Had a discussion with a lecturer in my university and he claimed that the Incan empire was the largest in the world in 1491. I told him I disagreed, he promised to check his sources and asked me to do the same. The only source I could get my hands on through the internet was by Turchin, Adams & Hall, 2006: http://peterturchin.com/PDF/Turchin_Adams_Hall_2006.pdf I was thinking of sources for the size of the Ming empire, or the Timurid empire. I tried to look for East Asia: The Great Tradition by Fairbanks but came up empty. So what were the largest states in the world around that time, with sources if possible.
Yea I heard this claim too and I always thought there was an ulterior motive to making it. The Inca at the maximum extent had an area of approximately 2 million km sq, and that happened in the 1520s, not the 1490s. So in 1491 it would be during the last years of Topa Inca Yupanqui's reign before the vast conquests in Collasuyu by his son Huayna Capac. Whereas in 1491 it was Hongzhi emperor's reign in the Ming dynasty. He was a fairly well regarded ruler in an empire which had relatively stable borders after the reign of the Yongle emperor whon had consolidated around 6 million km sq. So 6 > 2, even counting fluctuations the Ming clearly were larger than the Inca. The real question is why was this claim made.