Shadows of Empire

About this book

"The Indian nobility of the Andes - many descended from the Inca rulers and other preconquest lords - occupied a crucial economic and political position in late colonial Andean society, a position widely accepted as legitimate until the Tupac Amaru rebellion. Shadows of Empire traces the history of this late colonial elite and examines the preconquest and colonial foundations of their privilege and authority. It brings to light the organization and the ideology of the Indian nobility in the bishopric of Cusco in the decades before the rebellion and uses this nobility as a lens through which to study the internal organization and tensions of late colonial Indian communities. The work further analyzes the collapse of this Indian elite, repudiated by both the Indian commons and the crown in the last years of Spanish rule and marginalized in the emergence of the creole-dominated republican order after 1825."--BOOK JACKET.