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Who colonized Peru?

South America — the powers that ruled Peru, the dates, and what independence did and did not change.

In short

Who colonized Peru?

Spain. Pizarro captured the Inca emperor Atahualpa in 1532 and Spain ruled the Viceroyalty of Peru until independence was secured in 1824.

Potosí is the emblem of extractive colonialism: a mountain of silver worked by rotational forced labour, its output financing European wars for two centuries.

Reference

Who ruled Peru, and when

until 1532
Inca Empire (Tawantinsuyu)
1542–1824
Viceroyalty of Peru

At a glance

Key facts

Colonising powers
Spain
Independence
Declared 28 July 1821; secured 1824
Potosí
Silver from one mountain underwrote the Spanish Empire
The mita
Forced rotational labour with catastrophic mortality
Population
Andean population fell by an estimated 80–90% in the first century

Chronology

Key dates

  1. 1532

    Atahualpa seized at Cajamarca and later executed.

  2. 1545

    Silver discovered at Potosí (then in Upper Peru).

  3. 1570s

    The mita rotates Indigenous labour into the mines.

  4. 1780–82

    Túpac Amaru II rebellion.

  5. 1824

    Battle of Ayacucho ends Spanish rule.

Context

What the record shows

The mita drafted Indigenous communities across a vast catchment; many families fled their villages permanently to escape the draft.

Questions

Frequently asked

Who colonised Peru?
Spain, from Pizarro's conquest of the Inca Empire in 1532 to independence in 1824.
What was the mita?
A forced labour draft, adapted from an Inca institution, that rotated Indigenous workers into the Potosí silver mines and mercury mines with very high mortality.
When did Peru become independent?
Independence was declared in 1821 and secured at Ayacucho in 1824.

Read on

Related in the archive

References

Sources — colonial Peru

  1. [1]Bartolomé de las Casas, Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (Seville, 1552).
  2. [2]Noble David Cook, Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492–1650 (Cambridge University Press, 1998).
  3. [3]Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America (Monthly Review Press, 1971; English 1973).
  4. [4]Adam Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost (Houghton Mifflin, 1998).
  5. [5]Thomas Pakenham, The Scramble for Africa (Random House, 1991).
  6. [6]Shashi Tharoor, Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India (Hurst, 2017).
  7. [7]Caroline Elkins, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya (Henry Holt, 2005).
  8. [8]Alfred W. McCoy, Policing America's Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State (Wisconsin, 2009).
  9. [9]Daniel Immerwahr, How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019).
  10. [10]Jürgen Zimmerer, "The birth of the Ostland out of the spirit of colonialism", Patterns of Prejudice 39:2 (2005), on the German South-West Africa → Holocaust lineage.
  11. [11]Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Bogle-L'Ouverture, 1972).
  12. [12]Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I (1867), Chapter 31 ("Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist").

All works cited in good faith for documentary, educational and critical use. Errors and omissions: contact the archive.