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Abstract
Using the imbrication of urban space and empire as a lens, this dissertation traces the emergence and making of a frontier city through an examination of sixteenth and seventeenth century Lima, Peru. By examining ongoing spatial conflicts in the viceregal capital and most important city in Spain’s South American empire, this dissertation offers a new conquest history of Peruvian urban centers. The goal of this project is twofold: to elucidate and evaluate the efficacy of spatial strategies and tools employed by the crown, royal administrators, and Church officials; and to highlight the profound roles played by native Andeans in shaping how urban space and, by extension, empire was lived, experienced, and constituted in the Lima valley. In other words, examining space and empire from below allows us to see that native peoples were central to the making of place in Lima and, thus, critical actors in the construction of new spatial conducts and identities that ran counter to the goals of the crown, as well as local, royal, and Church officials. Ungovernable indigenous mobility posed an unrelenting challenge to officials’ ability to create place on their own terms in Lima as well as in the viceroyalty more broadly. Mobile native Andeans helped forge a Peruvian frontier world of which Lima was an integral part. By entangling Lima into the larger frontier region that was the Viceroyalty of Peru, itinerant native actors were frontier place-makers who fundamentally shaped the cultural habits of the capital’s diverse population, thus calling into question the ascension of baroque culture in Lima. In exploring the early modern history of Lima through a frontier perspective, this dissertation questions commonly held ideas concerning colonial Peruvian cities, urban conquests, the Spanish empire, and its power and authority in urban society during the Habsburg period.
