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The People are King is the first ethnohistorical study of the transformation of Andean communities over three centuries, from the Inca era into the nineteenth century, which traces the movement of indigenous people toward self-government.
List of contents
- Acknowledgments
- A Note on Terminology
- Introduction: The Genesis of an Andean Christianity and Politics
- Part I Inca and Early Spanish Peru
- Chapter 1 Incas and Asanaqi in Qullasuyu
- Chapter 2 Spanish República and Inca Tyranny
- Chapter 3 Resettlement: Spaniards Found New Towns for "Indians"
- Part II The Andeanization of Spanish Institutions and Christianity
- Chapter 4 Andeans Found Their Own Towns: The Andeanization of Reducción
- Chapter 5 Cofradía and Cabildo in the Eighteenth Century: The Merger of Andean Religiosity and Town Leadership
- Chapter 6 Rational Bourbons and Radical Comuneros: Civil Practices That Shape Towns
- Part III The Revolutionary Común
- Chapter 7 Comunero Politics and the King's Justice: The Común Takes Moral Action
- Chapter 8 A Lettered Revolution: A Brotherhood of Communities
- Conclusion The Rise of the Común and Its Legacy
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
About the author
S. Elizabeth Penry is Assistant Professor of History and Latin American Studies at Fordham University.
Summary
The People are King is the first ethnohistorical study of the transformation of Andean communities over three centuries, from the Inca era into the nineteenth century, which traces the movement of indigenous people toward self-government.
Additional text
Elizabeth Penry's skillfully crafted study reconstructs the ways colonial Andean comunes or commons became grassroots laboratories where modern ideas of communal self-government and popular sovereignty gradually emerged. Her vivid analysis of village life in the highlands of colonial Charcas over three centuries reveals how commoner-led republics reconciled the ethos of solidarity and mutual obligation of Pre-Columbian kinship groups with Castilian concepts of town government, corporatism, and civic Catholicism, in a synthesis that drew from both traditions but was, in fact, reducible to neither of them. Inscribed in the best traditions of Andean history and ethnohistory, The People Are King is a much-needed contribution to the intricate ways indigenous community politics helped establish the foundations of the modern world.
