History and Language in the Andes (Studies of the Americas)

This book gathers ground-breaking, explicitly inter-disciplinary essays examining the Andean past, including history, languages, anthropology, and ethnohistory. The modern world began with the clash of civilisations between Spaniards and native Americans. Their interplay and struggles ever since are mirrored in the fates of the very languages they spoke. The conquistadors wrought theirs into a new 'world language'; yet the Andes still host the New World's greatest linguistic survivor, Quechua. Historians and linguists see this through different - but complementary - perspectives. This book is a meeting of minds, long overdue, to weave them together. It ranges from Inca collapse to the impacts of colonial rule, reform, independence, and the modern-day trends that so threaten native language here with its ultimate demise. "The modern world began with the clash of civilisations between Spaniards and native Americans. Their interplay and struggles ever since are mirrored in the fates of the very languages they spoke. The conquistadors wrought theirs into a new 'world language'; yet the Andes still host the New World's greatest linguistic survivor, Quechua. Historians and linguists see this through different -- but complementary -- perspectives. This book is a meeting of minds, long overdue, to weave them together. It ranges from Inca collapse to the impacts of colonial rule, reform, independence, and the modern-day trends that so threaten native language here with its ultimate demise"--Provided by publisher Front Matter....Pages i-xxi Introduction History, Linguistics, and the Andean Past: A Much-Needed Conversation....Pages 1-16 Front Matter....Pages 17-17 Language and Society in Early Colonial Peru....Pages 19-38 A Visit to the Children of Chaupi Ñamca: From Myth to History via Onomastics and Demography....Pages 39-61 What Was the Lengua General of Colonial Peru?....Pages 63-85 “Mining the Data” on the Huancayo-Huancavelica Quechua Frontier....Pages 87-109 Front Matter....Pages 111-111 The Bourbon Reforms, Independence, and the Spread of Quechua and Aymara....Pages 113-133 Reindigenization and Native Languages in Peru’s Long Nineteenth Century (1795–1940)....Pages 135-163 Quechua Political Literature in Early Republican Peru (1810–1876)....Pages 165-186 Front Matter....Pages 187-187 The Quechua Language in the Andes Today: Between Statistics, the State, and Daily Life....Pages 189-213 “Ya No Podemos Regresar al Quechua”: Modernity, Identity, and Language Choice among Migrants in Urban Peru....Pages 215-238 Back Matter....Pages 239-266