4 books found
by Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala
2010 · University of Texas Press
One of the most fascinating books on pre-Columbian and early colonial Peru was written by a Peruvian Indian named Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala. This book, The First New Chronicle and Good Government, covers pre-Inca times, various aspects of Inca culture, the Spanish conquest, and colonial times up to around 1615 when the manuscript was finished. Now housed in the Royal Library, Copenhagen, Denmark, and viewable online at www.kb.dk/permalink/2006/poma/info/en/frontpage.htm, the original manuscript has 1,189 pages accompanied by 398 full-page drawings that constitute the most accurate graphic depiction of Inca and colonial Peruvian material culture ever done. Working from the original manuscript and consulting with fellow Quechua- and Spanish-language experts, Roland Hamilton here provides the most complete and authoritative English translation of approximately the first third of The First New Chronicle and Good Government. The sections included in this volume (pages 1–369 of the manuscript) cover the history of Peru from the earliest times and the lives of each of the Inca rulers and their wives, as well as a wealth of information about ordinances, age grades, the calendar, idols, sorcerers, burials, punishments, jails, songs, palaces, roads, storage houses, and government officials. One hundred forty-six of Guaman Poma's detailed illustrations amplify the text.
by Matthew Restall, Felipe Fernandez-Armesto
2012 · OUP USA
This Very Short Introduction examines the Spanish conquistadors who invaded the Americas in the sixteenth century, as well as the Native American Kingdoms they invaded.
The seventeenth-century missionary and diplomat Father Antônio Vieira once observed that Brazil was nourished, animated, sustained, served, and conserved by the "sad blood" of the "black and unfortunate souls" imported from Angola. In The Trade in the Living, Luiz Felipe de Alencastro demonstrates how the African slave trade was an essential element in the South Atlantic and in the ongoing cohesion of Portuguese America, while at the same time the concrete interests of Brazilian colonists, dependent on Angolan slaves, were often violently asserted in Africa, to ensure men and commodities continued to move back and forth across the Atlantic. In exposing this intricate and complementary relationship between two non-European continents, de Alencastro has fashioned a new and challenging examination of colonial Brazil, one that moves beyond its relationship with Portugal to discover a darker, hidden history.
An uncompromising study of the fictions, the failures, and the real man behind the myth of Magellan. With Straits, celebrated historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto subjects the surviving sources to the most meticulous scrutiny ever, providing a timely and engrossing biography of the real Ferdinand Magellan. The truth that Fernández-Armesto uncovers about Magellan’s life, his character, and the events of his ill-fated voyage offers up a stranger, darker, and even more compelling narrative than the fictional version that has been celebrated for half a millennium. Magellan did not attempt––much less accomplish––a journey around the globe. In his lifetime he was abhorred as a traitor, reviled as a tyrant, self-condemned to destruction, and dismissed as a failure. Straits untangles the myths that made Magellan a hero and discloses the reality of the man, probing the passions and tensions that drove him to adventure and drew him to disaster. We see the mutations of his character: pride that became arrogance, daring that became recklessness, determination that became ruthlessness, romanticism that became irresponsibility, and superficial piety that became, in adversity, irrational exaltation. As the real Magellan emerges, so do his real ambitions, focused less on circumnavigating the world or cornering the global spice market than on exploiting Filipino gold. Straits is a study in failure and the paradox of Magellan’s career, showing that renown is not always a reflection of merit but often a gift and accident of circumstance.