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History of the Inca Realm
Background
History of the Inca Realm. By María Rostworowski De Diez Canseco. Translated by Harry B. Iceland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Maps. Photographs. Tables. Glossary. Bibliography. Index. x, 259 pp. Cloth, $49.95. Paper, $14.95. The book published in Spanish in 1988 synthesizes 50 years of experience, reflections, and investigations by one of the most eminent living Peruvian researchers of the Inca. She describes pre-Inca Cuzco, the beginning of the Cuzco expansion, the war against the Chanca and the construction of the empire, social structure, economic wealth and sources, and models of regional economies.
Rostworowski de Diez Canseco combines her research with the results of historians, [End Page 164] anthropologists, archaeologists, and linguists. Her knowledge of written sources and her experience give a very personal flavor to the book. She constantly provokes the reader and obliges him or her to rethink common convictions. For example, she questions T. R. Zuidema's model of the organization of Cuzco by showing that ancient Cuzco had more lineages that are not considered in Zuidema's reconstruction (1964). She assumes that the persons described by the tradition as Inca kings were Inca kings but applies to them the dual model of Andean kingship. In her model of Cuzco and kingship women's lineages play a very special role, and she argues that kingship passed from the king to his sister's son (if it was hereditary).
Using John V. Murra's economic model (1978), Rostworowski de Diez Canseco constructs her own model to show that the Incas transformed the basic system of reciprocal cooperation organized by local lords into a model based on redistribution, which made them increase production and press local lords for more lands and manpower. The kings and aristocratic lineages based their property on yana retainers and not on commoners who worked state lands. Private property would be a late Inca development. The author's studies of local economies in the sixteenth century oblige her to question the universality of Murra's model, whose validity she limits to the highlands. She opposes the highland model to a coastal economic model, centered in Chincha and on the northern coast. Richer coastal societies developed a more permanent and profound professional specialization that influenced the Inca conquerors.
The existence of a new economic model, initiated by Inca reconstruction of local economies and based on imperial appropriation of local lands and transfers of population, retainers, and chosen women, caused the local lords to become Spanish allies. Local populations and macroethnic lords did not recognize themselves as a part of the empire, and waited for an opportunity to bring the Incas down.
The book has some weak points. The author follows the traditional model of Inca imperial development (the empire was constructed during the fifteenth century, with Cuzco as its center). She follows the chronicles and writes about continuous wars in the Cuzco Valley and neighboring territories before the empire, although the most recent archaeological studies do not reveal any evidence of local warfare in the thirteenth or fourteenth century. The author was one of the first to use colonial Quechua and Aymara vocabularies in ethnohistorical research. Unfortunately, her analyses of local names are doubtful. Like all other historians (including me), she does not know what to do with the oral traditions written down during and after the Spanish conquest in order to reconstruct events that cannot be rediscovered by archaeology. She suggests that an ideological connection could have existed between the earlier Middle Horizon polities and the Inca Empire. Cuzco traditions mentioned Tiahuanaco, but the author prefers to suggest a connection with Wari. Leaving aside my minor doubts, the book is one of the most useful and thought-provoking for any reader who wants to start serious reading on the Incas.
Jan Szeminski
Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
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History of the Inca Realm (review)
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