Overview

In Smoldering Ashes Charles F. Walker interprets the end of Spanish domination in Peru and that country's shaky transition to an autonomous republican state. Placing the indigenous population at the center of his analysis, Walker shows how the Indian peasants played a crucial and previously unacknowledged role in the battle against colonialism and in the political clashes of the early republican period. With its focus on Cuzco, the former capital of the Inca Empire, Smoldering Ashes highlights the promises and frustrations of a critical period whose long shadow remains cast on modern Peru. Peru's Indian majority and non-Indian elite were both opposed to Spanish rule, and both groups participated in uprisings during the late colonial period. But, at the same time, seething tensions between the two groups were evident, and non-Indians feared a mass uprising. As Walker shows, this internal conflict shaped the many struggles to come, including the Tupac Amaru uprising and other Indian-based rebellions, the long War of Independence, the caudillo civil wars, and the Peru-Bolivian Confederation. Smoldering Ashes not only reinterprets these conflicts but also examines the debates that took place-in the courts, in the press, in taverns, and even during public festivities-over the place of Indians in the republic. In clear and elegant prose, Walker explores why the fate of the indigenous population, despite its participation in decades of anticolonial battles, was little improved by republican rule, as Indians were denied citizenship in the new nation-an unhappy legacy with which Peru still grapples. Informed by the notion of political culture and grounded in Walker's archival research and knowledge of Peruvian and Latin American history, Smoldering Ashes will be essential reading for experts in Andean history, as well as scholars and students in the fields of nationalism, peasant and Native American studies, colonialism and postcolonialism, and state formation.

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9780822322931

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Reviews

This is a very good book, and may even come to be a classic in this cutting-edge sub-field of Latin American history. It imaginatively explores questions about the nature of Indian political participation in the new national Peruvian state, the social and political bases of caudillo rule, and the specific history of important episodes such as the Tupac Aaru and Pumacahua uprisings. The research is impressively deep, the writing clear, engaging, and rising at points to lyricism - Eric van Young, University of California at San Diego This pioneering study of the changing links between the state and its Indian subjects through the transition to the Republic is not only a truly brilliant reconstruction of a complex and enigmatic process but a vital contribution to the current effort to make sense of the painful birth of modern Spanish America. - Tulio Halperin Donghi, University of California at Berkeley [an] important contribution to 19th-century Latin American historiography. --Choice The culmination of a number of minor revolts in the highlands around Cuzco in 1780 provides the setting for this impressive history that examines a much-documented event from a new interpretative perspective... Walker deftly presents his perspective with a combination of thorough research and skilfully written narrative ... he has produced an enlightening and well-written source of reference. - British Bulletin of Publications on Latin America, October 1999 This is a very fine book... While the broad contours of Walker's thesis are perhaps not surprising , the intelligence and insight that he brings to his analysis lift this book into an entirely different category of reading experience. His text is full of small detail and sub-arguments that are a pleasure to read... Most fascinating of all he provides splendid information on the use of the inca empire as a counter-hegemonic symbol throughout the entire picture. --History, Vol 86, No. 284, October 2001B

This is a very good book, and may even come to be a classic in this cutting-edge sub-field of Latin American history. It imaginatively explores questions about the nature of Indian political participation in the new national Peruvian state, the social and political bases of caudillo rule, and the specific history of important episodes such as the Tupac Aaru and Pumacahua uprisings. The research is impressively deep, the writing clear, engaging, and rising at points to lyricism - Eric van Young, University of California at San Diego This pioneering study of the changing links between the state and its Indian subjects through the transition to the Republic is not only a truly brilliant reconstruction of a complex and enigmatic process but a vital contribution to the current effort to make sense of the painful birth of modern Spanish America. - Tulio Halperin Donghi, University of California at Berkeley [an] important contribution to 19th-century Latin American historiography. --Choice The culmination of a number of minor revolts in the highlands around Cuzco in 1780 provides the setting for this impressive history that examines a much-documented event from a new interpretative perspective... Walker deftly presents his perspective with a combination of thorough research and skilfully written narrative ... he has produced an enlightening and well-written source of reference. - British Bulletin of Publications on Latin America, October 1999 This is a very fine book... While the broad contours of Walker's thesis are perhaps not surprising , the intelligence and insight that he brings to his analysis lift this book into an entirely different category of reading experience. His text is full of small detail and sub-arguments that are a pleasure to read... Most fascinating of all he provides splendid information on the use of the inca empire as a counter-hegemonic symbol throughout the entire picture. --History, Vol 86, No. 284, October 2001B

Author Information

Charles F. Walker is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Davis. He is the editor of Entre la retÓrica y la insurgencia: Las ideas y los movimientos sociales en los Andes, Siglo XVIII.

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