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Originally Posted by issybird
I'm not done yet, but my overarching impression is one of near seamless integration of the facts of the situation (the textbook history) with images and personalities.
...........Hemming gives me the impression of someone who has so immersed himself in the source material and visits to the land that it lives for him, and that he's just recording it as a bystander, albeit one with 20th century sensibilities about conquest and extermination.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Bookpossum
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And I am impressed again with Hemming's ability to pull one up and point out that by no means all the Spaniards were rapacious and inhumane, pointing out that the protests about the condition of the Peruvians were being made by Spaniards in Peru who wanted the Crown to intervene and ensure better treatment. And in describing the ghastly conditions in the mines, he reminds us that they were no different to the conditions in mines in other parts of the world.......
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Quote:
Originally Posted by fantasyfan
I've finished Conquest of the Incas and it is certainly one of the finest--perhaps the finest--large-scale Historical study I have ever read. It has a remarkable precision of detail, depth of analysis, and epic scope that make it difficult to put down. And always we see the human element--the odd combination of religiosity and hideous greed of the conquistadors, the equally strange mixture of contempt for the Indians and a willingness to exploit them as well as a paternalistic concern for their welfare in Viceroy Toledo. With the Incas themselves the tiny and vulnerable Vilcabamba State teetered on the edge of survival under the leadership of Manco and his followers but was destroyed in the end owing to foolish actions of its final rulers.
It is a book filled with drama and has political and moral lessons which, I suspect, are relevant today.
It was an inspired choice, Issybird.
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True words, from the above....
I haven't finished this book yet, as I want to read it at leisure, keeping good track of the footnotes. It is a fantastic book in which the writer manages to give a voice to this part of the history.
Somehow this reminds me of the great historical work of Montaillou by Le Roy Ladurie
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Le_Roy_Ladurie and the works of Johan Huizinga, his Autumn of the Middle Ages
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johan_Huizinga
As for my (somewhat pedantic, perhaps never again) question of this being literature.....no question about it that it is a book which urges me to think, see some things in a new light and appreciate this writer.