The World Upside Down: Cross-Cultural Contact and Conflict in Sixteenth-Century Peru

The old saying that “history is written by the victors” certainly applies to most of the history of European colonialism in Spanish America. However, in recent decades scholars have begun to study the Spanish conquest and early colonialization of America from the point of view of the native Americans in an attempt to right this imbalance. Taking the perspective of the vanquished, the author aims to determine and explain some of the general principles on which the pre-Hispanic Andeans’ lives...