"The Rome of the Incas": Elite Nationalism, Amerindian History, and the Classical World in Nineteenth-Century Spanish America

In this paper I examine the parallels nineteenth-century elite nationalists posited between America’s pre-conquest civilisations and the European classical world.  My comments are in some sense a meditation on themes I’ve explored in a book that I have just completed (Duke University Press, 2007) on the role of the pre-conquest past in 19C elite nationalism. References to Europe’s classical heritage form a constant sub-stratum of elite discourse in Spanish America.  More precisely, comparisons between the ancient civilisations of the old and new worlds are a consistent element of elite discourse not only during the colonial period, but also during the nineteenth century—indeed well into the twentieth. Throughout this period ancient Greece and Rome provided a touchstone for elite discussion of the new world’s own ancient history.