Inca imperial expansion under Pachacuti
- Date
- 1438 CE
- Category
- Politics & governance
- Region
- Andes (Peru)
- Era
- Post-Classical / Medieval
- Significance
In 1438 the prince Cusi Yupanqui seized power at Cusco after repelling an invasion by the rival Chanka confederation, a war his father Viracocha Inca had fled as unwinnable.
Taking the name Pachacuti, meaning he who transforms or shakes the earth, he became the ninth Sapa Inca and launched the conquests that turned a single Andean valley kingdom into the largest empire in the pre-Columbian Americas. Pachacuti reorganised the realm as Tahuantinsuyu, the Land of the Four Quarters, with provincial governments radiating from Cusco, which he rebuilt monumentally. He and his successors expanded through a mixture of conquest, diplomacy and resettlement, ultimately controlling some twelve million people along more than 4,000 kilometres of the Andes. The state was knit together by the Qhapaq Nan, a road system eventually exceeding 30,000 kilometres, by relay runners, storehouses and the knotted-cord quipu records, without writing, the wheel or money. Pachacuti is also credited with building royal estates including Machu Picchu around 1450. His reign is the pivotal turning point in Andean history, creating the empire the Spanish would topple in the 1530s.
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Empires active in 1438 CE
- Malacca Sultanate1400 CE – 1511 CE
- Aztec Empire1428 CE – 1521 CE
- Inca Empire1438 CE – 1533 CE
- Ming Dynasty1368 CE – 1644 CE
- Kanem-Bornu Empire700 CE – 1900 CE
- Ottoman Empire1299 CE – 1922 CE
Related politics & governance events
- Founding of the Iroquois Confederacy and the Great Law of Peacec. 1450 (scholarly estimate; oral tradition as early as 1142)
- Formation of the Aztec Triple Alliance1428 CE
- Sonni Ali seizes Timbuktu and forges the Songhai Empire1468 CE
- Kublai Khan founds the Yuan dynasty and conquers Song China1271 CE (conquest completed 1279)
- Treaty of Tordesillas divides the non-European world7 June 1494
- Rise of Timur (Tamerlane) and his Central Asian empirec. 1370 CE (empire to 1405)
Further reading
The wider story
Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs
Award-winning history told from Nahua sources.
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