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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