The World Upside Down: Cross-Cultural and Conflict in Sixteent-Century Peru.

This book is an important contribution to the growing ethnohistorical literature on the Andes in the early colonial period. The author analyzes in a sophisticated manner Spanish colonial documents to understand the motivations and behavior of the indigenous peoples of the northern Peruvian coast during the first decades after the Spanish Conquest. Although she does not encounter major new findings that might revolutionize the field, her careful disentangling of the web of understandings and misunderstandings by Indians and Europeans alike results in series of small but important revelations into the nature of Spanish colonialism that can be fruitfully applied to colonial situations elsewhere. In many ways, this is a model study of how to do ethnohistory (i.e. using European-generated documents to understand the indigenous point of view).

The author tackles many of the major issues that underlay the colonial system, dedicating a chapter to each of them. These include the role of the native nobility and the changes in the indigenous hierarchy, control over land, and the tribute system. Ramirez shows in a nuanced way how the native nobility's roles changed from that of offering "good government" to their subjects by being responsive to them and redistributing wealth, to the extractors of surplus for the Spanish overlords. Those nobles who refused to transform themselves into the exploiters of their people were often deposed or even murdered. Others attempted to try to fulfill the demands of both their communities and the Spaniards, conflicting roles that became increasingly difficult to maintain as Indian population decline and the interference of the Spanish eliminated maneuvering room. The chapter is an significant contribution to the topic of the role of indigenous elite in the colonial system, going beyond Karen Spalding's seminal essay on this issue. Even more interesting is the chapter on land tenure. Ramirez shows well how land became a commodity during the sixteenth century and how indigenous conceptions differed significantly from those of the Spaniards. In the Andean context, land use was discontinuous and it was to a native lord's advantage to settle members of other ethnic groups onto lands he controlled, for it added resources to the community. This attitude was in opposition to that of the Spaniards who, once the Indian population declined significantly and merchant activities became important, coveted the Indians' land as private property. It helps explain why the Indian nobility rented out land so frequently to the Spaniards, only to have them claim later on that the rents were in fact installment payments for purchase. Ramirez describes a conflict of divergent views of land and its condition as property that can be applied to conflicts over land that occurred well into the twentieth century.

The transformation of tribute payments from requirement of labor in Inca times to the requirement to provide goods and services and lastly, monetary payments based on the numbers of individual in each community, is analyzed well. The Indians were eventually forced to participate in the market economy, also undermining an economic system which was based largely on the ideals of reciprocity and redistribution. This is a topic which many other scholars have examined, but Ramirez shows how it worked out in the case of northern Peru, laying the groundwork for the reforms that later in the 1570s would be implemented through the Andes under Viceroy Toledo. Indeed, she claims persuasively that the reconfiguration of the tribute system in northern Peru was the model which Toledo later applied elsewhere. This novel insight has many implications, since it means that the study of the northern Peruvian case is vital for understanding the rationalization of the colonial system in the rest of the viceroyalty during the late sixteenth century.

The author pulls many of the thematic strands together in the last full chapter, where she discusses a lengthy case of "mining" of the artifacts of a temple or burial mound by the Spanish and, reluctantly, the Indian headman. She demonstrates the different conceptions of ownership of the Indians and the Europeans, as well as the blindness of the Spanish to cultural nuances - the Indians argued (unsuccessfully) that the site was a burial ground rather than a temple and thus should be respected. The Spanish saw little difference between these two conceptions (nor was it in their best financial interest to do so), since either supported what they saw as heathen practices. As a result, the headman made the best of it and supplied laborers for the looting of the site in an effort to gain at least some of the artifacts to sell them in an effort to lighten his subjects' tribute burden. In this rich case study, Ramirez also illuminates other issues, such as the fissures within Spanish colonial society between the poor and the wealthy.

To summarize, this is a significant contribution to the field in a number of ways. First, it describes for the first time the process of colonial domination from the indigenous perspective in the important region of northern Peru, adding to our understanding of overall processes that occurred throughout the Andes and indeed in all of Spanish America. It indicates that northern Peru was a model of sorts applied later in the rest of the Andes. In addition, Ramirez reveals that principles of reciprocity and redistribution, shown to be so important in the south-central Andes, were also paramount in the coastal regions subject to the Chimu empire. Most of all, the careful and sophisticated analysis of the indigenous view of the effects of the Spanish invasion is a model of how to do ethnohistory.

The only criticism I have is that Ramirez at times idealizes aboriginal culture. While she is able to show that the ideological underpinning of the pre-Columbian state was different from that of the individualistic and capitalist Spaniards, she does not distinguish enough between the ideal of "good government" in the Andean world and the harsh practical realities that must have impinged even on the pre-Columbian nobility. But this is a minor criticism in an otherwise excellent work. I would recommend its adoption for graduate courses and upper-division undergraduate courses especially if Stanford University Press sees fit to bring it out in a paperback edition.

Erick D. Langer Carnegie Mellon University