The Spanish Empire conquered the region in the 16th century and Charles V established a viceroyalty with the official name of the Kingdom of Peru that encompassed most of its South American territories, with its capital in Lima.

Implementation of Plan Verde[12][13] shifted Peru towards neoliberal economics under the authoritarian rule of Alberto Fujimori and Vladimiro Montesinos in the 1990s, with the former's political ideology of Fujimorism leaving a lasting imprint on the country's governance that continues to present day.

[14][15] The 2000s marked economic expansion and poverty reduction, but the subsequent decade revealed long-existing sociopolitical vulnerabilities, exacerbated by a political crisis instigated by Congress and the COVID-19 pandemic, precipitating the period of unrest beginning in 2022.

Peru ranks high in social freedom;[18] it is an active member of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, the Pacific Alliance, the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership and the World Trade Organization; and is considered as a middle power.

The Moche, who reached their apogee in the first millennium CE, were renowned for their irrigation system which fertilized their arid terrain, their sophisticated ceramic pottery, their lofty buildings, and clever metalwork.

Pachacuti also promulgated a comprehensive code of laws to govern his far-flung empire, while consolidating his absolute temporal and spiritual authority as the God of the Sun who ruled from a magnificently rebuilt Cusco.

[34] From 1438 to 1533, the Incas used a variety of methods, from conquest to peaceful assimilation, to incorporate a large portion of western South America, centered on the Andean mountain ranges, from southern Colombia to northern Chile, between the Pacific Ocean in the west and the Amazon rainforest in the east.

In December 1532, a party of conquistadors (supported by the Chankas, Huancas, Cañaris and Chachapoyas as Indian auxiliaries) led by Francisco Pizarro defeated and captured the Inca Emperor Atahualpa in the Battle of Cajamarca.

[39] After years of preliminary exploration and military conflicts, it was the first step in a long campaign that took decades of fighting but ended in Spanish victory and colonization of the region known as the Viceroyalty of Peru with its capital at Lima, which was then known as "La Ciudad de los Reyes" (The City of Kings).

The "revolutionary government" also planned massive investments in education, elevated the Quechua language – spoken by nearly half the population but hitherto despised by the authorities – to a status equivalent to that of Spanish and established equal rights for natural children.

The economic turbulence of the time acerbated social tensions in Peru and partly contributed to the rise of violent rebel rural insurgent movements, like Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) and MRTA, which caused great havoc throughout the country.

[66][63][67] He then revised the constitution, called new congressional elections, and implemented substantial economic reform, including privatization of numerous state-owned companies, creation of an investment-friendly climate, and sound management of the economy.

[14] Using the terruqueo, a fearmongering tactic that was used to accuse opponents of terrorism, Fujimori established a cult of personality by portraying himself as a hero and made left-wing ideologies an eternal enemy in Peru.

[72] Peru tried to fight corruption while sustaining economic growth at the start of the 21st century,[72] though Fujimorism held power over much of Peruvian society through maintaining control of institutions and legislation created in the 1993 constitution, which was written by Fujimori and his supporters without opposition participation.

In April 2009, former president Alberto Fujimori was convicted of human rights violations and sentenced to 25 years in prison for his role in killings and kidnappings by the Grupo Colina death squad during his government's battle against leftist guerrillas in the 1990s.

[85][86] The COVID-19 pandemic resulted with Peru experiencing the highest death rate from COVID-19 in the world, exposing much of the inequality that persisted since the Fujimori administration[68] and triggering an economic crisis that led to Vizcara's removal from the presidency by Congress.

Major groups that have formed governments, both on a federal and legislative level, are parties that have historically adopted economic liberalism, progressivism, right-wing populism (specifically Fujimorism), nationalism, and reformism.

[179] Despite these results, most reforms were not reversed until the 1990s, when the liberalizing government of Alberto Fujimori ended price controls, protectionism, restrictions on foreign direct investment, and most state ownership of companies.

[201] It is also the world's leading producer of alpaca wool, and the most important exporter of cotton textile garments in Latin America, and due to its natural wealth, it is an excellent place for the development of the polymer industry worldwide.

The country is in a stage of economic growth and it is expected, in light of the agreements and treaties signed in free trade areas, to become one of the most attractive South American nations for developing business.

Jorge Chávez International Airport, the largest in Peru, is undergoing an expansion which includes the construction of a new runway, control tower and a new terminal, along with new hotels, logistical buildings and cargo sector.

[216] Major cities include the Lima metropolitan area (home to over 9.8 million people), Arequipa, Trujillo, Chiclayo, Piura, Iquitos, Cusco, Chimbote, and Huancayo; all reported more than 250,000 inhabitants in the 2007 census.

Amerindians inhabited Peruvian territory for several millennia before the Spanish conquest in the 16th century; according to historian Noble David Cook, their population decreased from nearly 5–9 million in the 1520s to around 600,000 in 1620 mainly because of infectious diseases.

[223] In the different stages of Peru's history, ethnic composition has varied, with a continuous decline in the Amerindian proportion, due to multiple socioeconomic and sociocultural factors, birth controls, high mortality rates, exclusion, among others.

Because the majority of the Peruvian population has become mestizo, some feel a superiority complex towards the natives of the mountains and the jungle, either because they do not pronounce a word properly, or simply because they do not know how to read a text well, leading to a kind of racism towards them.

Throughout its history, Peru has received migrations from Europe (mainly Spain and Italy; and to a lesser extent from France, United Kingdom, and from other Central European countries and Southern), sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia (China and Japan).

According to Article 20 of Decreto Supremo No 004-2016-MC (Supreme Decree) which approves the Regulations to Law 29735, published in the official newspaper El Peruano on 22 July 2016, adequate spellings of the toponyms in the normalized alphabets of the Indigenous languages must progressively be proposed with the aim of standardizing the naming used by the National Geographic Institute (Instituto Geográfico Nacional, IGN).

During the 17th and 18th centuries, the Baroque and Rococo styles, with their heavy ornamentation and predominantly curved lines, also dominated the fields of architecture and plastic arts, as for example on the walls of the Monastery of San Francisco in Lima.

The capital, Lima, is home to Central Restaurante, which is one of the World's Best Restaurants and serves various Peruvian dishes from each geographical part of the country, the Costa (coast, Sierra (mountains) and Selva (rainforest).

Historically, the cinema of Peru began in Iquitos in 1932 with Antonio Wong Rengifo (alongside a significant early film billboard from 1900) due to the rubber boom and the influx of foreigners bringing technology to the city.