The Royal Commentaries of the Incas (1609, 1617) by Inca Garcilaso de la Vega (1539-1616) is probably the most influential history of the New World ever written. It circulated widely in Spanish and was translated to several European languages. The Royal Commentaries is an exegetical history or commentary that mimics and twists the Old World historical genre called the ‘Book of the Kings’ and, later, the ‘Mirror of the Prince.’ It does so to create a new genre called the ‘Book of the Incas, Kings of Peru’ and the ‘Mirror of the Inca.’ This Inca mirror is in truth the mirror of its author, Inca Garcilaso, in the sense that it is a reflection of his own, mestizo gesture, written in Andalusian exile, to become the authentic ‘Inca’ voice that will interpret, for Peruvian and global posterity, the meaning of the Inca past. Inca Garcilaso´s work guided not only “the arts of rule” in viceregal Peru but also Enlightenment thought on how to “legislate” justly by respecting natural law. Graphic proof of this impact on the Enlightenment is the frontispiece of the French translation of 1737, published in Amsterdam. The image presents the founders of Inca Empire described in The Royal Commentaries, Manco Capac and Mama Ocllo, now as mythic models of a universal civilizing mission led by the French.
ROYAL COMMENTARIES OF THE INCAS
Frontispiece, Histoire des Yncas Rois du Perou, (Amsterdam, 1737). Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library, Brown University.
Further reading
- Fernanda Macchi, Incas ilustrados, (Madrid-Frankfurt: Iberoamericana-Vervuert, 2009).
- José Antonio Mazzotti, Coros mestizos del Inca Garcilaso: Resonancias andinas, (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1996).
- Mark Thurner, History’s Peru: The Poetics of Colonial and Postcolonial Historiography, (Gainesville: University Pres of Florida, 2011).
- Mark Thurner, ‘Sol de la Ilustración: El espejo del Inca en la imaginación ilustrada,’ en Ramon Mujica Pinilla, ed., Forjando la naciòn peruana, (Lima: Banco de Crédito, 2022).
- Margarita Zamora, Language, Authority, and Indigenous History in the Comentarios Reales de los Incas, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
