'Tapping' Into History: Exploitation and Hierarchy of Empire

Reading Blog 7

Silverblatt pg. 192: “Like the Incas, the Spanish derived their great wealth from institutions that tapped the labor of a colonially fashioned peasantry; like the Incas, they attempted to shape Andean senses of self and position – with varying degrees of success – by expanding an imperial religion.”

I find the close comparison between the colonialism of the Inca and the Spanish present in this sentence from page 192 of Silverblatt very interesting. We have talked and read quite a bit about the Incan conquest of Peru, and their approach to colonizing the other Indigenous peoples that were here, how those cultures persisted or were largely amalgamated, or just disappeared, under Inca rule. However, I feel like so far we have been careful about comparing the Incan conquest of what is now Peru (and Chile and Ecuador and Bolivia), to the Spanish Conquest. We have been talking a lot about different kinds of colonization, the many forms it takes (administrative, labour-focused, resource extractivist, settler, etc.), and its widespread impacts. We have also talked about how unique different colonial regimes are despite having many similarities in that they are all colonists. However, the direct comparison Silverblatt is making here is pretty unique, especially in that it doesn’t include a contrast. 

The part about how both the Incas and the Spanish “attempted to shape Andean senses of self and position – with varying degrees of success – by expanding an imperial religion,” drawing direct comparison with the Incan religion/faith system with Roman Catholicism, is very interesting. The comparison makes me think about the all-encompassing nature of both of these faith systems, as neither is/was simply a belief system, they provided a calendarized doctrine for daily living. I know that is true of most religions, but Catholicism is one I know quite well, and from what I’ve learned about the Incan religion, it was also calendarized, with Inti Raymi occurring on the Winter Solstice every year.

The first part of the sentence, “like the Incas, the Spanish derived their great wealth from institutions that tapped the labor of a colonially fashioned peasantry,” makes me reflect a lot on labour extractavist colonization, in the context of both the Incan and the Spanish colonization of Peru. The “colonially fashioned peasantry,” specifically jumps out at me, as we talked in class on Wednesday about colonially, and institutionally, constructed hierarchies. We were mostly talking about the Inquisition, the religious hierarchies based on blood/ancestry and amount of time practicing, but we talked about the caste system and the racial hierarchy ranging from Spanish to Indian, with everything in between, as well. “Tapping the labor” of the Indian “peasantry” was something that the Inca and Spanish both did, and basing who does the physical labour on social/religious/racial hierarchy has been common throughout the history of States, conquest, and just human civilization in general. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that it is our natural state to exploit, because I am no psychologist or philosopher, but it is certainly interesting that, thinking about human history, I can’t think of a single ‘great’ Empire that did not build their power on the backs of those they oppressed based on one of those hierarchies or another.