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Ethnohistory 47.3-4 (2000) 838-840



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Book Review

The Discovery and Conquest of Peru:
Chronicles of the New World Encounter


The Discovery and Conquest of Peru: Chronicles of the New World Encounter. By Pedro de Cieza de León. Edited and translated by Alexandra Parma Cook and Noble David Cook. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998. xviii + 501 pp., prologue, introduction, maps, illustrations, notes, bibliography. $21.95 paper.)

The historiographical imbalance between the Spanish conquests of Mexico and Peru, which goes back many decades, has increased in recent years with the publication of new monographs and primary-source editions on the conquests in New Spain. Alexandra Parma Cook and Noble David Cook’s new English-language edition of Pedro de Cieza de León’s The Discovery and Conquest of Peru does much to offset this imbalance; not only is it the first and only publication in English of Cieza de León’s important firsthand account of the Spanish invasion of Peru, but the Cooks and Duke University Press have done a fine job of presenting an accessible edition that will be both invaluable to scholars and appropriate for classroom usage.

Cieza de León, an Extremaduran who died in Seville in 1554 while in his thirties, was one of the greatest of Spanish America’s colonial historians. His complete opus, a work of geography, ethnography, and history, which he called the Chronicle of Peru, spans the course of Peruvian history from pre-Inca times to the civil wars of the 1540s; the first of four parts was initially published in 1553, but the second and fourth parts did not see [End Page 838] print until the late nineteenth century, and the third part (presented here by the Cooks as The Discovery and Conquest of Peru) was not discovered and published until the late twentieth century.

Inspired by the sight of Atahuallpa’s treasure being unloaded at the docks in Seville, a teenage Cieza de León set sail in 1535 for South America, where for a decade he participated in numerous expeditions of exploration and conquest—most notably in Colombia, where he received an encomienda. He also participated in the Peruvian civil wars, and in Cuzco in 1550 he completed his manuscript of some eight thousand handwritten pages. Because he wrote notes on his experiences as he traveled, Cieza de León combined personal observations with information gathered from both Spanish and native Andean informants as well as written sources such as the letters of Gonzalo Pizarro.

The resulting narrative makes for fine, often fascinating reading. Not surprisingly, the text reveals as much about the author’s culture as it does about that of native Andeans, while, typical of Spanish American chronicles, female and black protagonists are marginalized or ignored. Yet Cieza de León offers a wealth of historical detail and insight and presents it in a way that is surprisingly modern in its striving for substantiation and objectivity. (The Cooks suggest that Cieza de León is certainly more trustworthy and objective than Garcilaso de la Vega, and probably more so than Bernal Díaz.)

The Cooks’ engaging thirty-page introduction discusses these and other details of the conquistador-chronicler’s life and work. Cieza de León’s lively style is ameliorated by the clarity of the Cooks’ translation. The text is long—430 pages—but seldom tedious, thanks to its subdivision into 101 brief, well-focused chapters, each with comprehensive but not excessively detailed notes. The volume’s presentation is also excellent in other regards: there are twenty-three illustrations, some from the overused Guaman Poma but more than half taken from the 1553 Seville edition of the first part of Cieza de León’s magnum opus; and the volume offers various reader’s aids, such as a glossary, a guide to measures and currency, seven useful maps, and bibliographies of references and of previous Cieza de León editions.

The chronicle ends rather suddenly and frustratingly, just as Diego de Almagro is about to return to Cuzco in 1537...

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