Reading Inca History

At the heart of this book is the controversy over whether Inca history can and should be read as history. Did the Incas narrate a true reflection of their past, and did the Spaniards capture these narratives in a way that can be meaningfully reconstructed? In Reading Inca History,Catherine Julien finds that the Incas did indeed create detectable life histories. The two historical genres that contributed most to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish narratives about the Incas were an official account of Inca dynastic genealogy and a series of life histories of Inca rulers. Rather than take for granted that there was an Inca historical consciousness, Julien begins by establishing an Inca purpose for keeping this dynastic genealogy. She then compares Spanish narratives of the Inca past to identify the structure of underlying Inca genres and establish the dependency on oral sources. Once the genealogical genre can be identified, the life histories can also be detected. By carefully studying the composition of Spanish narratives and their underlying sources, Julien provides an informed and convincing reading of these complex texts. By disentangling the sources of their meaning, she reaches across time, language, and cultural barriers to achieve a rewarding understanding of the dynamics of Inca and colonial political history.

At the heart of this book is the controversy over whether Inca history can and should be read as history. Did the Incas narrate a true reflection of their past, and did the Spaniards capture these narratives in a way that can be meaningfully reconstructed? In Reading Inca History,Catherine Julien finds that the Incas did indeed create detectable life histories. The two historical genres that contributed most to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish narratives about the Incas were an official account of Inca dynastic genealogy and a series of life histories of Inca rulers. Rather than take for granted that there was an Inca historical consciousness, Julien begins by establishing an Inca purpose for keeping this dynastic genealogy. She then compares Spanish narratives of the Inca past to identify the structure of underlying Inca genres and establish the dependency on oral sources. Once the genealogical genre can be identified, the life histories can also be detected. By carefully studying the composition of Spanish narratives and their underlying sources, Julien provides an informed and convincing reading of these complex texts. By disentangling the sources of their meaning, she reaches across time, language, and cultural barriers to achieve a rewarding understanding of the dynamics of Inca and colonial political history.

An expert and vivid guide to the history of the Inca civilization, exploring the native peoples of Peru and the Andes, their mythologies and ancient belief systems, the detail of their everyday lives, and the beauty of their art and architecture. ,

This classic work of ethnohistorical research has been both influential and provocative in the field of Andean prehistory.

Documents the epic conquest of the Inca Empire as well as the decades-long insurgency waged by the Incas against the Conquistadors, in a narrative history that is partially drawn from the storytelling traditions of the Peruvian Amazon Yora people. Reprint. 20,000 first printing.

The Historia del Nuevo Mundo, set down by Father Bernabe Cobo during the first half of the seventeenth century, represents a singulary valuable source on Inca culture. Working directly frorn the original document, Roland Hamilton has translated that part of Cobo's massive manuscripts that focuses on the history of the kingdom of Peru. The volume includes a general account of the aspect, character, and dress of the Indians as well as a superb treatise on the Incas—their legends, history, and social institutions.

Originally published in 1901, the following description comes from the first edition: This work, although of a scientific nature, has not been written exclusively for scientists, for the theme is of so universal a scope as to be worthy the attention of all who are concerned in lessening the trials of humanity, or who which to shape the necessities of life through a more useful and consequently a more happy being. Centuries before the introduction of cocaine to anaesthetic uses, the world had been amazed by accounts of the energy creating properties ascribed to a plant intimately associated with the rites and customs of the ancient Peruvians, and first made known through the chroniclers of Spanish conquest in America. The history of this plant, known as Coca, is the history of the Incan race and is entwined throughout the associations of the vast socialistic Empire of those early people of Peru. The characteristics and botanical peculiarities of Coca, and the economic uses of plants of the family to which it belongs are described, and an effort is made to harmonize the early uses of the substance -- which are now shown to been of necessity, and not of luxury -- with its present employment, through facts of modern physiology. No effort has been made to make this work in any sense a book of Coca therapy, but a study of the early necessities and the hypothesis here advanced as to the rationale of its empirical uses will doubtless be ample to impress the true status of Coca, and will suggest its application in the affairs of modern life for conditions similar to those which originally demanded.