Royal Commentaries of the Incas and General History of Peru (Texas Pan American Series) [Paperback]

Garcilaso de la Vega (Author), Harold V. Livermore (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Univ of Texas Pr (October 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0292770383
• ISBN-13: 978-0292770386
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #398,628 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #49 in Books > History > Ancient > Incan
  • #70 in Books > History > Americas > South America > Peru

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Inca History Must Read, February 14, 2009

By 

Anthony O. Miller - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Royal Commentaries of the Incas and General History of Peru (Texas Pan American Series) (Paperback)

Garcilaso de la Vega's recollections of pre-Hispanic Peru (and Bolivia) are perhaps the most important in any language. Known as "El Inca," De La Vega was of two bloods -- the illegitimate son of a Spanish conquistador and an Inca princess. He was born in the Incan capital of Cuzco, Peru, and steeped in both traditions. So his accounts of what life was like before The Conquest of the Queshua-speaking people of Peru and Bolivia are the closest to what it truly was like before the illiterate son of a pig farmer, Francisco Pizarro, and a handfull of armored and horsed Spanish adventurers exploited multiple coincidences to "conquer" the so-called Inca empire. These variables included the unrest in the Incan empire after Atahualpa, the last "Inca" (name of the "Son of the Sun" -- the king) defeated his brother, Huascar, for the kingship; and the facts that the Queshua-speaking people of Peru and Bolivia (misnomered as: The Inca) had never seen horses, had no firearms and were expecting the return of a white, bearded god named "Viracocha" -- who they took Pizarro to be. Curiously the Aztec of Mexico were defeated a few years earlier because of a similar "white bearded god" myth -- the Aztec thought Hernan Cortes was Quetzalcoatl, their name for the "white bearded god" who had promised to return to the people of Mexico hundreds of years before The Conquest by Cortes.

The marvels of the organization of most of South America under the "Inca" empire are wonderfully illustrated by De La Vega in his "Royal Commentaries." Life as he "remembers" it before Pizarro (since he was born just after the conquest) comes alive under the pen of "El Inca" as under no other historian. De la Vega gives life to this great story of the clash of empires and cultures that is on a level with the epic conquests of Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, the Romans and the early Muslims. "The Royal Commentaries" is a must-read for anyone fascinated (as I am) with life in South America before the Spanish stumbled into The New World in search of gold and souls.