Encyclopedia of the Incas

influence of works produced under the Viceroy Toledo, especially the chronicle
of Sarmiento de Gamboa, in which many Inca accomplishments were
characterized as having been constructed under the “tyranny” of the Incas.
Despite the critics of the Inca rulers, Europe soon fell under the sway of the
image of this great American empire, especially as recounted by Garcilaso.
Soon, imaginary engravings of the city of Cuzco began to appear, as well as
portraits of Inca rulers and idealized descriptions of Inca political organization
and cultural achievements. During the eighteenth century, such was the
popularity of Inca achievements that in France they inspired an opera-ballet,
titled Les Indes Galantes (The Noble Indies) and the well-known Lettres d’une
Peruvienne (Letters from a Peruvian Woman), a romantic novel written by the
French woman Françoise de Graffigny, in which quipus played a leading role in
a delightful love story. This work in particular attracted the attention of an
Italian, Raimundo de Sangro, Count of Sansevero, who created drawings of
knotted cords, heavily annotated with a series of largely imaginary symbolic
elements.
Near the end of the eighteenth century, an Indian rebellion that aimed to restore
Tahuantinsuyu shook the southern Andes. Its principal leader, José Gabriel
Condorcanqui, known by his nom de guerre Túpac Amaru II, named himself
after an Inca ruler who had held sway in the neo-Inca stronghold of
Vilcabamba. Spanish officials suspected that Garcilaso’s Royal Commentaries
might have helped stir up this rebellion, and his chronicle was banned in the
Viceroyalty of Peru.
Awareness of past neo-Inca movements saw a resurgence at the same time that
liberalism began to promote ideas of independence, at the beginning of the
nineteenth century. Soon, the influence of Túpac Amaru II’s rebellion and a
series of political circumstances undermining Spanish rule motivated
Argentinian leaders, such as Generals Manuel Belgrano and José de San Martin,
to advocate for independence from Spain. From early on, these moves were
accompanied by calls for the restoration of an Inca monarchy. Although many
people in the future Andean nations were sympathetic to these views, once
independence was gained (which occurred in Peru in 1821), these nostalgic calls
for the rebirth of an Inca state were abandoned in favor of a Republican political
order under Simón Bolívar.
The attraction of the earlier historians of the Incas continued with renewed
strength in Republican times, motivating the publication of new editions of
several works, as well as the production of secondary works, some of which