In this study of the Tupac Amaru rebellion, the first to appear in English since 1966, Charles Walker offers a lucid and engaging account of the Andean peasant insurrections which, as they swept through the southern Andes in the early 1780s, confronted Spanish rule with its longest and most violent challenge before the wars of independence. He focuses primarily on the movement started by the charismatic Indian noble who took the name ‘Tupac Amaru’ to signal his claims to Inca kingship, and, backed by family members, used his social prestige and connections to mobilise peasant insurrection in the old Inca heartlands. This is, however, part of a bigger story, in which Walker traces the interactions between the rebellion of Quechua-speaking rebels around Cuzco and the several distinctive uprisings among peasant communities in Upper Peru (Bolivia), some of which pre-dated Tupac Amaru’s rebellion and had a dynamic of their own. In so doing, he aims at creating a comprehensive, comparative picture of these intersecting rebellions, asking why they started and spread, who became involved, what the rebels wanted and believed, how they behaved, and what they achieved.
