Staple Finance, Wealth Finance, and Storage in the Inka Political Economy [and Comments and Reply]

TLDR

The Inka state’s political economy depends on expanding financial systems, including staple finance that mobilizes subsistence goods and wealth finance that produces valuables, and stresses that production and management of goods are as crucial as labor and exchange relations. The study investigates how the Inka reorganized its economic systems and introduced new financial forms. The authors analyze the Upper Mantaro Valley’s extensive state storage network and the Inka’s mobilization and regulation of valuable commodities and special‑purpose moneys.

Abstract

The development of the regionally integrated institutions of an expanding state society is predicated on the growth of systems of economic support. Both expansion of existing systems of finance and the development of alternative systems of revenue, such as tribute, administered exchange, and centralized taxation, may be of central importance to the state political economy. This paper examines the reorganization of the economic systems of the Inka state and the development of new forms of finance. State finance is dichotomized as staple finance, the direct or indirect mobilization of subsistence and utilitarian goods, and wealth finance, the manufacture and procurement of valuables, primitive money, and currency. It is argued that the requirements of production and management of goods were as important as the social relations of labor and exchange that are the focus of current discussions of the state political economy. The organization of the massive state storage system, specifically in the Upper Mantaro Valley of the central highlands of Peru, and the state's mobilization and control of valuable commodities and special-purpose moneys are examined.