several pivotal institutional developments during critical
junctures. At least three factors could have changed this
trajectory and led to very different long-run patterns.
First, institutional differences within the Americas during
the fifteenth century shaped how these areas were
colonized. North America followed a different institutional
trajectory than Peru because it was sparsely settled before
colonization and attracted European settlers who then
successfully rose up against the elite whom entities such as
the Virginia Company and the English Crown had tried to
create. In contrast, Spanish conquistadors found a
centralized, extractive state in Peru they could take over
and a large population they could put to work in mines and
plantations. There was also nothing geographically
predetermined about the lay of the land within the Americas
at the time the Europeans arrived. In the same way that the
emergence of a centralized state led by King Shyaam
among the Bushong was a result of a major institutional
innovation, or perhaps even of political revolution, as we
saw in chapter 5, the Inca civilization in Peru and the large
populations in this area resulted from major institutional
innovations. These could instead have taken place in North
America, in places such as the Mississippi Valley or even
the northeastern United States. Had this been the case,
Europeans might have encountered empty lands in the
Andes and centralized states in North America, and the
roles of Peru and the United States could have been
reversed. Europeans would then have settled in areas
around Peru, and the conflict between the majority of
settlers and the elite could have led to the creation of
inclusive institutions there instead of in North America. The
subsequent paths of economic development would then
likely have been different.
Second, the Inca Empire might have resisted European
colonialism, as Japan did when Commodore Perry’s ships
arrived in Edo Bay. Though the greater extractiveness of
the Inca Empire in contrast with Tokugawa, Japan, certainly
made a political revolution akin to the Meiji Restoration less
likely in Peru, there was no historical necessity that the Inca
completely succumb to European domination. If they had
been able to resist and even institutionally modernize in
response to the threats, the whole path of the history of the