu Cusi, ever the people pleaser, was hesitant to displace those who had been favored previously. And, desperate to maintain a monopoly, Titu Cusi remained extremely selective about the distribution of forged weapons, to the point of harming the effectiveness of his army. There was also the matter of smithing. The Tawantinsuyu could smelt and smelt and smelt, but they had no true experts in working iron and steel into swords or other weapons. The well trained gold and copper workers could fashion weapons well enough, but the quality again remained low. If a piece became unworkable it would be refashioned into a club or mace.
Quillota was also home to the powder mills of the Empire. Very few Europeans knew the formulas commonly used for gunpowder, and fewer still the process for refining the saltpeter needed. Acquiring charcoal was easy enough, Titu Cusi ordering swaths or threes felled and burned in the jungles of the east. Sulfur too could be found easily. The slopes of Tacora, an ancient volcano in north-central Quallasuyu, had plenty and was sent south to Quillota.
No the problem was saltpeter.
Even among Europeans the methods of producing saltpeter were kept secretive. Gunpowder was a lifeblood of war, and those who controlled the supply could at the very least turn a profit, if not strangle their opponent's ability to wage war. In the days of Titu Cusi’s father some saltpeter had fallen into the hands of the Tawantinsuyu from captured Spaniards, but little of that remained. Half heard tales from Europeans and trial and error had led to a small nitrary being established. Human and animal waste was packed in with plant matter and left. If they were lucky, it would then produce a product that could be scraped up and boiled to make the saltpeter. It was slow process, and with no experience in the process whole batches were often lost to mistakes. So the Tawantinsuyu had a very limited supply of gunpowder to start with[3].
And it wasn’t always very good gunpowder either, often containing lower amounts of saltpeter then was needed. In his everlasting bid to garner support Titu Cusi would often show off the power with displays of explosions and fire, but failed to mention that the powder used was useless in the barrel of a gun. What little useful powder existed was kept in the hands of the Apu, for use by his gunmen or artillery. The weapons themselves were either captured from the Spanish or bought from the Portuguese for extremely high prices, Titu Cusi deciding that with what little powder he had manufacturing guns locally would not be worth it. Even with the low number they possessed the guns of the Tawantinsuyu were still filled mostly with European powder, at this point in history purchased either from enterprising Spaniards or enterprising Portuguese.
The great mass of men armed with modernized weapons was based in Quillota, as was to be expected. While Titu Cusi lived in Cusco, his base of power remained in the South. The men entrusted with the city in his absence were a cadre of nobles who had actually originated in what was now the Kingdom of Kito and who had followed the army South and ended up being stranded there. A few guards were naturally posted in Cusco, it would not do for the Sapa Inka not to have power over at least some guns, and various important figures were given the “honor” of owning a gun. But the real power remained in Titu Cusi’s control and stashed in Quillota. At least for now.
In early 1557 crews of laborers broke ground some five mile northwest of Cusco on a new mountain fortress. With the loss of Tumbez all those years ago the most modern fortifications of the Tawantinsuyu had been lost, and the Cessation of Faith had given the Spanish land well into the mountainous interior. No longer could invaders simply be stopped in the foothills, and with the border now closer to Cusco then in living memory, it was time that the capital got a strong defense once more. This first fort was situated along the road leading towards Spanish territory, and would theoretically serve as a bastion that protected the capital from all threats. Titu Cusi hoped to follow it up with another fortress on the roads headed towards the coast. However, the fortress would never be as grand as he had hoped.
Firstly Titu Cusi, in his rush to emulate the newest of modern tactics, ordered that a star or bastion fortress be built. Such fortresses were useful in the flatter and more costal regions of Europe and, while not useless in the mountains, were not as necessary when an attack was likely only coming from one side. Secondly, star forts were manned with a complex set of batteries that engaged in covering fire of blind spots with precision being needed to defend effectively, a tactical expertise that no gunners in the Tawantinsuyu had yet developed. And Titu Cusi did not have enough heavy guns or powder to man the fortress either, especially when the Spanish raised a ruckus about what they saw as an aggressive move, and which Quisipe-Tupac, not wanting to be surrounded by his cousin’s forces, agreed with. So Titu Cusi agreed to “voluntarily” limit the number of men and guns in his new fortress. This left the builders building a fort that was much larger than it needed to be. It would be several years before it was completed, and by the time the expensive project was over, Titu Cusi was forced to abandon any hope of more fortifications.
During the years of peace that followed 1556, Titu Cusi’s military achievements were generally successful when they were continued from previous Tawantinsuyu efforts, but failed to present any great leap forward against the Spanish.
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1: The Mines listed above are near or at the towns of La Higuera, Taltal, and Romeral in Chile and the Marcona district in Peru respectively.
2: This is not really accurate, bronze (and thus copper), is still the backbone of Tawantinsuyu metallurgy and are still widely used.
3: The irony here is that, being into control of OTL Northern Chile and the coast, Titu Cusi is in possession of some of the best gunpowder making material the world has to offer. Wars were fought over it IOTL. But at this point in history Nitratine has not been identified as a viable source, and while guano is known to certain people near certain caves it is not a widely sought after source. So for now, the Tawantinsuyu struggle to produce saltpeter, while atop a mountain of it.
Their habit of marrying into local dynasties and the multiple wives does help some, so they aren't as bad as say, the Ptolemies. None of the Sapa Inkas IOTL seem to have had anything close to the issues the Hapsburgs had.
On the other hand you can't just keep marrying your siblings and expect it to go well.
Thank you!
I'll be covering the language issue in an upcoming update, but at the moment Quechua remains dominant and was so even when Spanish influence was higher in Cusco.
At the moment Africans and those of African decent are still confined to Spanish holdings. The large scale purchasing of slaves is also outside the picture at the moment. Titu Cusi doesn't trust the Spanish enough, or even really know enough about the slave trade, to try and import a new population base from them. And the Portuguese, while happy to send ships with some gunpowder and weapons, are not sending huge armadas around the Cape quite yet.
Josip Bruz Titu Cusi really is playing it smart and building up his forces like his father was doing before his eventual death, I got the feeling that he won’t be the one to overthrow the Spaniards but his legacy will eventually result in when the Incan military can go toe to toe with the Spaniards.
Incas have wait while before they can challenge Spaniards. Probably they would need allies but them has difficult to find speciality such which would be useful. Probably best moment is when Spain is focused to another issues. Perhaps them have wait until War of the Spanish Succession which probably will happen eventually even if very different from OTL.
How long would it be, based on OTL, before all the vulnerable people die from plagues and only the immune/resistant are left?
Also, making maces and clubs out of bad quality iron. The weapon needs to be somewhat pointy/edged to make use of the material. A simple club is a pure bludgeoning weapon, they might as well make it out of bronze or copper (and wood, I guess. Pure metal clubs sound extremely heavy). As a matter of fact, blunt weapons as traditional armor piercing/negating option might be a good counter to Spanish armor supremacy.
Also, making maces and clubs out of bad quality iron. The weapon needs to be somewhat pointy/edged to make use of the material. A simple club is a pure bludgeoning weapon, they might as well make it out of bronze or copper (and wood, I guess. Pure metal clubs sound extremely heavy). As a matter of fact, blunt weapons as traditional armor piercing/negating option might be a good counter to Spanish armor supremacy.
I would assume that it goes couple generations before immune level is same as Europeans have. So perhaps on early 17th century diseases wouldn't be so big problem for them.
Well, at least the Empire is putting (quite wisely) all the possible effort to survive. I guess at this point time is the essence now. Probably would need to hold another century at least.
If would survive, I guess the Empire's core lands would be essentially ATL Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina...
If would survive, I guess the Empire's core lands would be essentially ATL Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina...
Longer. As long as it takes for the population to be mixed- so that's more on the scale of centuries, arguably not completed today. More complete in Mexico, for example.