Category: South America

Alan Covey interview – Spanish wars of conquest – Inca Apocalypse (Oxford University Press, 2020)

Spanish wars of conquest – An interview with Alan Covey about his new book Inca Apocalypse published by Oxford University Press. The book discusses the Spanish conquest of the Incas. Check out the book here https://amzn.to/2EAvVFj

How did you become interested in studying and writing on the subject of your book?

The Spanish conquest of the Incas has always been an important aspect of the work that I do in the Andes.  It lies between the two lines of evidence that I work with:  prehistoric archaeology and colonial archival documents.  The conquest story stands apart from those two records, and the Spanish chronicles that provide the most vivid detail aren’t always easy to line up with the other evidence, so I was always a little intimidated about trying to work them all together.

What is the book about and what major themes do you focus on?

The book features the religious worldview of the Incas and Spaniards, presenting the conquest of the Andes as a drawn-out transformation that could be interpreted as the end of the world, or the start of a new era.  I focus on the ways that the Inca and Spanish empires were both engaged in building civilizations, and how the Spanish conquest was only possible with indigenous support.  Even though most of the Incas became Christians and supported the Spanish crown, it took decades for the Spaniards to establish dominance over much of what remained of the Inca world.

Did any of the evidence you found address whether either the Spaniards or Incas were surprised to have discovered each other?  In other words, in their respective worldviews did either expect a cataclysmic clash of civilizations at some point as their empires grew?

The Spaniards were probably less surprised to encounter the Incas than the other way around.  When Columbus sailed, he thought he would reach the Mongol Empire and seek an alliance against Spain’s Muslim enemies, and in the 40 years that followed, Spaniards recognized that many native societies had hereditary leaders who could be quite powerful.  Pizarro sailed south from Panama to follow the rumor of a wealthy lord living just beyond where other Spaniards had explored.  The Incas probably expected that their world would end in natural disasters (earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes) rather than a foreign invasion.

What did you find to be the biggest culture clashes between the two empires?  Both obviously were ready to engage in war to protect themselves but were there approaches that stood in stark contrast to each other?

Although there were a lot of ways that the two empires were alike, there were also important ways that they differed, which created misunderstandings about each other.  For example, the Spaniards thought that the Pope had granted them dominion over half of the world, so they felt comfortable taking food and clothing and native porters from the communities they passed through.  The Incas saw them as a lawless men who didn’t know the land or even how to eat properly, and when the Spaniards ate Inca food and drank Inca beer, it signaled that they were Inca subjects, rather than the other way around.  As Spaniards and Andean lords worked to forge alliances and gain the greatest advantage as the world changed, their interactions could be ambiguous, interpreted in different ways by European and Andean people.  When it came to fighting, the Incas had shown that they were capable of brutal campaigns that relied on shock troops and violent retribution to bring frontier peoples in line.  The Spaniards didn’t fight by the same rules–they attacked without warning, tortured and burned their allies, and brought new weapons to the battlefield (like horses and firearms).  Over time, native people acquired those weapons and learned to fight against them successfully, and they learned guerilla tactics that worked when Spaniards were few in number and in remote places.

Were the smaller groups that had been previously conquered by the Incas ready to turn against them and why?  Or were the Incas seen as the better alternative to the new Spanish Empire?

The Inca civil war that was wrapping up when Pizarro went into the Andean highlands had forced local lords to choose sides, and Atahuallpa (the victorious Inca prince) had passed through the north Pacific coast where Pizarro arrived just months earlier, killing local people and taking their women.  Atahuallpa’s captains had occupied Cuzco, the Inca capital, where they wiped out some royal families and declared an intent to force the nobility to migrate to Quito.  And there were provinces that had ceased to pay Inca tribute during the war, which Atahuallpa planned to visit and punish.  So the Spaniards turned up on a landscape where lots of Andean people were either looking for revenge, trying to survive, or hoping to maintain newfound independence.  The Spaniards didn’t seem like an especially formidable force when it came to fighting across the entire Andean region, but they were dangerous and violent, and when they offered to fight for native lords, or to protect them, it was an appealing offer.

What resource materials or archives did you primarily use for your research?

To discuss the Inca Empire and its claims to civilize the Andes, I used recent archaeological evidence alongside colonial descriptions of the Inca world.  For other parts of the book, I used published chronicles, as well as a large body of unpublished manuscripts from libraries and archives in South America and Europe.  I also consulted scholarly studies of literature that was beyond my own expertise.

What did you discover in your research that most surprised you?

I think the thing that surprised me most was how much the first-hand descriptions differ from the popular versions of the story that have been published in recent years.  One theme that really stood out was how Pizarro and his allies knowingly violated the terms that they had agreed to with royal officials, and how the Spanish crown had to spend decades trying to figure out how to rein in unruly conquistadores–often with the Incas and other Andean lords as their allies.

Was there a particularly difficult issue to research because of lack of information or access to information?

Probably the biggest challenge to assembling this book was the sheer scale of documents and other evidence that could be used for a big-picture story like the one I wanted to tell.  As a social scientist, I went into the project trying to bring in as much evidence as possible, but I realized that I could fill a book (and more) just with a bibliography of publications and archival manuscripts.

Did you have any difficulties in finishing or publishing and how did you overcome those?

I was fortunate to have support from the University of Texas to devote a semester to writing, which allowed me to build a momentum that I was able to keep for the rest of the project.  My wife, who is also a professor, was really supportive and patient at times when the project required more time and focus.  The folks at Oxford University Press were really accommodating, and I felt like I had room to write the book that needed to be written.

What is your current or next writing project?

Right now, I am in the early stages of a project that builds on some of the things I learned writing Inca Apocalypse.  The Incas became an important point of debate among early modern Europeans, and I am working on a book that explores how representations of the Incas evolved as Europeans moved out of medieval modes of thought, through the Enlightenment, and into the theories that drive the social sciences today.

Where can people find you online?

I don’t do social media, so my page at the University of Texas is the best place to keep up with my work.

Biographical information

Name:  Professor Alan Covey

Bio:  AB Dartmouth College (1996), PhD University of Michigan (2003), postdoctoral training at the American Museum of Natural History.  I’ve held tenure at Southern Methodist University and Dartmouth College before coming to my present position.

Position and specialty:  Professor of Anthropology

Affiliation:  University of Texas at Austin

Project/work being discussed:  Inca Apocalypse

Links of interest

Check out the book here https://amzn.to/2EAvVFj

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/inca-apocalypse-9780190299125?cc=us&lang=en&

https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/anthropology/faculty/rc39628

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War of 1812 military history book – “The Papers of James Monroe, Volume 7” – (ABC-CLIO, 2020) – Dan Preston interview

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Check out this book here   https://amzn.to/3dIM4ok

Dr. Daniel Preston has spent much of his career compiling and editing the papers of early American Revolution hero and then President James Monroe. We spoke about the latest completed volume of his papers, volume 7, which covers the middle and end of the War of 1812 and then naval expeditions to the North African coast.

1:23 – Dan talks about how he got into studying James Monroe.

2:30 – Dan talks about the War of 1812.

5:16 – Dan talks about US incursions into foreign territory.

6:48 – Dan talks about Monroe’s feelings on the readiness of the US Army in this time.

10:11 – Dan talks about Monroe’s feelings about the War of 1812.

13:20 – Dan talks about what Monroe did as Secretary of War in the fall of 1814.

20:16 – Dan talks about worries that the British would win.

24:58 – Dan talks about the US military and Native Americans.

28:57 – Dan talks about the Native American military threat to the US.

34:37 – Dan talks about the Second Barbary War with Algeria and the South American revolutions.

38:31 – Dan discusses details of the Second Barbary War.

42:14 – Dan talks about the possibility of a US Britain alliance against common enemies.

46:29 – Dan talks about the financial troubles of both the US and Britain and the burning of Washington, DC.

49:56 – Dan goes into detail about the burning of Washington.

51:04 – Dan talks about Monroe’s ideas on defending Washington.

59:43 – Dan talks about the large volume of letters he had to research.

1:02:57 – Dan talks about where the Monroe letters and documents are found.

1:04:35 – Dan talks about President Madison’s cabinet.

1:06:32 – Dan talks about commentaries on the documents

1:09:29 – Dan talks about documents they couldn’t find.

1:10:55 – Dan talks about Monroe’s uncertain birthday.

1:12:43 – Dan’s work and the papers can be found on amazon and on the University of Mary Washington website and by searching “Monroe Papers” or at Academics.umw.edu/jamesmonroepapers.

 

Links of interest

https://amzn.to/3dIM4ok

https://products.abc-clio.com/abc-cliocorporate/product.aspx?pc=B5565C

https://academics.umw.edu/jamesmonroepapers/

For more “Military History Inside Out” please follow me at www.warscholar.org, on Facebook at warscholar, on twitter at Warscholar, on youtube at warscholar1945 and on Instagram @crisalvarezswarscholar. Or subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify

Guests: Dan Preston

Host: Cris Alvarez

Tags: military, history, military history, conflict, war, interview, non-fiction book, James Monroe, Jefferson, James Madison, Presidency, Florida, Texas, Virginia, militia, Continental Congress, filibuster, France, Napoleonic Wars, engineers, coastal defenses, British Army, Royal Navy, Chesapeake, Baltimore, Washington, US history, American history, Andrew Jackson, Mobile, New Orleans, Long Island, New England, New York, Henry Dearborn, Canada, Maine, Tennessee Volunteers, Europe, Great Britain, Monroe doctrine, Republicanism, French Revolution, Native Americans, Creeks, Shawnee, Miami, Winnebago, Wyandot, Huron, Algiers War, Spain, Barbary, Libya, Tripoli, Morocco, US Navy, merchant fleet, Mediterranean, American Diplomatic Service, Great Lakes, Michigan, Washington DC, Philadelphia, New York, Patuxent, Alexandria, Stephen Decatur, Oliver Hazard Perry, Library of Congress, New York Public Library, National Archives, Barbary War

Check out this book here   https://amzn.to/3dIM4ok

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Amazon war history book – “Slavery and Utopia” (University of Texas Press, 2018) – Fernando Santos-Granero – WarScholar written interview 3

https://utpress.utexas.edu/books/santos-granero-slavery-and-utopia

For many readers, the Amazon has been a place that brings up images of wild beauty, teeming wildlife, and violent death. It is a place considered pristine and uncivilized. Today the Amazon is seen as a vital environmental asset, the destruction of which is considered a harbinger of a fast approaching environmental disaster brought on by the unchecked growth of civilization.

But the Amazon’s struggle for survival is not a new one. Many indigenous peoples live in the Amazon and they have all had to deal with the encroachment of civilization. But these peoples didn’t simply succumb to the crush of development and exploitation. Some of them fought back and fought back successfully.

Fernando Santos-Granero has written about one such Amazonian leader and I spoke with him about his book Slavery and Utopia and the struggles of one man and his followers to save his people’s place in the Amazon.

How did you become interested in studying and writing on the subject of your book?

I became interested in the figure of Ashaninka Chief José Carlos Amaringo Chico by sheer chance. In 2008, Łukasz Krokoszyński, a young colleague, told me about a book published by Mieczysław B. Lepecki, a Polish Army officer, recounting his experiences during a 1928 reconnaissance trip to the Upper Ucayali River in Peruvian Amazonia.

What led Łukasz to bring this particular book to my attention was Lepecki’s mention of an encounter with an Ashaninka chief who claimed to be “son of the Sun.” His followers, according to Lepecki, called him Tasorentsi, the Ashaninka term for a category of gods, good spirits and divine emissaries that may be translated as “all-powerful blower world transformer.” Lepecki described Tasorentsi as a great chief and paramount leader of a violent uprising that in 1915 had swept the Upper Ucayali and Lower Urubamba, killing many rubber extractors and forcing the survivors to abandon the region.

Knowing of my interest in the struggles of the indigenous peoples of the Selva Central region against white people’s encroachment, Łukasz assumed that Lepecki’s reference would be of interest to me. I responded that I had never heard of an indigenous uprising on the Upper Ucayali at that date. And added that Lepecki was probably merging accounts of the well-recorded 1912-14 Ashaninka revolt in the neighboring Pichis, Perené and Pangoa river basins with older narratives about Juan Santos Atahualpa, head of an eighteenth-century millenarian and anticolonial uprising against the Spanish, who also styled himself “son of the Sun.” However, since I was not prepared to dismiss the story entirely, I embarked on a search for independent evidence confirming Lepecki’s information. An examination of the national and regional newspapers of the time confirmed not only that the uprising had taken place but also that Chief Tasorentsi had played a key role in its planning and execution.

What aspect of this subject does your book focus on?

At the beginning, I intended to focus my study on the 1915 Upper Ucayali uprising. The revolt coincided with the collapse of the rubber boom –the rapid economic prosperity derived from the extraction of natural rubber throughout Amazonia– and I was interested to determine whether it had been an isolated incident or an expression of a much wider indigenous discontent. However, as the information started piling up, and I realized that Chief Tasorentsi had played a crucial role in most of the social and political events that affected Ashaninka people during the first half of the twentieth century, I gradually changed the focus of my study to reconstructing the life and political trajectory of this extraordinary man.

What are the major themes of this book?

The reconstruction of Chief Tasorentsi’s political trajectory serves as a backdrop to examine three broader topics. Firstly, the tensions and conflicts between the indigenous peoples of the Selva Central region and the local representatives of the national society –rubber extractors, river traders, merchant houses, shippers and local authorities– during a chaotic and violent period Peruvian Amazon history. In second place, the strategies developed by indigenous leaders to liberate their peoples from white-mestizo oppressors, many of whom were involved in the enslavement and traffic of indigenous people; strategies that oscillated between armed confrontation and millenarian action going through calls for retreat and isolationism. Finally, the debates that the conflicts between white and indigenous peoples generated at the regional and national level opposing those who defended indigenous rights to their lands and lifeways to those who proposed their cultural assimilation and/or extermination.

What resource materials did you use for your research?

The book combines a vast array of materials: archival documents from national and regional repositories with oral histories recorded from knowledgeable indigenous elders; journalistic articles and editorials with field materials collected by Ashaninka specialists in the 1960s, 70s and 80s; Adventist and Catholic missionary literature with ethnographic works; articles produced by scientists and explorers with travelogues published by globetrotters and adventurers; dictionaries of indigenous languages with old maps, sky charts and atlases; and musical recordings and scores with photographs, early films and other visual materials. It is thus a work of historical anthropology; a hybrid book combining the conventions of anthropology and history.

What part of the research process was most enjoyable for you?

I especially enjoyed the archival work. In comparison to Andean indigenous peoples, native Amazonian peoples have received very little attention from colonial or post-colonial authorities. As a result, there are not many archival documents dealing with their history. When I began my research, I did not expect to find much in the way of written documents. I was thus quite surprised when I began to find documents that dealt directly with Chief Tasorentsi and his actions throughout the years. Even more enjoyable, however, was the process of slowly putting together the puzzle of Chief Tasorentsi’s life based on such disparate kinds of information.

What did you discover in your research that most surprised you?

My greatest discovery was the resourcefulness and versatility of indigenous leaders such as Chief Tasorentsi, who had the capacity to change and constantly re-invent himself in response to the challenges posed by changing social and political conditions, but also to deep philosophical-moral doubts and reflection. The lives of such leaders were not black or white, but rather made up of multiple shades of gray. This was clearly the case of Chief Tasorentsi, who, from being a debt-peon and quasi-slave in his youth, went on to being a slave raider and trader; inspirer of an Ashaninka movement against white-mestizo rubber extractors and slave traffickers; paramount chief of a multiethnic, anticolonial, and anti-slavery uprising; enthusiastic preacher of an indigenized version of Seventh-Day Adventist doctrine; and charismatic people-gatherer whose world-transforming message and personal influence extended well beyond Peru’s frontiers.

Was there anything you discovered that moved you?

What moved me the most was the discovery of a song composed by Chief Tasorentsi as a means of transmitting his millenarian message. Colleague Jeremy Narby recorded the song in the 1980s from an Ashaninka friend who had learned it from Tasorentsi as a boy, and generously provided me with a copy. When I first heard the song, I was enthralled. I felt as if Chief Tasorentsi was trying to communicate with me across time. Narby had transcribed the lyrics but had not translate it. With the help of ethnomusicologists, linguists and anthropologists I finally managed to translate the song. Its message –that the creator god is coming to this earth to take his children to the waters of youth, where they will enjoy immortal life– expressed in evocative and melodious words the core of Ashaninka traditional religious beliefs.

What was the most difficult issue to research?

The most difficult part of my research was to find information on Chief Tasorentsi’s youth and old age. In those two periods, Chief Tasorentsi led a life away from the public spotlight. For this reason, there are few written documents for those years. It was thanks to interviews with Ashaninka elders related to Chief Tasorentsi and, more especially, with his youngest son that I was able to fill in those gaps. Oral histories thus became a crucial complement to archival materials.

What do you hope the book will do for readers?

With regard to non-indigenous readers, I hope that the book will allow them to get a glimpse of the richness of native Amazonian cultural practices and history, but also to realize the enormous odds that indigenous peoples have had to overcome in order to survive. It is my hope that greater knowledge of indigenous peoples’ past struggles will sensitize readers to support their present-day fight for their rights to life, land, and political autonomy. With regard to Ashaninka readers, I hope this book will recover a part of their history that has been largely forgotten; a history of courage against mighty odds in which not only leaders, but common men and women played a crucial part.

Did you have any difficulties in finishing the book and publishing it and if so, how did you overcome those?

No. Before I started to write the book, I signed a book contract with the University of Texas Press.

Do you have any online accounts where people can find more of your work? 

Readers can find more about my work at: https://stri.si.edu/scientist/fernando-santos-granero

Author Biography

Fernando Santos-Granero

Social Anthropologist

Smithsonian Institute

Author of Slavery and Utopia: The Wars and Dreams of an Amazonian World Transformer, University of Texas Press, 2018.

https://stri.si.edu/scientist/fernando-santos-granero