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.

Table of Contents

Introduction: History, Linguistics, and the Andean Past: A Much-Needed Conversation - Adrian J. Pearce and Paul Heggarty Part I: The Colonial Era * Language and Society in Early Colonial Peru - Gabriela Ramos A Visit to the Children of Chaupi Namca: From Myth to Andean History via Onomastics and Demography - Frank Salomon and Sue Grosboll What Was the 'Lengua General' of Colonial Peru? - Cesar Itier 'Mining the Data' on the Huancayo-Huancavelica Quechua Frontier - Adrian J. Pearce and Paul Heggarty Part II: Reform, Independence, & The Early Republic The Bourbon Reforms, Independence, and the Spread of Quechua and Aymara - Kenneth J. Andrien Reindigenisation and Native Languages in Peru's Long Nineteenth Century (1795-1940) - Adrian J. Pearce Quechua Political Literature in Early Republican Peru (1810-1876) - Alan Durston Part III: Towards Present and Future The Quechua Language in the Andes Today: Between Statistics, the State, and Daily Life - Rosaleen Howard 'Ya no podemos regresar al quechua': Modernity, Identity, and Language Choice among Migrants in Urban Peru - Tim Marr

About the Author

Paul Heggarty is a Researcher in the Linguistics Department of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Adrian J. Pearce teaches at King's College, London, in the Departments of History and Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin American Studies.

Reviews

"An illuminating set of readings that shines a bright light onto the cultural and social history of language use - both spoken and written - in the Andes, from the Spanish conquest of the Incas, through the turbulence of the Colonial era and down to the present day. The book succeeds by liberating the study of languages (primarily Quechua, Aymara, and Spanish) from the formalism of linguistics and the constraints of academic history. In the process, the authors show how the performance and interaction of Native and European languages played a vital, creative, and transformative role in the formation of the Andean nations." - Gary Urton, Dumbarton Oaks Professor of Pre-Columbian Studies, Harvard University, USA
"In bridging history, linguistics, and anthropology, this fine volume breaks new ground. It should now be unthinkable that scholars probe the impact of the Spanish Conquest, the legacy of the Incas, and the state of the contemporary Andes without considering language. The