Work · Latin American & Caribbean Philosophy
Royal Commentaries of the Incas
Inca history from Manco Capac to the Spanish conquest, told by a native speaker of Quechua who corrects the chroniclers word by word.
Introduction
The first part of the Royal Commentaries appeared in Lisbon in 1609, written in Spanish by a man who had left Cusco almost fifty years earlier. In nine books it describes the Inca state from its legendary founder Manco Capac to the last rulers before the conquest: dynasty, laws, religion, roads, agriculture and the quipu records. Garcilaso presents himself as an interpreter who knows Quechua and therefore understands what the Spanish chroniclers got wrong, and he quotes and corrects them, often on the meaning of a single word. He draws on the memory of his mother’s relatives, on letters from former schoolmates in Peru and on papers of the Jesuit Blas Valera. The book shaped the European image of the Incas for two centuries and is now read both as a historical source to be used with care and as a founding text of mestizo writing.
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Taken up in
- General History of Peru (Royal Commentaries, Part Two)1617 · Inca Garcilaso de la Vega
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