The History of Ecuador covers human habitation in the region reaching back 8,000 years.
During that period a diversity of cultures have influenced the people and the land that today make up the contemporary Republic of Ecuador. Indigenous tribes inhabited the area for millennia before being invaded and absorbed into the Inca Empire in the early fifteenth century.
The Incas themselves were conquered shortly afterwards by the Spanish led by Francisco Pizarro in the early 16th century. The region fell under the Viceroyalty of Peru although it was granted certain autonomy through the Quito Audencia established in 1563. In 1720, it was joined to the Viceroyalty of New Granada.
A rebellion in 1812 against the Quito Audencia was crushed early in the Spanish American wars of independence, but the struggle was revived in 1820 by a new rebellion originating in Guayaquil. The city was also the site of the Guayaquil Conference between Simon Bolivar and San Martin. Ecuador became independent initially as part of the Republic of Gran Colombia, before finally breaking away in 1830.
Ecuador would endure a period of civil war until the mid nineteenth century after which it would be dominated by caudillos, alternatively conservative and liberal. In the twentieth and twenty first centuries Ecuador would continue to struggle in achieving both economic and political stability.
Pre-Columbian Ecuador
Indigenous peoples in Ecuador
During the pre-Inca period, people lived in clans, which formed great tribes, some allied with each other to form powerful confederations, as the Confederation of Quito. But none of these confederations could resist the formidable momentum of the Tawantinsuyu. The invasion of the Incas in the 16th century was very painful and bloody. However, once occupied by the Quito hosts of Huayna Capac (1523–1525), the Incas developed an extensive administration and began the colonization of the region. The Pre-Columbian era can be divided up into four eras: the Pre-ceramic Period, the Formative Period, the Period of Regional Development and the Period of Integration and the Arrival of the Incas.
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