The symbolic use of Rome in early colonial Peru and how it became a persistent model for describing and legitimizing the Incas

Date Presented:

February 6

Abstract:

In the last decades of the sixteenth century, Spanish historians began to portray the Incas more negatively. This did not sit well with Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, the son of a Spanish conquistador and an Inca princess. His written attempt to rectify the historical record, Royal Commentaries of the Incas and General History of Peru, would become the most influential source on Inca and early-Peruvian history for centuries. Garcilaso’s work provided an apologia for Inca society. My thesis clarifies how he did so, turning Spanish and classical models to pro-Inca ends. One group of sixteenth-century historians suggested that the Incas were tyrants—an Aristotelian category. Garcilaso denied these accusations. To build a positive conception of what the Incas had been instead, Garcilaso used Rome to create a model of the ideal non-Christian civilization, which he argued described both the ancient Romans and the Incas. My thesis argues for a contextual approach to Garcilaso. Some studies have viewed him as acclimated to European norms while others have searched for traces of the indigenous in his writing. I contend that Garcilaso used the European tradition in an integrative way: He refuted accusations originating within the European tradition with arguments from the same tradition, which he then purposefully used to craft a new, more positive conception of the Incas.