Were there slavery in the Inca civilization?

by RodionRomanovitch

I'm reading History of the Conquest of Peru by Willian H. Prescott, and it exposes how they had hours of work that didn't worn out the people, and such thing. Wasn't there any kind of enslavement, even of conquered peoples?

the_gubna

If by slavery you mean "people owning other human beings" then no. There appears to have been no concept of this in the Inka empire. While there were prisoners of war taken as trophies in parts of the Andes (before the Inka period), they were much more likely to end up as sacrificial victims than as domestic or agricultural laborers.

What may appear similar is the Inka practice of mitma, where rebellious communities were split up and forced to resettle in other parts of the empire. The areas where mitmaes/mitmaqkuna were sent might have been territories occupied by communities loyal to the empire who could keep an eye on them, or to sparsely occupied provincial territories where they couldn't cause much trouble. While these peoples were never "owned" by any other person, they could expect a heavy labor demand in addition to their forced resettlement.

This was somewhat similar to the everyday labor tax known as the mit'a, expected of all residents of the Inka empire (with the exception of the Cuzco Valley lineages and some provincial nobles). This labor tax also shouldn't be thought of as slavery, however, because it's simply tax paid in the form of labor hours (agricultural, pastoral, military service, etc). If the mit'a is slavery, so is income tax.