Peru (in Quechua and Aymara: Piruw), officially the Republic of Peru,2 is a sovereign country located in western South America. It has a republican, democratic, unitary, representative, decentralized and presidential form of government. Its capital is the city of Lima.

The Pacific Ocean borders its coast and the country is bordered by Ecuador and Colombia to the north, Brazil to the east, and Bolivia and Chile to the southeast. Its territory is composed of diverse landscapes: valleys, plateaus and the high peaks of the Andes spread west to the desert coast, from the north to the southeast of the country and east to the Amazon. It is one of the most biologically diverse and mineral resource-rich countries in the world.

Ancient Peru was home to successive civilizations during the ancient and medieval periods, and has one of the longest civilizational histories of any country, whose heritage dates back to the 10th millennium B.C. Notable pre-colonial cultures and civilizations include the Caral-Supe civilization in 3200 B.C.16 (the oldest civilization in the world). C 16 (the oldest civilization in the Americas and considered one of the cradles of civilization) the Nazca culture, the Chavin culture, the Wari, Tiahuanaco empires, the Kingdom of Cusco, and the Inca Empire which was the last autochthonous or indigenous state, which dominated much of western South America by the 15th century.

The following century saw the Conquest of Peru, after which the territory was configured as a viceroyalty of the Spanish Empire articulated around the exploitation of silver and gold with forced labor of indigenous people and African slaves in mines and haciendas. In 1551, the Spanish crown officially founded the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos in Lima, the first and oldest university in the New World.17 The Bourbon reforms of the eighteenth century sparked various uprisings against colonial authority, whose greatest exponent was the rebellion of Tupac Amaru II.