Distant Provinces in the Inka Empire: Toward a Deeper Understanding of Inka Imperialism Book

Greatly enjoyed reading this book, which I count as an authentic cultural history of the Incan empire. Some quibble with the historicity of the narrative, but this is less important when viewing the work as an expression of cultural memory, story-telling, and meaning-making. What adds to the work's fascination is the multiple dimensions of cultural and historical immersion: One dimension deals with Incan imperial history, another with Spanish conquest and the clash of cultures, yet another with the spread of Christianity, and yet another with the grand synthesis of these threads into a European colonial tapestry that begins to look more familiar. The scale of the story is epic, and I drew a great many insights into the nature of empire, which I now see as being rooted firmly in an elitism that is likely justified in several dimensions. Military might is necessary but not sufficient for empire. The Inca appear to have won over at least half of their vassal states through a form of preaching and technological advancement that heightened their prestige. Others they fought and fought well. As I considered this pattern, I believe it applies to other imperial expansions as well, including the Roman, British, Greek, American, etc. Probably worth a separate book!

Some of my favorite quotes:

--"It constitutes a lyrical endeavor, which is so violent that, at times, it appears to be desperate, to recapture the forgotten forces . . . to breathe their spirit into a modern body that, otherwise, risks desiccation and decay through depersonalization." pg. xx

--" . . . if Garcilaso made such an attempt to justify the desire for conquest of first one and then the other, it was with no intention of opposing them to each other but, on the contrary, of bringing them together, by considering their accomplishments as two successive stages in the forward march of humanity from the darkness of earliest times till the only total civilization which, for this Christian Inca, must derive from the teachings of Christ." pg. xxxiii

--" . . . this boulder was hauled across the mountain by more than twenty thousand Indians, going up and down very steep hills . . . at a certain spot, it fell from their hands over a precipice, crushing more than three thousand men." pg. 304 (of the largest stone at Saqsayhuaman

--"So the inadequacy of this translator was twofold: on the one hand, he did not know enough Spanish and Inca words, and on the other, he forgot half of the arguments he was supposed to translate." pg. 404 (Garcilaso's theory that Pizarro's and Atahualpa's translator caused an escalation of hostilities btwn the Spanish and Inca)