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Charles F. Walker , The Tupac Amaru Rebellion (Cambridge, MA : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press , 2014), pp. xi + 347, $19.95, £15.95, pb.
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In this study of the Tupac Amaru rebellion, the first to appear in English since 1966, Charles Walker offers a lucid and engaging account of the Andean peasant insurrections which, as they swept through the southern Andes in the early 1780s, confronted Spanish rule with its longest and most violent challenge before the wars of independence. He focuses primarily on the movement started by the charismatic Indian noble who took the name 'Tupac Amaru' to signal his claims to Inca kingship, and, backed by family members, used his social prestige and connections to mobilise peasant insurrection in the old Inca heartlands. This is, however, part of a bigger story, in which Walker traces the interactions between the rebellion of Quechua-speaking rebels around Cuzco and the several distinctive uprisings among peasant communities in Upper Peru (Bolivia), some of which pre-dated Tupac Amaru's rebellion and had a dynamic of their own. In so doing, he aims at creating a comprehensive, comparative picture of these intersecting rebellions, asking why they started and spread, who became involved, what the rebels wanted and believed, how they behaved, and what they achieved.
Walker approaches these questions through a narrative reconstruction with several interlocking themes. One is the character and behaviour of Tupac Amaru himself, seen from several angles: his social background and education, his motives and intentions, his social connections, and his actions and abilities as political and military leader. Another key theme is the transformation of peasant discontents into collective revolt, turning local uprisings into a regional rebellion that directed armed force against Spanish institutions and officials, and spread ideas subversive of Spanish rule. Walker does much to clarify the currents that fed the rebellion, in both his account of the way in which...