A New Past for the Old Peruvian Nation: Franklin Pease GY and Inka Ethnohistory

The late Franklin Pease G.Y. (1939-1999) was one of several Peruvian historians who, influenced by the new ethnohistorical approach to Andean studies pioneered in the 1960s by John Murra, embarked from the 1970s onwards in a revision of the country’s past with these new theoretical tools.  Pease became a specialist in the Inkas through an interest in the Spanish colonial chronicles, historical narratives written about the Inkas during the 16th and 17th centuries.  He also made some inroads into colonial history, interested in the survival and adaptive change of Andean ethnic groups from Inka times onward, under Spanish cultural and economic pressure.  Pease’s ample knowledge of the historical literature on the Peruvian past, produced from the 16th century up to the 1990s, allowed him to produce a highly ambitious “general history” of Peru (published in two volumes in 1992-1993), in which “Andean history” became fully intertwined with “the history of the Peruvian nation.” This paper will discuss how original, effective, and influential Pease’s endeavor has been in the last 25 years, and the long shadow of his interpretation of Peru’s Inka origins.