Best peru history books according to redditors

>if they had met the armies prior to disease they wouldn't have had a chance most likely.

But, that happened. If you read the description of the battle in Cajamarca, you will notice that I'm not so wrong, and that Spanish also had better tactics, and incredible amount of luck. Curiosity of Atahualpa let them inside, when emperor came they let him and only some 5000 men inside the fortress they abandoned. And then, slaughter begun with cannons. It shocked Inca army so much, that cutting them with heavy swords was just a hard work, but not a problem. Even a man on a horse was a miracle, not to mention shiny armor and all. That was crucial, like a sudden coup...

Diseases, yes. But more in Mezoamerica (when Pedro de Alvarado started to conquer Guatemala, Mayans were decimated because messengers from the Mexico Valley already transfered the diseases). Pizzaro had to face full Inca army of some 100.000 men. And he had tactics as I said. Cortes had much harder way, had to gather other tribe nations against the Aztecas, and had to go through Noche Triste. Difference was this: while Inca could not function as a society without Atahualpa (when he was captured), Aztecas didn't give a s..t when Moctezuma was in custody.

Both stories open this theme of difference between civilizations, it was a true meeting of two worlds, and it happened relatively recently. Fantastic read here, about Peru, is a book by Prescott: http://www.amazon.com/History-Conquest-Peru-William-Prescott/dp/0486440079

Well the third one, the vase rollout, is Moche fineline drawing from Peru (ca. A.D. 1-800) and is not Mesoamerican. It is generally interpreted as a burial (the two figures lowering a mummy bundle using ropes on the right). To the left, some people are presenting an elite (king or high priest) with sacrifices or tribute, and he is dressed in full ceremonial garb and seated on top of a huaca or pyramid mound.

The image is full of characters that commonly show up in Moche iconography and, in some cases, throughout northern Peru. Unfortunately, I am not up to speed on who each character is or what their role is in the Moche canon.

I found a copy of this rollout on this page, put together by Brian Billman who is a Moche specialist. He cites Donnan and McClelland for this scene. They have a couple books on Moche art and iconography and they are recognized as authorities on Moche ceramic art. You should take a look at their books for more info. Check out Sex, Death, and Sacrifice in Moche Religion and Visual Culture by Steve Bourget for some more recent ideas on the meaning of Moche ceramic art.

The other two images look Mesoamerican to me and I don't know much about Mesoamerican art or iconography so I can't help you out there, unfortunately.

Well this will make it a lot easier for you, because the biggest barrier to getting really in depth is typically language. You will have access to lots of Spanish media. I find that history tends to be more fun at first when you have personal connections to countries or events, so after you learn about the basic history of colonization, I urge you to explore the history of Peru, and of Colombia/Venezuela/Panama. Did you know that Panama was actually a province of Colombia until the US decided to locate the canal there and supported Panamanian independence?

Start with the book I mentioned earlier, then I would suggest The Peru Reader: http://www.amazon.com/The-Peru-Reader-History-Politics/dp/0822336499/ref=pd_sim_b_4?ie=UTF8&refRID=0D5CS5PZ6FVTDQCMTVJ4. I have used both The Mexico Reader and The Argentina Reader in university, and assume the Peru Reader is of equal quality.

After that I would suggest couple of books on modern politics: Addicted to Failure: US Security Policy in the Andean Region and then and then Politics in Latin America by Charles H Blake. The drug war and US policy is hugely important and has repercussions across virtually all countries in Latin America.


http://www.amazon.com/Addicted-Failure-Security-American-Silhouettes/dp/0742540979/ref=sr_1_67?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1416496742&sr=1-67&keywords=peru+drug+war

http://www.amazon.com/Politics-Latin-America-Charles-Blake/dp/0618802517/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1416496989&sr=1-1&keywords=politics+in+latin+america

An biography or book about Simon Bolivar would also be ideal, given his role in shaping the nations of the Andean Region of South America.

Another poster mentioned Eduardo Galeano -- he is a brilliant writer, one of my favorites, but his books tend to be a bit polemic and philosophical...I definitely recommend reading his books in Spanish, but not until you already have a good grasp of history to understand a lot of the allusions and topics his writing touches upon.

And if you are comfortable reading academic texts in Spanish, Latinoamerica. Las ciudades y las ideas (Spanish Edition) by Jose Romero.

http://www.amazon.com/Latinoamerica-Las-ciudades-ideas-Spanish/dp/9876291521/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1416497447&sr=1-1&keywords=jose+luis+romero

Anyhow this is more than enough to get you started, unless you had a more specific topic you want to learn about. Don't ignore literature, movies, or online newspapers either!! Going once or twice a week to some of the more major newspapers of specific countries to read articles is always interesting.

If you can, get this: The Peru Reader: History, Culture, Politics. Basically, a compilation of articles from various authors about the mentioned subtitles

Stumbled upon this at the library... crazy, crazy book.

The Rivers Ran East

Long out of print, this is a riveting firsthand account of Leonard Clark’s search for the legendary lost Seven Cities of Cibola — reputedly home to enormous reserves of gold — in the rain forest east of the Peruvian Andes. A former U.S. Army intelligence officer, Clark is joined on his expedition by Inez Pokorny, a gutsy, multilingual female explorer. Their treacherous journey includes encounters with head-hunting Jivaro Indians, man-eating jaguars, 40-foot-long anacondas, poisonous plants, and shamanistic healers. Against the odds, Clark and Pokorny reach their destination, but nearly starve to death trying to transport sacks of gold out of the dense tropical foliage.

On my summer reading list, I have:

• Player Piano
  
  
• Lolita (re-reading. Nabokov's use of language is sublime)
  
  
• The Swerve: How The World Became Modern
  
  
• The Conquest of the Incas
  
  
• Let The Great World Spin
  
  
• Theodore Rex
  
  
  I'm currently half way through The Conquest of the Incas. If anyone has interest in the Spanish invasion of Mesoamerica, I highly recommend it. It's a very vivid account of the political games Pizarro and his generals played to take over the Inca empire and solidify their grip in the New World.

Here are all the local Amazon links I could find:


amazon.com

amazon.co.uk

amazon.ca

amazon.com.au

amazon.in

amazon.com.mx

amazon.de

amazon.it

amazon.es

amazon.com.br

amazon.nl

amazon.co.jp

amazon.fr

Beep bloop. I'm a bot to convert Amazon ebook links to local Amazon sites.
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https://www.amazon.com/Historia-corrupci%C3%B3n-Spanish-Alfonso-Quiroz-ebook/dp/B01FOVMD4K

IIRC this was the book: A Socialist Empire: The Incas of Peru

> How is whiteness associated with private property?

I'm referring to the emergence of private property as upheld by Liberal political theory through the likes of John Locke and its associated legal systems, which have their origin in Modern Europe and was co-produced through the massive waves of European colonialism. Thus I'm referring to 'property' as a legally-sanctioned and policed set of relations that are inherent to the Modern state, a model of societal organization that is more or less globalized these days. I can provide some good readings on the relations between private property, liberalism, and the construction of race if you're interested.

Do you have sources for your claim that private property as I have defined it existed in the Chinese Empire? Can you also define the Chinese Empire and its boundaries through time and space? Genuinely interested to learn more.

I think I actually agree with you in general, but my point is that contemporary forms of power are concealed in whiteness and its relation to the private property relations of European liberal state-making and their institutional structures that still dominate most of the world today. So in other words, its not that these problems are exclusive to whites, as you have pointed out nicely, but that the current legal-political infrastructures of the world are dominantly copies and a perpetuation of white liberalist ideas. I completely agree that discrimination and patriarchy have been central to human relations. I just think that there current dominant iteration is within the political and legal structures of white Europe (which still exist in non-white spaces like India or Indonesia or Latin America as a consequence of European colonization). You are right that slavery is rather common in terms of human history, but chattel slavery, the form of slavery inherent to Europeans and upheld through legal sanctioning (even in democracies - in fact democracy is built on slavery, ironically) is a uniqe form in relation to private property and the creation of the 'race' category.

> Get your head out of your ass man. Yes you needed to hear that again. Read a little world history. Do you even know who the "whites" really are? They don't teach that in your school, I'll tell you that.

I have read some world history. Apologies I've made you angry, and probably because my quick and dirty reddit post that I wrote on my phone wasn't particularly rigorous. I do know where the notion of whiteness comes from, and it has its roots in the emergence of the idea of race as first instigated by the Spanish inquisition in the late 1400s as part of the development of state bureaucracies (you can read about this through Irene Silverblatt). In a dialectical sense, Whiteness then came to construct itself in opposition to the 'Other' throughout the various colonial projects of the Spanish, Dutch, British, French and then later the Italians and Germans as they saught to control and discipline their colonial periphery through knowledge - hence the rise of census making, statistics, and other forms of state control (folks like Foucault and Said are key thinkers here).

> Language controls you and you don't even know it.

Yes, true. This is a basic tenant of the social sciences and humanities, and also a good reason for the rise of critical theory and other post-Marxist theories for they wanted to find ways to always be interrogating our language structures and how they colour our viewpoint without us knowing it, i.e. the concept of 'ideology'. In fact I'm actually more interested in how white and black are used by different cultural groups but sometimes I prefer to participate in the discourse itself because I agree with direction of the politics.

> Black and white are also really horrible terms, and ignores the fact that that are many different races within the broad groups of "white" or "black" - I think people of african/european descent is much more objective. But I digress.

For that reason I completely agree with you that black and white are difficult categories, but so are basically any terms we could use to describe people and their groups. I think however that these words have important cultural salience and can point us to certain historically produced structures, and so it is more of a pragmatic issue of whether or not to use them. These words also have important cultural and situated importance for the groups thesmelves, for instance things like the Black power movement or Black lives matter where blackness is integral to fighting against the whiteness that has long oppressed them in America (I understand these terms are less useful outside of America). Also what makes you think that European descent and African descent are 'more objective'? Objective of/to what?

Finally on your point about minority - no I don't really use those terms. Yes the literal skin colour of people on Earth is much less white than otherwise, but my point again was that Whiteness is a kind of systems and political organization that is specific to Western liberalism and can thus be practiced by those who are not 'white' in the colloquial sense.

Happy to chat more.