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"This io9 flashback previously ran in January 2012." This note on the submitted article prompted me to look for earlier discussion of the Inca empire through the HN Search tool. This article appears not to have been submitted before, but we have had other discussions here about the Inca empire and its conquest by the Spanish. The submitted article correctly notes that the history of the Inca empire is fragmentary bec…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually I remember a documentary were it stated that the Persians paid men and women for their skills working on projects. I can't remember the name of the documentary (probably from the discovery channel). A quick google search - http://hsc.csu.edu.au/ancient_history/societies/near_east/pe... And - "Men, women and children worked in ancient Persia to support a diverse economy. Workers were paid in wine and grain, w…
>Workers were paid in wine and grain That's not pay, it's logistics. Even on the worst forced labor projects they're still usually feeding the prisoners.
"This io9 flashback previously ran in January 2012." This note on the submitted article prompted me to look for earlier discussion of the Inca empire through the HN Search tool. This article appears not to have been submitted before, but we have had other discussions here about the Inca empire and its conquest by the Spanish. The submitted article correctly notes that the history of the Inca empire is fragmentary bec…
The thesis of Icebreaker [1], a controversial history book by an ex-GRU officer, is that Stalin was planning an invasion of Germany right when Operation Barbarossa happened. However, his interpretation is disputed by most historians.
What is certain is that the Red Army was caught with its pants down and got a sound beating at the beginning. However, they did fight with tremendous tenacity (eg, at Stalingrad) later on, and eventually pushed back the Germans.
You'll also note that Germans and Japanese troops fought with particular determination even when it became clear that defeat was the only possible outcome. Contrast this with the dismal performance of French and British troops during the Battle of France.
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>People don't fight hard against invaders if their "home" rulers are dictators--World War II provides other examples of that principle. You don't think the Russians fought hard?
I had Ukraine in mind as one outstanding example. For some parts of the territory Japan invaded, too, the local people thought at first that maybe the invaders would be better rulers than their previous rulers.
The extent to which the Incas did it is remarkable, but historically civil engineering had little to do with markets. The ancient Sumerians, Egyptians, Persians etc. pretty much built their infrastructure and monumental buildings with drafted, unpaid labor. The French monarchy, one of the most advanced states in the world, relied on the corvée to build roads up until 1789 [1]. The decisive turn in the situation took…
I think the key point is that they didn't have money at all .
1. The Inca state had no internal trade system whatsoever. This is, if accurate, indeed unusual for a society of its size.
2. Despite this, they still managed to acquire great "wealth", which the article defines as infrastructure and public works. This is not surprising at all, since historically even societies that had markets did not usually rely on them for civil engineering projects.
A comment from a Peruvian friend of mine, who I passed the article onto: "This is incredibly misleading. There was no market because that culture was run by theocratic totalitarian blood thirsty central planners. The vast majority of people were a form of slave and trapped in basically a completely rigorous caste system. They were a mix of India and NK, ruled by a Mao "god" Inca who had total control of everything. T…
>There was no market because that culture was run by theocratic totalitarian blood thirsty central planners
This implies that markets would have arisen in Incan society but were suppressed. Is there evidence of markets organically manifesting in Incan society?
Also without the terror component the Soviet state became stagnant.
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Agreed, there is nothing strange about the Incan system. It is one of the oldest forms of taxes.
However I shared the paper's central question which was the complete lack of existence of a trading class. In other cultures there were always traders and markets and points of exchange. Perhaps as a mono-culture the Incans never had to develop such systems (or the need was small enough, as pointed out in the paper, that they did so on a case by case basis).
The extent to which the Incas did it is remarkable, but historically civil engineering had little to do with markets. The ancient Sumerians, Egyptians, Persians etc. pretty much built their infrastructure and monumental buildings with drafted, unpaid labor. The French monarchy, one of the most advanced states in the world, relied on the corvée to build roads up until 1789 [1]. The decisive turn in the situation took…
The secret of the Inca's great wealth may have been their unusual tax system. Instead of paying taxes in money, every Incan was required to provide labor to the state. In exchange for this labor, they were given the necessities of life. Of course, not everybody had to pay labor tax. Nobles and their courts were exempt, as were other prominent members of Incan society. Isn't this just a variant of feudalism?
It also sounds a lot like communism.