The People Are King: The Making of an

Indigenous Andean Politics S. Elizabeth

Penry
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/the-people-are-king-the-making-of-an-indigenous-and
ean-politics-s-elizabeth-penry/
The People Are King
The People Are King
The Making of an Indigenous Andean Politics

S. E L I Z A B E T H P E N RY

1
 1
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.

© Oxford University Press 2019

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction
rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data

Names: Penry, S. Elizabeth, author.
Title: The people are king : the making of an indigenous Andean politics / S. Elizabeth Penry.
Description: New York : Oxford University Press, 2019. | Summary: “The People Are King traces the
transformation of Andean communities under Inca and Spanish rule. The sixteenth century Spanish
resettlement policy, known as Reducción was pivotal to this transformation. Modeled on the Spanish ideal
of República (self-government within planned towns) and shared sovereignty with their monarch, Spaniards
in the Viceroyalty of Peru forced Andeans into resettlement towns. Andeans turned the tables on forced
resettlement by making the towns their own, and the center of their social, political, and religious lives.
Andeans made a coherent life for themselves in a complex process of ethnogenesis that blended preconquest
ways of life (the ayllu) with the imposed institutions of town life and Christian religious practices. Within
these towns, Andeans claimed the right to self-government, and increasingly regarded their native lords,
the caciques, as tyrants. A series of microhistorical accounts in these repúblicas reveals that Andeans
believed that commoner people, collectively called the común, could rule themselves. With both Andean
and Spanish antecedents, this political philosophy of radical democracy was key to the Great Rebellion of
the late eighteenth-century. Rather than focusing on well-known leaders such as Tupac Amaru, the book
demonstrates through commoner rebels’ holographic letters that it was commoner Andean people who
made the late eighteenth-century a revolutionary moment by asserting their rights to self-government. In
the final chapter the book follows the commoner-lead towns of the Andes from the era of independence into
the present day of the Plurinational State of Bolivia. Ayllu, Reducción, ethnogenesis, Peru, Bolivia, cacique,
Tupac Amaru, comunero, revolution, microhistory”—Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019015748 | ISBN 9780195161618 (paperback) | ISBN 9780195161601 (hardback) |
ISBN 9780190073923 (epub) | ISBN 9780199721900 (updf)
Subjects: LCSH: Indians of South America—Relocation—Andes Region. | Indians of South America—
Andes Region—Politics and government. | Indians of South America—Cultural assimilation—
Andes region. | Power (Social sciences)—Andes Region—History—18th century. | Andes Region—
Politics and government—18th century. | Spain—Colonies—America—Administration.
Classification: LCC F2229 .P448 2019 | DDC 980—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019015748

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Paperback printed by Marquis, Canada
Hardback printed by Bridgeport National Bindery, Inc., United States of America
To the people of the markas and ayllus of the Andes, the heirs of the comuneros
 CONTENTS

Acknowledgments  ix
A Note on Terminology  xiii

Introduction: The Genesis of an Andean Christianity and Politics  1

PART I INCA AND E ARLY SPANISH PERU  

1. Inca and Asanaqi in Qullasuyu  29

2. Spanish República and Inca Tyranny  43
3. Resettlement: Spaniards Found New Towns for “Indians”  53

PART II THE ANDE ANIZ ATION OF SPANISH

INSTITUTIONS AND CHRISTIANIT Y  

4. Andeans Found Their Own Towns: The Andeanization of

Reducción  79
5. Cofradía and Cabildo in the Eighteenth Century: The Merger of
Andean Religiosity and Town Leadership  101
6. Rational Bourbons and Radical Comuneros: Civil Practices That
Shape Towns  124
viii Contents

PART III THE REVOLUTIONARY COMÚN  

7. Comunero Politics and the King’s Justice: The Común Takes

Moral Action  145
8. A Lettered Revolution: A Brotherhood of Communities  167

Conclusion. The Resilience of the Común and Its Legacy  200

Notes  221
Bibliography  261
Index  281
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

With a project that has taken so many years to complete, I have incurred many
debts and have many, many people to thank. At the University of Miami where
I wrote the dissertation that this book is based on, Noble David Cook, Guido
Ruggiero, and the late Robert Levine were helpful in the foundation of the pro-
ject. Above all, this has been a labor of years spent in archives and poring over
documents, and the much too infrequent moments of sharing tidbits and inter-
pretive angles with other researchers at those archives and in conferences.
First, I would like to thank the wonderful staff at the Archivo y Biblioteca
Nacionales de Bolivia (ABNB). I was fortunate to begin my research with the
late Don Gunnar Mendoza, director extraordinario. His over forty years of
dedication to cataloging and organization of the archive made the ABNB one
of the finest archives in the world. The late Dr. Josep Barnadas, who followed
Don Gunnar as director of the ABNB and was the first director of the Archivo
y Biblioteca Arquidiocesanos de Sucre (ABAS) was also instrumental in
guiding my research. Archivists Sra. Judith Terrán, formerly associate director
of the ABNB and the late Doña Anita Forenza were generous with their time
and great expertise. They and other members of the ABNB staff were my sur-
rogate family during my time in Sucre. Fellow researchers in the ABNB, espe-
cially Ana María Presta, Emma Sordo, and Heather Thiessen-​Reilly (whose time
in Sucre overlapped with much of mine) and others who worked for briefer
times, including David Garrett, the late Catherine Julien, Karen Powers, Cynthia
Radding, and the late Ward Stavig, all made the sometimes lonely experience of
archival research more rewarding. Especially appreciated were the monthly pot-​
luck dinners sponsored by anthropologist Verónica Cereceda and her late hus-
band Gabriel Martínez which brought together historians and anthropologists
working in the Sucre area for dinner and some very animated discussions.
Over many research trips in twenty years of working in the Archivo General de
Indias in Seville, the archival staff have been incredibly helpful. Living in Seville

ix
x Acknowledgments

is a privilege, and I was fortunate that in my first time there I was introduced to
Andalusian life in the Santa Cruz neighborhood home of Doña Carmen Moguel,
who treated me as her daughter. It was also while living in Spain that I realized
how many things that I took to be “Andean” had multiple roots.
I have also been fortunate to have been able to spend a significant amount
of time in Buenos Aires working in the Archivo General de la Nación. Helpful
archivists, staff, and friends there made my time more productive than it other-
wise would have been. I wish to thank Ana María Presta of the Universidad de
Buenos Aires, and her team of researchers, especially María Carolina Jurado, for
their help.
The Archivo del Arzobispal de Lima houses a wealth of documentation on
local indigenous communities, and I was privileged to work there during re-
search trips to Peru. Director of the archive, Srta. Laura Gutiérrez, was especially
helpful. I also thank Pedro Guibovich, who introduced me to Srta. Gutiérrez.
His great knowledge of Peruvian archives facilitated my research there.
During a year at the John Carter Brown Library as a National Endowment for
the Humanities Fellow I completed early drafts of ­chapters 4 and 5. I have fond
memories of the weekly lunches and talks given by other fellows. Former Director
Norman Fiering was helpful in many ways during my time in Providence.
There are many other individuals, institutions, and archives that have helped
me in countless ways as I worked to understand the lives of the comuneros. A spe-
cial thanks to Cristina Bubba who provided me with a copy of the document
of the foundation of Tolapampa. Anthropologist Krista van Vleet graciously
allowed me to accompany her to her field site near Pocoata where we witnessed
a tinku battle. I also thank three wonderful historians, now retired, who offered
support and encouragement at key moments in my work, historians of Spain
Richard Kagan and the late Helen Nader, and historian of Mexico William
B. Taylor. Although the list is far from complete, among the many others who
provided help in myriad ways through informal chats, or comments at confer-
ences as fellow panelists or audience members, or who shared their work with
me are Kenneth Andrien, Jovita Baber, Kathryn Burns, Juan Cobo, Natalie
Cobo, Noble David Cook, Mercedes del Rio, Simon Ditchfield, Lee Douglas,
María Elisa Fernández, David Garrett, Karen Graubart, Pedro Guibovich, the
late Olivia Harris, Tamar Herzog, Alex Huerta, Christine Hunefeldt, Amy
Huras, Marta Irurozqui, the late Sabine MacCormack, Jane Mangan, Kenneth
Mills, Scarlett O’Phelan Godoy, Karen Powers, Tristan Platt, Susan Ramírez,
Joanne Rappaport, Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, Gilles Riviére, Stuart Rockefeller,
Rafael Sánchez, Lynn Sikkink, Irene Silverblatt, Karen Spalding, Patricia Spyer,
and Sinclair Thomson.
A special thank you to Akira Saito of the National Museum of Ethnology
(Osaka, Japan) who invited me to participate in two long-​term interdisciplinary
 Acknowledgments xi

projects reevaluating reducciones. My deep appreciation goes to the team of in-

ternational researchers involved in the reducción projects, especially Tetsuya
Amino, John Charles, Alejandro Diez Hurtado, Luis Miguel Glave, Clara López
Beltrán, Jeremy Mumford, Stella Nair, Parker VanValkenburgh, Steve Wernke,
Guillermo Wilde, Marina Zuloaga, and Paula Zagalsky. Discussions over many
years with these historians, anthropologists, art historians, and archaeologists
working on the reducciones projects were key in helping me to refine my own
interpretation of resettlement.
My colleagues in the history department at Fordham University have been
very supportive, above all Kirsten Swinth, who as chair was instrumental in
bringing the book to publication. Colleagues, especially Barbara Mundy and the
late Chris Schmidt-​Nowara, in the Latin American and Latino Studies Institute
at Fordham have provided a warm intellectual home. I also wish to thank the
students, both graduates and undergraduates at Fordham University, from
whom I have learned so much.
I have had extraordinarily generous support for research and writing from
many sources. I thank the Wenner-​Gren Foundation for Anthropological
Research (Grant # 5634); Fulbright/​IIE; the National Endowment for the
Humanities Dissertation Fellowship; the Albert J. Beveridge Grant for Research
in the Western Hemisphere from the American Historical Association; the Lewis
Hanke Award from the Conference on Latin American History; the Advanced
Study Center and International Institute at the University of Michigan; the
Fulbright Senior Research Award; the National Endowment for the Humanities
Senior Scholar Fellowship at the John Carter Brown Library; the Program for
Cultural Cooperation between Spain’s Ministry for Culture and US Universities;
the Short-​Term Research Grant from the International Seminar on the History of
the Atlantic World at Harvard University; and the National Ethnology Museum,
Osaka, Japan. Also thank you to the generous offers of fellowships that I had to
decline due to time conflicts: the Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation
Fellowship of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, and the
American Fellowship from The American Association of University Women.
Thank you to Fordham University for Faculty Fellowships (2002–​2003; 2009–​
2010) and Faculty Research Grants (1998, 2000, 2001, 2015), for time away
from teaching obligations and funds to travel to archives.
Chapter 8 contains material originally published in Colonial Lives: Documents
on Latin American History, 1550–​1850 edited by Richard Boyer and Geoffrey
Spurling, 2000, and has been reproduced by permission of Oxford University
Press. An early version of parts of ­chapter 4 was published in The Council
of Trent: Reform and Controversy in Europe and Beyond, (1545–​1700): Vol.3
Between Artists and Adventurers, edited by Wim François and Violet Soen, 2018,
and has been reproduced here by permission of Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht
xii Acknowledgments

GmbH & Co.KG, Göttingen, Germany. Chapter 4 is a revised version originally

published in Reducciones: la concentración forzada de las poblaciónes indígenas
en el Virreinato del Perú, edited by Akira Saito and Claudia Rosas Lauro, 2017,
and has been reproduced here by permission of Fondo Editorial de la Pontificia
Universidad Católica del Perú and the National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka,
Japan. Portions of the introduction have been revised from material origi-
nally published in Collective Identities, Public Spheres and Political Order: Latin
American Dynamics edited by Luis Roniger and Tamar Herzog, 2000, and have
been reproduced here by permission of Sussex Academic Press.
Susan Ferber, my editor at Oxford University Press, has been extraordinarily
supportive every step of the way and, fortunately for me, never gave up on this
very long-​term project. Her encouragement and editing made this book much
stronger.
Much of the final draft was completed in Toro, Spain. I thank my dear friends
there for their support. Evenings spent in Javier and Frans’s patio, or on the
plaza with Marisol, Fernando, and Tony or Consuelo and Ata are priceless and
a much-​appreciated distraction from work. Nicola, who welcomed us into her
home as family, is truly a force of nature.
Finally, I thank Tom Abercrombie, my partner in life, my soul’s companion,
and fellow Andeanist, whose own work is an inspiration to me. Tom generously
offered his time and expertise to read and comment on many drafts of this ac-
count of the comuneros. To my great sorrow Tom did not live to see the final
product of our many conversations, yet I feel his presence on every page. I also
thank Tom’s students who enveloped me in their love as an extended family
in the painful time after his death, especially Ulla Berg, Lee Douglas, Sandra
Rozental, Augusta Thomson, and Alex Huerta who graciously proofread parts
of the final manuscript. The remaining faults and shortcomings in the book are
my own.
 A NOTE ON TERMINOLOGY

In The People are King, I use the terms “Andeans,” “indigenous people,” and
“Indian” to refer to the native people of the Andes, aware that, to varying
degrees, these are problematic terms. Creole Spaniards born in the Andes, were
also “Andeans.” “Indigenous people,” a nineteenth-​century term, is anachronistic
and when invented carried a racial stigma as a “scientific” means of categorizing
humans. Today “Indian” in Spanish (indio) is an insult term, and was sometimes
used as such in the colonial period.
Other terms are also problematic. Some scholars have used “natural,”
a common colonial term, but it carried the same racial significance as
“Indian” for Spaniards. Other scholars have used runa, (Quechua: “human”
or “people”) but there is little evidence that colonial or contemporary
Andeans referred to themselves as runa or the Aymara language equiva-
lent, jaqi. Since the Bolivian agrarian reforms of the mid-​t wentieth century,
which sought to efface racial terms, campesino, or “peasant” has been the
preferred term. Although campesino is plainly a euphemism for Indian, it
is unquestionably a more polite term. However, it suggests an economic in-
terpretation that is anachronistic; Andeans were not uniformly subsistence
farmers, and Spaniards (or Creoles) were not always targeted as economi-
cally oppressive colonizers. Just as importantly, contemporary indigenous
people of Bolivia object to the term because it also diminishes their “iden-
tity as a ‘people.’ ”1
Given all these problems with the typical nomenclature, and although some
Andeans are now proudly reclaiming the name Indian for themselves, in the
chapters where I treat the early colonial period, I will generally use the terms

1
Albó, “Our Identity,” 24.

xiii
xiv A NOTE ON TERMINOLOGY

“Andean” or “indigenous.” When writing from a Spanish colonial viewpoint,

I will use the term “Indian.” For the chapters dealing with the eighteenth cen-
tury, where I can be certain that words deriving from “común” were used with
frequency, I opt to use the only terminology that derives from words I know
eighteenth-​century rebels used for themselves: comunero.
The People Are King
 Introduction
The Genesis of an Andean Christianity and Politics

The night of October 14, 1774 was clear and cold, and the moon had risen early,
illuminating San Pedro de Condocondo, an indigenous town nuzzled against the
mountains on the edge of the high Andean plain in the Spanish viceroyalty of
Peru. Gregorio Llanquipacha, cacique (native hereditary lord) and governor for
the Spanish crown of the town of Condocondo and its vast municipal jurisdic-
tion, had retired early for the evening. Llanquipacha had premonitions of trouble,
for he had asked a half dozen men of the village to sleep at his home that night.1
Two seemingly separate events had led Llanquipacha to take this precaution.
That afternoon a dispute had erupted into a bloody fight between two elected
town leaders. Llanquipacha’s relations with these men, Julián Taquimalco but es-
pecially Ignacio Rudolfo Choque, were as strained as their relationship with each
other. The previous year town authorities had accused Llanquipacha of stealing
tax money.2 However, as governor and highest authority of Condocondo,
Llanquipacha would be compelled to intervene the next day to settle the dispute
between the two men, whatever its nature.3
Another incident that afternoon had also left Llanquipacha with a sense of
disquiet. Father Joseph Espejo, the widely respected priest of Condocondo who
had served the parish for over thirty years, had abruptly left on muleback to
move to the neighboring town of Toledo. Llanquipacha had a history of conflict
with the priest, but he also knew that the townspeople revered Father Espejo.
Llanquipacha openly suspected that the priest had conspired with elected
town officers to accuse him of stealing tax money, and so townspeople blamed
Llaquipacha for forcing Father Espejo to leave. Whatever the case, a large group
of townspeople had walked with the priest to the nearest town on his journey,
crying and begging him to stay with them in Condocondo. Only a few months
earlier the assistant priest, who had served as schoolmaster for the parish for six-
teen years, had likewise left Condocondo; his move, too, was widely understood

The People Are King: The Making of an Indigenous Andean Politics. S. Elizabeth Penry, Oxford University Press
(2019). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780195161601.001.0001
2 The People Are King

by townspeople as being made at the demand of Llanquipacha. These events led

governor Gregorio Llanquipacha to be on his guard.
Vicente Nina, a twenty-​six-​year-​old Condocondo resident, was one of those
whom Llanquipacha had asked to sleep in his house that night and who later
gave sworn testimony to Spanish officials of what ensued. Sometime during the
night, Nina said, he was awakened by the sound of a large rock hitting the door.

Jumping from [my] bed [I]‌put [my] body against the door to support it
from the inside. However, they continued to pound the doors furiously
and they forced them open. Immediately, [I] recognized Cruz Yana,
Damaso Yana and Ignacio Rudolfo Choque [current and former town
councilmen] . . . and many more people, men, women, young boys, so
that they were more than a 100 people gathered together in a mad rush,
entering the room with different weapons, stones, whips and clubs.4

At that point someone struck Nina in the chest with a club, knocking him
to the floor. Struggling to get up, he saw women carrying flaming straw torches
approach Llanquipacha, who, already bloodied, stood next to his bed clad only
in his night shirt, waving his sword. “Get out Indians!” Llanquipacha screamed
at his attackers, using the insulting term Spaniards applied to native Andeans.
With that the already enraged crowd surged toward him, and inflicted blows to
his head and body. Nina testified that one of the women, María Lenis, the wife
of Damaso Yana, took her weaving tool (a wichuña, a sharpened llama bone) and
repeatedly stabbed Gregorio Llanquipacha in the ear until the point broke off in
his brain. Meanwhile, others in the mob looted Llanquipacha’s office, taking his
papers. Then, with the vigilantes screaming “Let’s go kill the other thief!” they
ran to the home of Andrés Llanquipacha, Gregorio’s brother and his second in
command, who met them with gun in hand and managed to shoot one of the
mob before they murdered him.
In the days immediately following the murders, a large contingent from
Condocondo traveled the 70-​odd miles of mountain roads and llama trails to
the seat of the regional Spanish colonial government in La Plata to present their
version of events. News of the murders arrived via mail before they did. When
Spanish officials realized that more than thirty people from Condocondo were
waiting inside the patio of the courthouse to plead their case, they quickly had
them arrested and jailed. The Condocondo prisoners offered an explanation of
the crimes that the Spaniards neither expected nor believed: the murders came
about in response to what they reckoned to be the forced ouster of their priest,
Father Espejo. Moreover, they contended, because the común of Condocondo
as a whole had killed the indigenous cacique and his second in command, it
was impossible to assess any individual blame. When pressured by incredulous
 Int roduc tion 3

Spanish officials to offer a fuller explanation for the murders, one representative
to the Condocondo town council, an accused leader of the mob, declared:

It is a crime to take justice into [my] own hands, and to reprimand [my]
cacique or Governor, whom [I]‌well know ought to be obeyed if he is
good, but not if he is bad and his works unjust, as was the case with
the deceased. [Former town councilmen] Ignacio Rudolfo Choque and
Damián Lenis taught this doctrine. And also [I] know that if the común
ordered [me] to do one thing and [my] Governor another, [I] ought to
obey the común.5

What was the común? This book is an effort to answer that question. In
Spanish language dictionaries of the era, común can refer to common property,
common pastures, or more importantly the collective people of a place. Put
simply, común was the Andean voice of popular sovereignty and an exclusionary
term that referred solely to the common people, putting the hereditary nobility
outside the bounds of their community. But the people of the Andes had not al-
ways used the term común and had not always opposed rule by their hereditary
lords. The Andean community that prized commoner rule over their caciques
had come into being over the course of the long colonial period, from the late
sixteenth to the late eighteenth centuries.

***
The People Are King is a history of how ordinary Andeans in the Audiencia of
Charcas, a vast region of the viceroyalty of Peru, came to define themselves by
reinterpreting colonial institutions and ideas, and their efforts to govern them-
selves and acquire full rights during the nearly three hundred years that they
were subjects of the Spanish Crown. It demonstrates how Andeans moved from
a politics of hereditary nobility, the caciques, to a hybrid form of participatory
democracy, with the town council at its heart, that had roots in both the Andean
and Spanish worlds. Andeans publicly articulated a political philosophy that
not only questioned their political, economic and social subordination to their
own hereditary lords, but presented a thesis on popular sovereignty that would
threaten the structures of Spanish colonial domination. This new politics was
undergirded by Andean ideas about a redistributive justice in which mountains,
fields, and animals participated, as well as Christian and Spanish notions of nat-
ural rights and God-​given sovereignty.
Spaniards imposed new kinds of town life, commoner-​led town councils,
and Christian patron saints and festivals in the sixteenth century, but these
impositions did not replace pre-​Conquest Andean social forms. Indeed, at the
center of these new ideas about legitimacy and governance was the ayllu, the
4 The People Are King

Andean kin and landholding group that predated both the Spaniards and the
Incas and that during the colonial period (1532–​1825) came to be linked to
Andean towns through the town council and saints’ celebrations. Andeans se-
lectively appropriated Spanish religious and political impositions and combined
them with pre-​Conquest understandings of reciprocal and moral obligations,
and justice in a complex synthesis that Andeans called the común. Then, in the
eighteenth century, Andean communities across the viceroyalty of Peru took
collective action, deposing and, in some cases, executing abusive hereditary
lords, all the while claiming they were operating in the name of the común. No
one person could be named responsible for these political coups: the “común
de Indios” had acted. In the 1780s as revolutionary uprisings accelerated in
the Audiencia of Charcas (modern Bolivia), this political discourse spread
through the mails, with indigenous communities writing back and forth to their
“Amantíssimos hermanos comunes,” their “Beloved Común Brothers.”6
What led to this shift in how Andeans understood their political commu-
nity? Where did this strong sense of collective life come from? To answer these
questions, The People Are King offers an overview of the pre-​Conquest Andes
and sixteenth-​century Spanish ways, and then turns to an in-​depth examination
of how grass roots-​level political power was exercised by colonized Andeans
in two broad historical periods, times that roughly bookend the long colonial
era. The first runs from the late 1500s to roughly 1650, the era of the Spanish
invasion and creation of the early colony, when Spain was governed by the
Hapsburg dynasty. The second runs roughly from 1750 to the end of Spanish
hegemony in 1825, frequently referred to as the era of Bourbon Reforms be-
cause of economic and political changes introduced by the Bourbon dynasty,
which acceded to the Spanish throne in 1700. Close analysis of these two time
periods reveals the changes that occurred over the long colonial era in Andean
politics.
The setting for this study is the Audiencia of Charcas (see Figure I.1), an ad-
ministrative unit of the Spanish Indies, with its capital in La Plata (today Sucre,
Bolivia). Until 1776, the Audiencia of Charcas was part of the viceroyalty of
Peru, headquartered in Lima; after that it was incorporated into the new viceroy-
alty of Rio de la Plata, with Buenos Aires as its capital. Within the Audiencia, the
primary focus is the territory of what were two pre-​Conquest federations, what
Spaniards called “nations,” the Killaka, of which Condocondo was part, and its
neighboring federation, the Karanqa. The contiguous core areas of these two
federations covered approximately thirty thousand square miles in the highland
Andes, an area roughly three times the size of the state of Massachusetts. The
average altitude for the core region is over twelve thousand feet, with mountain
peaks reaching twenty thousand feet above sea level. It is a cold, windswept, and
dry plain of austere beauty. In this highland area, people have herded llamas and
 Int roduc tion 5

Figure I.1 Map of Study Area. Map by Erin Greb Cartography.

alpacas and cultivated the highland crops of potatoes and quinoa for thousands
of years. The full extension of the territories of Killaka and Karanqa, taking in
their “discontinuous but interconnected” outlier communities in distant, pro-
ductive valleys to the east, where maize and coca were grown, and oases near the
Pacific Ocean in the west, reached eighty thousand square miles, roughly the size
of the states of Kansas or Utah.7 Within that region, the study concentrates on
five highland towns, refounded with Christian patron saints in the late sixteenth
6 The People Are King

and early seventeenth centuries: San Pedro de Condocondo, Santa Bárbara de

Culta, Todos Santos de Tomave, Santiago de Tolapampa, and San Pedro de
Totora. It also treats distant valley outliers belonging to the Killaka and Karanqa
to which highland people made annual trips with llama caravans for foodstuffs.
These valley settlements, nearer to the Audiencia capital of La Plata and within
the core territory of the Qaraqara people, particularly the town of San Juan de
Pocoata, were convenient resting places when traveling to the capital on com-
munity business.
From the sixteenth century re-​foundation of these Andean communities
until the independence of this region from the Spanish Empire, representa-
tives from these towns regularly traveled to the Audiencia capital to meet with
lawyers and put forward the aims of their communities. When they did so,
they went with a particular understanding of the nature of the human col-
lectivity they represented, and of its rights, based on both in their historical
domination over lands they possessed and the sovereignty granted to them as
people. Such ideas were grounded in Spanish law as well as in Andean moral
frameworks.
The Spanish civilizational project, which had at its heart the creation of self-​
governing resettlement towns for indigenous people, resulted from the Spanish
Crown’s recognition of Indians’ essential humanity and fundamental right of do-
minium, that is, “ownership” of themselves and their property, and by extension
the right to govern themselves.8 These plans for indigenous self-​government were
forged during an era when the nature of sovereignty was understood as some-
thing granted by God to “the people.” These ideas had played out in Spain shortly
before the invasion of the Inca empire in Castile’s 1520–​1521 Revolution of the
Communities. But going beyond the idea of the sovereignty of the people was
the proposition that the people had a right to take sovereignty back when their
leaders became tyrants. Spaniards used these ideas to justify their overthrow of
the Inca “tyrants.” Then, these political ideas were made explicit to indigenous
Andeans when Spaniards moved them into resettlement towns designed to “civ-
ilize” Andeans. This book reveals how Andeans came to understand such things
and to adopt the institutions imposed on them by colonizing Spaniards to speak
back to power and to serve their own ends.

Andean Community Life and the Introduction

of Reducciones
Conquered by the Inca around 1460, less than one hundred years before the
Spanish invasion, the region of this study was the most densely populated
and wealthiest of the Inca Empire. It was also home to the village that would
 Int roduc tion 7

become San Pedro de Condocondo, where, just over three hundred years later,
the común would kill Gregorio Llanquipacha. Condocondo was part of a col-
lectivity known as Asanaqi, which in turn was part of the Killaka federation. The
Asanaqi population was concentrated in the high plateau of the Andes moun-
tains, living in small, scattered villages to the east of Lake Poopó. The Incas were
attracted to the region by the large llama herds of the Asanaqi and neighboring
“nations,” the fertile and irrigable fields of the Cochabamba valley, and the enor-
mous silver deposits of the region.
The Inca conquest brought benefits to the Asanaqi: peace prevailed across
the region, and their sophisticated agricultural methods and transport meant
that there was a surplus of food in the enormous state warehouses along the Inca
highway system that could be distributed to those in need. Incas imposed their
imperial religion of sun and moon worship on all, but their subject populations
were allowed to keep local gods. The Asanaqi had limited say in their political
life; they were ruled by a hereditary elite at local, regional and empire-​wide levels
whose right to rule was grounded in their descent from deities. Like their neigh-
boring ethnic groups and larger federations, the Asanaqi held property collec-
tively; the only privately held property were the large estates of the Inca elite.
The Incas were enormously successful in funneling wealth upward from local
commoners to the ruling elite. Asanaqi commoners, for instance, were drafted
by the Inca to grow maize in the Inca fields of Cochabamba, work in the Inca
silver mines of Porco, and help build and maintain the highways on which llama
caravans moved their goods to regional storehouses, and from there to the Inca
capital in Cuzco. In 1532, when Spaniards entered the territory that would be-
come the viceroyalty of Peru, they recognized this efficient transfer of wealth
that sustained the Inca nobility and hoped to channel it into their own coffers to
ennoble themselves and enrich their king.
While the Spanish admired the wealth generated by the Inca Empire, they
believed that Andeans lacked the essentials of civilized life: Christianity, of
course, but almost as importantly, town life. The Inca Empire did hold some
impressive cities, but aside from the capital Cuzco (and a few others), they
were primarily administrative centers staffed with temporary laborers. With
the Spanish invasion, many of the temporary workers fled, returning to their
home villages. For Spaniards, neither these administrative centers, nor the small
villages in which most Andeans lived, were adequate to foster the kind of inten-
sive interpersonal and collective sociality that Spaniards identified as necessary
for civilized life. For Spaniards, the town was the república, the basis of civilized
life; the municipality guaranteed rights to its citizens and brought about proper
moral, religious, and political behavior. There was no national guarantee of rights
and citizenship; all political life was vested in the town-​republic. The most basic
political identification for Spaniards was their natal town, their patria chica, or
8 The People Are King

little fatherland. In the Americas, then, Spaniards immediately founded towns

for themselves in order to legitimate their dominion.9
Under Viceroy Francisco de Toledo, who arrived in Peru in 1569, Spaniards
insisted on resettling Andeans from their small hamlets into new Spanish-​
style towns in order to introduce them to life in a town-​based republic and the
institutions of church and state that supported that life. Known as reducciones,
from the verb reducir, to reduce, these resettlement towns would concentrate the
population into towns with a uniform grid-​pattern design that Spaniards believed
would help bring civilization to the people of the Americas. In this, Spaniards
were inspired by the plazas and squares of Roman architect Vitrivius, whose first-​
century work was first published in Spanish in the late fifteenth century, and that
of the Renaissance Italian humanist and architect Alberti, in imaging the ideal
city design. The new resettlement towns, informed by Renaissance ideals that
considered the social effects of buildings and city design, were an early modern
attempt at social engineering. From the Spanish viewpoint, without the orderly
pattern of life, the buena policía, or “good customs,” of the Spanish-​styled munic-
ipality, the people of the Andes were estranged from civilization and Christian
life. Orders governing the layout of towns issued by King Philip II called for
a large plaza and straight streets that would give physical expression to buena
policía. The straight streets and rectangular plazas of resettlement towns would
make indigenous Andeans into “true men.”10
With the creation of resettlement towns, Spaniards renewed and intensified
efforts to convert Andeans to Christianity, a requirement for buena policía. Each
resettlement town was named for a saint or other Christian advocation, and a
lay religious brotherhood to celebrate the saint was established for Andeans.
Condocondo, which had existed under the Inca empire, was “founded” as a
reducción town under Viceroy Toledo as San Pedro de Condocondo, with Saint
Peter as its patron. Asanaqi people, like other Andeans, quickly took up and
adapted these brotherhoods dedicated to the saints. The brotherhoods, called
cofradías, clothed the image of their patron saint in elaborate textiles and, on
his feast day, marched in processions through their town, carrying their saint’s
image on their shoulders on platforms laden with flowers and candles. Before
the end of the sixteenth century, church officials sought to limit the numbers of
indigenous founded cofradías, fearing that they could be a cover for a return to
pre-​Conquest religious practices. Despite Spanish efforts to halt their numbers,
the new town based cofradías flourished, helping to give meaning to and create
ties of sentiment to the new reducción towns. Certain aspects of Christianity, in
particular the focus on the brotherhood between fellow members of cofradías
who collectively served the saints, along with generosity, humility, and charity,
but also Christianity’s sacrificial metaphors linking persons and domesti-
cated animals, were well-​attuned for the emergence of a commoner-​collective
 Int roduc tion 9

political ethics in communities like San Pedro de Condocondo whose livelihood

depended on herd animals.
Building on Spanish concepts of God-​given, community based popular sov-
ereignty, Viceroy Toledo also created a model for self-​government within the re-
settlement towns, the elected town council or cabildo that was to share authority
with the hereditary cacique. This concept of divided rule was clearly modeled
on the Spanish pattern of dual government by aristocrats and plebeians. The
town councils were made up mainly of annually elected taxpaying plebeians;
the nobility was specifically restricted from monopolizing offices. Town council
officers would be charged with helping collect tax payments and recruiting
labor, in addition to governing. Toledo’s orders also compelled them to as-
sist the priest in conversion and teaching Christian doctrine. As town council
members led celebrations for the town’s saints, they publicly engaged in actions
that underscored their legitimation by tapping into pre-​Conquest roots where
leaders’ political duties and their leadership of religious practices had been
inseparable.
Within a short time, Andeans adapted the imposed civil and religious
institutions and practices and made these resettlement towns their own. More
than that, commoner Andeans began to create new towns modeled on the
Spanish resettlement towns. In many cases, Andeans were returning to their pre-​
Conquest hamlets, but re-​founding them with town councils and the celebration
of the saints, now melded with Andean social forms. Asanaqi people originally
settled by Viceroy Toledo in Condocondo would create three new towns in the
early seventeenth century, carved out of Condo’s territory. Sometimes appealing
to the local archbishop, other times going to the viceroy, the highest civil offi-
cial in the Americas, commoner Andeans sought legal permission for their new
towns. With these new town foundations, indigenous social and political life was
transformed from systems of hereditary kingdoms and chiefdoms to town based
communities, with a concomitant reworking of concepts of legitimate political
leadership from rule by hereditary lords to self-​government by elected town
councils made up of commoners.11 Andeans created a sophisticated hybrid of
pre-​Conquest and Spanish political and religious ideas and practices that came
together to form the común.

From Caciques to the Común

While caciques continued to be regarded as the traditional authority in Andean
towns, by the eighteenth century, and earlier in some cases, they were being
supplanted by another set of authorities, the town council, known as the cabildo.12
Toledan ordinances describe in detail the process for electing cabildo officers,
10 The People Are King

but this did not automatically make cabildos a legitimate authority. Other long-​
term processes simultaneously undermined caciques and strengthened cabildos.
Salaries for caciques came from the tax money collected from common Indians.
Just as Spanish nobles were exempted from a head tax, so too were Andean
nobles. As paid bureaucrats of the Spanish state, caciques’ interests began to
be more closely tied to Spanish interests. These ties were not only economic.
Caciques began to take on the cultural habits of Spaniards, dressing, eating and
living like them. Caciques owned haciendas, put their daughters in convents,
and required “their Indians” to greet them as nobles, ringing church bells and
setting off fireworks when they made official visits to one of “their towns.”13
Spanish reasons for creating reducciones had been, in part, to remove
Andeans from sites of native religion. In pre-​Conquest and early post-​conquest
times, caciques led public worship at local religious shrines. This was a vital com-
ponent of office holding as pre-​Conquest relations were charged with religious
meaning.14 As Spanish efforts at forced conversion to Christianity effectively
curtailed many religious aspects of cacical activity, it also provided an avenue
for cabildo legitimacy. By the eighteenth century, cabildo and cofradía roles and
offices had become so closely linked that they were viewed as one complex hier-
archy within indigenous towns. Cabildo officers were expected to take an active
role in their town’s patron saint’s festival. Many cabildo offices had their specific
church duties outlined, from providing fronds for Palm Sunday to assisting the
priest in collecting charity donations.15 This certainly did not go unobserved by
caciques, some of whom attempted to promote their own legitimacy by listing
the saints’ celebrations that they had sponsored.16
The cabildo itself had taken on Andean shadings. Over two hundred years
of practice had made the cabildo membership larger and more flexible in
number and with a more distinctly Andean appearance. The people who were
considered cabildo members had broadened to include other town leaders: the
heads of ayllus; the captains who escorted the corvée workers to the silver mines
of Potosí; and a somewhat nebulous group of former office holders known as
principales.17
The political and religious institutions introduced by the Spanish in the six-
teenth century had by the eighteenth century become the basis for indigenous
identity conceived in terms of community-​based collectivity and sovereignty. To
belong to the “común de Indios” in the late eighteenth century, one paid taxes,
served corvée labor, worked community lands, and honored the local saints. To
be a legitimate authority for the “común de Indios” one led these activities by
serving as officer of the cabildo and cofradía. If a cacique stole tribute money
or hounded the parish priest, he could be construed as a disloyal apostate and
therefore an enemy of the común.
 Int roduc tion 11

The Age of Enlightenment and Revolution

In the two hundred years following the creation of resettlement towns, Andeans
melded pre-​Conquest ideas and practices to imposed Spanish institutions to
create the complex synthesis that underlay their ideas about community-​based
sovereignty that resided in the común. But just as the común took full shape,
around the beginning of the eighteenth century, the new Bourbon dynasty in
Spain, inspired by Enlightenment ideas, began to impose reforms that attacked
its representational form and the thesis of popular sovereignty the común had
adopted in its own vernacular. The Enlightenment is generally thought of as a
time when individualism gained ground against collectivities, private property
replaced commons, societies were secularized, and the state gained greater con-
trol over everyday life. These shifts are understood to go hand in hand with the
rise of the sovereign individual, who, gathering with others of his kind in cafes
and plazas, created not only institutions of civil society and a public sphere of de-
bate and discussion, but also new political theory to underwrite a revised under-
standing of popular sovereignty. That philosophy of classic liberalism legitimated
the displacement of monarchs by rule of “the people,” conceived as a collection
of bourgeois individuals. Of course, the Bourbon dynasts of Spain were aghast
at the anti-​monarchial sentiments of the French and American revolutionaries.
They censored revolutionary writings (to little effect) and offered a hardline
counter thesis to popular sovereignty, arguing that God placed sovereignty di-
rectly into the body of the king himself. Aiming to consolidate and centralize
power, the Bourbons ejected the “popular sovereignty” philosophers, the Jesuits,
from Spanish realms, and aimed to streamline state control over the empire’s
population of individuals through a new administrative architecture, hoping to
undercut the myriad fractious municipal repúblicas that were becoming a danger
to crown power. The sum of these reforms can be called Absolutism.
Most discussions of eighteenth-​century Enlightenment and modernity focus
on northern Europe and North America, taking the French and American
revolutions as the epicenters. But the earlier vernacular application of popular
sovereignty in the indigenous community of San Pedro de Condocondo in
1774 underscores some truths about the origins of modernity that challenge the
widely accepted view. Joining a growing chorus of revision of Anglophone and
Francophone theses on Enlightenment and modernity, this book affirms that
both came earlier and from further south, from Spain’s colonial peripheries.18
Yet, the Enlightenment and the course taken by political modernity in the
Spanish Atlantic diverged from that of northern Europe in a critical way best
explained by a difference in meaning between the English “the people” and its
ostensive Spanish equivalent, “el pueblo.” While “the people” is a plurality of
12 The People Are King

persons (and especially of “common persons”), “el pueblo” shifts in meaning be-
tween “people” and “town.” Popular sovereignty in the Spanish Atlantic world
always referred to rights vested in “el pueblo,” a “people” by virtue of residence in
a “pueblo” or town. When the people of San Pedro de Condocondo embraced
their right to popular sovereignty, it was not as sovereign individuals, but as a
sovereign town-​based community, the común.19 This particular understanding
of collective or corporate political rights, one with a long genealogy in the
Iberian Peninsula, is not only a property of the indigenous común. It continues
to define the body politic of Creole-​dominated Spanish-​speaking countries in
the Americas.20
In the eighteenth century, the Bourbon Reforms that most directly bothered
Andeans could be summed up in the term “secularization.” Serving the saints, as
a cofradía officer, was understood as serving the community. But those serving
were exempt from taxation and corvée labor, thus depriving the state of much
income. Enlightenment-​inspired reforms, with dual aims of secularizing and
bringing economic rationalism to bear, also aimed to reduce the numbers of
Andeans serving the saints. This would redirect income from church to state,
but it also undercut Andeans’ means to legitimate authority in the común.
Like the común’s killing of Llanquipacha, the late eighteenth-​ century
uprisings that followed were revolutionary uprisings of commoners against aris-
tocracy and in favor of something like municipal democracy. Seen in this manner,
the Andean revolutionary movements of the early 1780s become a grassroots
application of popular sovereignty not unlike that seen in other arenas of the
Atlantic Revolutions. Although they were creating a new public sphere of po-
litical action in their comunes, comuneros were not members of an emerging
bourgeoisie and did not employ the individualist idiom of the Enlightenment
in defining themselves or their anti-​colonial movement. Instead, echoing the
Hispanic world’s tradition of democratic revolution, they declared themselves
to be sovereign communities. Far from being considered a vanguard by later
Creole revolutionaries who fought for independence from Spain, however, the
Andean comuneros led Creoles to fear and marginalize Indians from their own
republican-​nationalist designs.

The Común
Many indigenous people across the Andes today refer to themselves as
comuneros, a term so taken for granted as indicating “peasant” or “indigenous”
status that it needs no explanation.21 But the contemporary meaning of común
or comunero came into use in the late seventeenth century and only became
widespread in the eighteenth century as commoners sought to define their
 Int roduc tion 13

political interests in ways that often conflicted with their hereditary lords. During
interrogations following her arrest in the murders of Gregorio Llanquipacha and
his brother in San Pedro de Condocondo, María Michaela, imprisoned wife of
Ignacio Rudolfo Choque, an instigator of the murders, said she owed allegiance
to the “rey común.” When asked to define the term, María hedged and pleaded
ignorance as a mere woman. Pressed by her interrogators, she replied that “it is
the ayllus together,” making explicit an Andean definition of what on the surface
would appear to be a Spanish political term.22 The term, “King common people,”
or (in my translation) “the people are king,” then reappeared in another case in
the nearby town of Challapata, where a cacique expressed fear of the rey común
because “it” had claimed the power to elect or remove caciques. The term común
or rey común had become recognized political discourse and shorthand for a po-
litical philosophy empowering common people.23
Común was the term used by colonial indigenous people themselves in their
letters, petitions, and testimonies. Despite its Spanish origins, the term was an
indigenous social construction, a feat of the imagination that named the political
entity identified with sovereignty. How did indigenous make the term their own?
Sharing etymological roots with comunidad, or community, común had been the
basis for collective political action for Spaniards since at least the fifteenth cen-
tury. Something akin to the “sovereignty of the pueblo,” it had been a rallying cry
in the constitutionalist and pro-​parliamentary Revolution of the Communities
of 1520–​1521. In the hands of colonized Andeans the term revealed a revolu-
tionary potential that terrified Spaniards and Creoles.24 This study makes this
colonial indigenous terminology visible once again.

The Común Defined

The term común had many different but related meanings in the colonial Andes.
These various meanings coincided, at least nominally, with formal, Spanish
definitions. The Diccionario de la lengua castellana (1729) offered its first defini-
tion of común as an adjective, “that which not being privately held, pertains to all,
as common goods, common pasture.” In this sense, común is roughly equivalent
to sapsi, the Quechua term referring to common lands or other common pro-
perty. Sapsi or sapçi was defined in González Holguín’s 1608 Quechua-​Spanish
dictionary in roughly the same way, as “common thing of all.” Testimony taken
in 1773 in the reducción of Santiago de Moscarí reflects this usage; townspeople
complained that the cacique had appropriated community land (“comunes”) for
his personal gain.25 While each tax payer had land assigned to him or her, other
community lands were to provide for community needs: to feed the poor, fi-
nance the local school, and pay taxes for the ill or those currently holding cabildo
14 The People Are King

status, or in service to the church.26 What becomes clear is that if caciques took
economic advantage of the common lands, they were directly attacking commu-
nity leaders, those who served the cabildo and the Church, by undermining the
community’s ability to pay the taxes of its office holders.
Común also defined the collective people of a place. In the 1791 edition of the
Diccionario de la lengua castellana, común can be “used as a noun, signifying the
entire people of whatever province, city, town or village.” This sort of “nesting”
definition where each progressively smaller group of people is known as a común
is reminiscent of modern definitions of ayllu.27 The 1608 definition of ayllu from
González Holguín, as “faction, genealogy, linage, kinship, or caste,” is less expan-
sive. But by the early eighteenth century, townspeople sometimes used común
and ayllu interchangeably. At other times, común referred to a group of related
ayllus (what Spaniards would call a parcilidad, and known by the Quechua terms,
anansaya and urinsaya), and, clearly, at other times, it referred to the entire town,
(the equivalent of the Quechua and Aymara marka).

The Común as Juridical Person

The term común seems to have been introduced initially as little more than legal
boilerplate, something that every scribe knew to include in formal petitions but
that carried little more weight than a series of “whereas,” “wherefores,” and “the
parties to the aforesaid.” Probably its multiple uses as common land, common
people, and common interest, and links to Andean terms such as sapsi and ayllu,
led común to take on specific meaning for Andeans as a person in law, or as the
collective public subject. This definition was slowly engendered by the repetitive
Spanish use of the term in legal documents that would hold great import for the
community. For example, in a 1711 boundary hearing in the Carangas province
town of San Pedro de Totora, possession of the town’s lands were given “in voice
and in name of the común of the said town.”28 At least by the 1740s, Andeans
had begun to use the term themselves in somewhat the same manner, as the col-
lective legal body of the community. Following accusations against him in 1744,
the cacique of Todos Santos de Tomave countercharged that the petition was
only “supposedly in the name of the común.”29 This of course suggests that the
boilerplate “in the name of the común” had to be backed up with some action in
order to be considered legitimate.
A 1758 report from the state’s attorney for Indians in the Spanish Creole
mining center of Oruro intimates how decisions of the común might be reached.
Beginning his report with a summary of charges made by the community of San
Pedro de Totora against their priest, including his proposal that they make ad-
ditional monetary offerings on certain feast days, the state’s attorney wrote “and
 Int roduc tion 15

to this proposal [of the priest] they responded in the body of their común that
his Majesty [the King] had ordered that they observe no such thing.”30 Although
the state’s attorney offers no further details, this wording conjures an image of a
public meeting where the común could make known its collective will. Indeed,
public meetings seem to have been precisely how the común came to its opinion.
In 1775, following a written petition in which people from Pocoata denounced
their cacique, the notoriously abusive Don Florencio Lupa, and demanded a
new one, Lupa responded that their complaints did not reflect the town as a
whole, to which they replied:

The said cacique has resorted to saying that our complaint to the royal
government was made by us alone, without the agreement of the com-
munity. This is patently false in view of the meeting of more than three
hundred native Indians who in his presence, acted on this information
and unanimously called for our own cacique.31

With this example in mind, the increasingly repetitive use of the term común
in petitions from Andeans in the last half of the eighteenth century takes on
added significance. No longer mere perfunctory wording, común was coming to
represent the will of the people in a very literal sense, and pretenders to cacique
status were noting this change. If a cacique could claim that the común agreed
with him, he regarded this as strengthening his position. In 1762 a cacique
brought a complaint against a local-​level Spanish bureaucrat claiming that his
community was being illegally assessed taxes for the deceased. The case was not
brought by him alone, because as he added, “the común of my Indians agrees.”32

Colonialism, Property, and “Race”

In English, as in Spanish, común can mean “commoner,” in contrast to aristocrats
or nobles, or it can refer to “the commons” as a form of collective property, to
which all “commoners” have guaranteed access. Sixteenth-​century Spanish
towns possessed common lands, and even the poorest “commoners” held use
rights in those common lands, by which to support themselves in some way via
agriculture or herding or the gathering of firewood or chestnuts, for example. On
the other hand, while aristocrats in Spain had access to their town’s commonhold
land, they also had privately held land. Spaniards in the Indies identified them-
selves exclusively as holders of private property, aiming to amass and transfer
that private property through inheritance so as to create and sustain lineages
akin to those of Spain’s aristocracy.
16 The People Are King

The towns into which Andeans were resettled were established completely
as inalienable commonhold properties; the people of the town owned the land
collectively. Of course, usufruct rights in common lands also seems to have
characterized “property” in pre-​Conquest times. So, when Spaniards granted
Andeans commonhold titles, they reinforced the merger of Andean ayllus and
the new town-​based repúblicas. Caciques and town councilmen were entrusted
with equitably dividing up lands within the town’s jurisdiction among its
inhabitants on a regular basis as families grew or shrank. However, by the eight-
eenth century, caciques, whose claims to office depended on being members of
aristocratic lineages, were aiming to amass private property in a manner akin
to Spaniards, often by usurping parts of the common lands belonging to the
communities they ruled.
One result of granting common land title to “Indian” communities was to
reinforce and help shape among Andeans an understanding of commoner pol-
itics that celebrated an ethics of equality, redistribution, and investment in the
well-​being of the collective and of the fields, pastures, crops, and herds on which
it depended, and that scorned any practices that held individual interests above
those of the collective. Yet another result of the Spanish granting recognition of
common land titles to the peoples resettled in new towns was to permanently
equate indigeneity both with commoner status and with commons, member-
ship in collectivities. By the late eighteenth century, when modern liberalism
began to be equated with the private-​property holding individual, “indigenous
culture” founded on commons appeared to be the essence of non-​modernity.
Commonhold property would be coupled with new “race” theory as evidence
of the inferiority of indigenous Americans. The eighteenth century was self-​
consciously the age of reason, when science replaced faith as a way to knowledge,
with an urge toward classificatory or taxonomic thinking about plants, animals,
and people. Turning sixteenth-​century “Protector of the Indians” Bartolomé de
Las Casas’ famous saying that “all mankind is one” on its head, Enlightenment
thinkers espoused a fixed racial hierarchy that enshrined “white” people at its
peak and put American natives near the bottom.33 With independence in the early
nineteenth century, Andeans would be systematically deprived of their rights
through liberal understandings of their assigned race determined in large part
through membership in comunes with commonhold, rather than private pro-
perty rights. But the común was a resilient entity that survived even those attacks.

Methodology and Scope

The People Are King is a work of ethnohistory, an Iberian Atlantic history, and
a series of microhistories. As an ethnohistory, the study of a people’s ways of
 Int roduc tion 17

understanding their own past, it draws on the ethnographic method of “thick de-
scription” and poses anthropological questions to investigate the lived histories
of indigenous people, analyzing their religious, political, and social practices for
Andean meaning and understanding of their world.34 Increasingly, scholars of
colonial Latin America such as Jorge Cañezares-​Esguerra, Karen Graubart, Jane
Mangan, Bianca Premo, and José Carlos de la Puente Luna, as well as many of
early modern Spain—​most prominently Helen Nader and Richard Kagan—​
have put their work in the context of the Iberian Atlantic realizing that it is not
possible to isolate the events, institutions, practices or people of the viceroyalties
of the New World from the Iberian Peninsula.35 This book joins that trend to
make clear that the colonial Andes cannot be understood without knowledge
of sixteenth-​century Spain, especially the contemporary ideas and philosophies
about the importance of urban life and the nature of sovereignty, while putting
the lived experience of indigenous people at the forefront. In this way, The People
Are King meets one of the challenges of microhistory to connect the local case
to global history. The microhistorical accounts told here provide a series of fine-​
grained, overlapping, interrelated, and sequential studies of towns in what were
originally the pre-​Conquest federations of Killaka and Karanqa against a back-
drop of Spanish institutions and policies.36
Within these three fields The People Are King speaks to several important schol-
arly debates. Foremost, the impact of colonialism on native peoples. Scholars
of colonial Latin America have moved beyond the simple binary of resistance
and domination, where colonized people are seen as a uniformly and heroically
resistant class, and colonizers are in agreement on policies designed to main-
tain their economic, political, and social domination.37 One particularly pow-
erful critique of the “resistance school” is that it flattens the real lives and politics
of those in “resistance,” to create an “authentic” one-​dimensional, unchanging
Indian—​what Andean scholars refer to as “lo Andino.”38 Rather than searching
for cultural continuity from the colonial past into the present, The People Are King
demonstrates how Andeans grabbed hold of the new languages of legal codes
and rights of early modernity to defend their long-​held values of mutual respon-
sibility and collective life in a manner akin to what Brian Owensby has found in
Mexico, and José Carlos de la Puente Luna has uncovered in Peru. In some sense
Andeans did resist Spanish impositions, but they did it by adopting and adapting
them, giving them new meaning and making them their own. While colonialism
is always destructive, and Amerindian reactions to the institutions, practices and
ideas introduced by Spaniards were constrained, recent scholarship has shown
that Andeans in the creole urban spaces of cities such as Lima, Cuzco or Potosí
were creative and effective in carving out spaces of action.39 The People Are King
brings rural Andeans into this debate by demonstrating how they fashioned new
identities in what might be called a process of ethnogenesis. By taking up and
18 The People Are King

adapting certain colonial policies, especially reducción, the resettlement into

Spanish style self-​governing towns with commoner-​led councils, commoner
Andeans came to challenge and ultimately replace the hereditary rule of indig-
enous nobles, forging a new identity for themselves as comuneros, members of
a república. These resignified ideas and institutions fit well with prior ideals of
mutual responsibility and collectivity.
The People Are King also intervenes in debates that are more particular to colo-
nial Latin American historiography: the impact of reducción policy, and the na-
ture of the late colonial rebellions. Colonial Spaniards almost universally judged
reducción policy to have been a failure. Studies drawing their evidence from of-
ficial reports by Spanish colonial bureaucrats have concurred, pointing out cor-
rectly that Andeans fled the new towns but drawing the erroneous conclusion
that the policy had no impact. Joining scholars such as Thomas Abercrombie,
and more recently William Hanks, Jeremy Mumford, Steve Wernke, and Marina
Zuloaga Rada (who have turned attention away from bureaucratic reports to
examine what local Andean practices tell about the impact of reducción), it
becomes clear that reducciones were neither a failure nor a success but rather a
catalyst for a complex Andean ethnogenesis producing new forms of collective
life drawing on a hybrid political/​religious hierarchy.40
My research methods have enabled close attention to this process of
ethnogenesis in a handful of places over the entire Spanish colonial era. The
evidence presented here reveals the sea change in indigenous forms of self-​
governance and collective self-​identification from the pre-​Conquest past of
leadership by aristocratic lineages of caciques to the commoner-​led councils
governing indigenous municipalities. It clearly shows that the eighteenth-​
century indigenous rebellions were as much about overthrowing indige-
nous aristocracies as seeking rights as self-​governing indigenous republics. In
doing so, The People Are King also provides the genealogy of contemporary
indigenous collectivities of the Andes, as described in depth by numerous
ethnographies.41
To understand the 1774 events in San Pedro de Condocondo, the book
examines events in other towns in the region over the long term and links the
local and the global to make sense of both. The Llanquipacha murder is a fasci-
nating case in its own right, comprising nearly two thousand pages of testimony,
letters, petitions, and legal orders, but it gains importance as a vehicle to under-
stand the changes that took place over the years that separated the imposition
of resettlement towns in the 1570s and the revolutionary moment of the 1780s.
Little about the Condo murders makes sense without an in-​depth understanding
of how the común came to exist. A group of “Indians” killing their “Indian” he-
reditary lord because he sent away their Spanish priest was incomprehensible to
 Int roduc tion 19

late eighteenth-​century Spanish bureaucrats. It defied their racialized categories,

and they were blind to the evolution of the común.
This book is framed by two key moments in the colonial transformation of
indigenous lives: the Renaissance of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth
centuries, when Spaniards forcibly resettled upwards of one and a half million
native Andeans, and the Enlightenment’s late eighteenth century, when nearly
Continent-​wide revolutions shook the colonial state. This work portrays the
impact on Andeans and Andean responses to sixteenth-​century resettlement
policies as the beginning of long-​term, social, political, and religious changes that
redefined the indigenous political community. It roots indigenous rebellions
of the eighteenth century in Renaissance understandings of república and an
Enlightenment-​from-​below indigenous appropriation of the law that together
produced a revolutionary response to Enlightenment era reforms.42 In doing so,
The People Are King contributes to a rethinking of the origins of social and po-
litical change, reconsiders the long-​term impact of colonialism and provides an
intimate portrait of how subaltern or colonized people defined and redefined
themselves and their political communities. It tracks a transition from one
kind of collectivity, the pre-​Conquest dually organized kingdoms such as the
Asanaqi—​composed of subunits called ayllus, and with a population scattered
in numerous small hamlets—​to another kind focusing on reducción towns, in
which ayllus regrouped as parts of something Spaniards called república and in-
digenous people came to call the común. Many elements of pre-​Conquest indig-
enous life were taken up in the república/​común, but the resulting hybrid was a
profoundly different kind of indigenous political form, resembling in some ways
both sixteenth-​century Castilian town life, and pre-​Columbian ways, but reduc-
ible to neither. One commonality, however, is the centrality of collective life.
The research for this study comes from over twenty archives and research
libraries in Bolivia, Argentina, Peru, Spain, and the United States including
town, regional, national, and church archives. Colonial Spaniards were exem-
plar bureaucrats who frequently sent multiple copies of documents to higher
authorities; if a document no longer exists in Peruvian or Bolivian archives, it can
frequently be found in Argentine or Spanish ones. In other cases, archives hold
unique materials or original letters composed by indigenous commoners. These
include holographic letters written by indigenous people, letters never meant for
Spanish eyes, petitions to Crown or church authorities, trial testimonies, census
materials, church inspections, tax records, baptismal records, records from in-
digenous lay religious brotherhoods, chapel foundations, records of community
chests, testimonies taken and recorded by indigenous people, lists of indige-
nous household contents, contracts signed by indigenous people to hire school
teachers, and complaints against caciques and/​or priests. This array of materials
20 The People Are King

provides a panoramic view of indigenous life and a multifaceted treatment

of their political culture, in many cases in the words of Andeans themselves.
Moreover, the abundance of documentation has made it possible to follow local
events over three centuries in a handful of related and neighboring communities,
revealing not just collectivities but the interactions of specific persons.
The people who are the subject of this book have too often been excluded
from their own history for being so radically different from colonial Spaniards
that their words could not be parsed. Rather than relying only on official reports
from Spanish bureaucrats, which generally attributed to Andeans motives
springing from their difference from Spaniards, this work gleans indigenous
meanings and reveals how contemporary participants understood the events
of their lives. It prioritizes letting them speak for themselves, sometimes by de-
tailing the contexts of their practices or acts and the kinds of futures they worked
toward and sometimes by reproducing words they spoke/​wrote to judges or
comrades in arms.
These sources yield some surprises. First, many principal actors were literate
and wrote their own “testimonies”: that is, letters and petitions. Literacy in the
Spanish language was not uncommon among people outside of the elite class
of hereditary indigenous caciques. Late sixteenth-​century Andeans purchased
books of Spanish law and manuals of instruction on how to file lawsuits. By the
seventeenth century, they were composing petitions directed to civil and polit-
ical authorities, which in some cases sought to curtail the power of the cacique
in favor of town council officials. Dozens of letters were written by rebels during
the Great Rebellion of the 1780s. The fact that all these petitions and letters were
written in Spanish might lead one to question how much of the “native” voice
can be heard in the “master’s” language.43 But literacy was not taught in indige-
nous languages in the Andes, and there was no standard orthography to draw on
with which to write those languages.
Through traces in the documentary record left by Andeans, it is possible to
glimpse the kinds of social and political entities significant to them, the varieties
of contexts for productive political and religious life, and the goals and values for
which they fought. Andeans speak through their testimony before judges at their
trials but also in litigation over local leadership positions, land, or injustices vis-
ited on them by administrative or religious authorities—​and sometimes in let-
ters of correspondence. Rather than the aristocratic hereditary elite, the focus is
on tribute-​paying commoners among native Andeans in small indigenous towns
who began to reshape colonial policy for their own purposes and who created their
own towns over the objections of local Spanish officials. Andeans were not merely
bystanders but architects of the world-​transforming events of the age of Atlantic
Revolutions and the forerunners of today’s Indianist movements in Bolivia.
 Int roduc tion 21

The book is divided into three parts that are both chronological and thematic.
Part I moves from the mid-​fifteenth century to the late sixteenth century and
examines pre-​Conquest Andean and Spanish societies then turns to the rad-
ical changes Spaniards imposed on Andeans. Chapter 1 presents an overview
of pre-​Conquest Andean society from the standpoint of the Asanaqi people of
the southern highlands who were conquered by the Inca in about 1460. This
chapter sets the stage for understanding the transformations that both Spanish
and Andean political and social organization underwent as they clashed and
came together in the colonial era. Chapter 2 examines the political and religious
ideas that Spaniards carried with them to the New World, particularly their
notions of civilization and performance of Christianity within towns defined as
republics. Chapter three looks closely at one of the most destabilizing policies
introduced by Spaniards: the uprooting of 1.5 million people and their reset-
tlement in towns based on an idealized version of those of Castile. Spaniards
did not resettle indigenous people merely to exploit them economically but, as
they understood it, to ensure that their “natural rights” would be protected as
members of “repúblicas” subject to the king. For them, it was only within mu-
nicipal social structures that civilization, and hence Christianity, could exist.44
This chapter reveals what indigenous people initially made of this resettlement
policy and of the political and religious ideas and practices they were to learn in
the new towns.
Part II explores what Andeans born into this new colonial world made of the
institutions and policies imposed on their parents and grandparents. Chapter 4
shows that Andeans both followed and modified the resettlement policies. At
the center of this is the question of indigenous agency. How can Andeans “obey”
the letter of the law and yet “resist” its impositions? Andeans followed legal
strategies, appealing to either the civil or the ecclesiastical authorities for per-
mission to create their own towns.
Spanish resettlement policy was not an end in itself but a means to achieve
evangelization and imposition of Spanish ideas of civilization. Chapter five
focuses on the role of religious practices that would make the space of the newly
created towns meaningful places for Andeans. The religious dimensions of po-
litical culture demonstrate how the kinds of civil and religious offices character-
istic of colonially founded towns became the basis through which commoner
Andeans criticized both church and state. Yet as examples of animal sacrifice
demonstrate, orthodox Spanish Catholicism was not at the center of Andean
political culture. Tracing the modern system of alternating sponsorship of reli-
gious fiestas with civil duties to the eighteenth century, this chapter shows how
participation in religious and civil offices was transformed through the use of
local, indigenous idioms into a means to legitimate authority.
22 The People Are King

Chapter 6 turns to the civil aspects of political culture that made towns mean-
ingful places and contrasts the commoner authority developed in c­ hapter 5 with
that of the hereditary caciques. Commoners objected to the Hispanization of
their caciques, but also to their aristocratic pretensions and their claims to a pre-
eminent place in an incipient racial hierarchy. At the same time, caciques tried
to preserve their authority by tapping into culturally Andean behavior, doing
things such as pouring libations, as pre-​Conquest caciques did, in order to legit-
imate their call for commoners to perform forced labor in Spanish silver mines.
Part III turns to the revolutionary outcome of over 250 years of colonialism.
Chapter seven closely narrates the murders of the Llanquipacha brothers. This
account reveals how people of Condo understood legitimate rule and tyranny
and why they were driven to remove Llanquipacha from the office of cacique by
any means. Chapter 8 examines the revolutionary moment of 1780–​1782 and
reveals the crucial role that letters written by comuneros and their circulation
among rebel towns played in generating and coordinating region-​wide uprisings.
Through a large corpus of holographic letters, it traces the evolution of the
uprising.
The book concludes by comparing the proto-​nationalist quality of comuneros’
political language and their notions of municipal self-​governance and citizenship
with those of their Creole contemporaries to demonstrate that a political philos-
ophy that could support a national public sphere was not purely an elite-​driven
goal. As Creoles’ ideas of “republics” independent of Spain evolved between
1780 and 1825, they justified their exclusion of Andeans from full participation
in national political life by attributing to them a terrifying anti-​modernity and po-
tential for violence. Perhaps Creoles unconsciously recognized that comuneros
were also poised for autonomy and nation building.45 The brutal suppression of
the revolution effectively curtailed that movement for Andeans.
In the new postcolonial nation, liberal ideas of individualism and private pro-
perty came to define modernity and the bounds of the proper political commu-
nity. Based on their communally held lands, seen as an inefficient ancient holdover
that would drag down the national economy, “Indians” were largely excluded
from political rights in the new nation of Bolivia. Across Latin America, newly
independent Creoles began policies aimed at destroying indigenous people’s
ethnic identity. As one post-​independence patriot wrote: “To expand our agri-
culture it would be necessary to hispanicize our Indians. . . . it would be very de-
sirable that the Indians be extinguished by miscegenation with the whites . . . ”46 Try
as they might, however, white elites could not extinguish the indigenous común.
The towns depicted in this book defeated efforts to crush their liberties and steal
their lands from 1825 until the revolution of 1952, in which these comunes also
played important roles. Indigenous Bolivians regained their citizenship rights
 Int roduc tion 23

only with the revolution of 1952 and gained full participation in the state, as
well as recognition of the right to self-​governance and to possession of the com-
mons, through the election of an indigenous president, Evo Morales, in 2005.
Left behind for centuries was the alternative vision of community-​based democ-
racy as a bulwark of human rights and rights of the land so deeply entangled
in the Andes with the común of persons—​and something lately recognized in
the constitution of the plurinational Bolivian state. That vision had already been
eloquently expressed by eighteenth-​century revolutionaries in the phrase “rey
común”: The people are king!
 PA RT I

INCA AND EARLY SPANISH PERU

Prior to the Spanish invasion of the lands of Peru, an ethnic group calling
themselves Incas had consolidated an empire through violence and ne-
gotiation, forging a single state that subordinated myriad distinct peoples
to a new high religion and a state-​level politics. Through a massive reset-
tlement campaign, by seizing extensive irrigable valleys, and by coercing
conquered peoples to participate in a draft that supplied laborers for im-
perial projects, they built a highway system, constructed terraced irrigated
fields for maize cultivation, and produced enormous surpluses of stored
food and clothing for Inca elites as well as workers. Monopolization of
violence, the imposition of a legal code, and their vast stores of food and
clothing produced a Pax Incaica that saw an end to the wars and famines
that had periodically devastated the peoples within the empire called
Tawantinsuyu by Inca masters.
When Spaniards invaded Tawantinsuyu, renaming it Peru, they
came for precious metals and to convert the peoples of the Andes into
Christians and subjects of the king. They also sought to become, as had
the Incas before them, a nobility who could control the labor of their new
subjects. They did not do so to produce surpluses of food and clothing
for themselves and their subjects, but to convert that labor, through the
mining of gold and silver, into a source of private, Spanish-​owned wealth.
Imposing as well a Castilian custom by which commoners paid tributes
in goods and in money to their noble lords, they used the marketplace
to accumulate further wealth, which many hoarded so as to be able to
buy nobility back in Spain. The Spanish king took a cut of this wealth
expropriated from Andeans (the royal fifth), and through the transfer to
26 The People Are King

Spain of precious metals and of new knowledge, and new modes of gov-
ernance developed in the colonial enterprise, made Spain into the wealth-
iest and most powerful empire the West had ever seen. They justified this
systematic exploitation through the twin philosophies of legitimate sov-
ereignty and God’s natural law. The Incas, they argued, had been tyrants,
and the Spaniards had come to liberate Inca subjects from tyranny and
to bring them into the light of Christianity and civilization. Discovering
that Andean peoples lived dispersed across the territory in small hamlets,
they aimed to create Spanish-​like towns in which the Indians could be
better supervised and evangelized, thus saved from the eternal damnation
to which pagans were condemned. Provision of these services justified, as
payment, the new coerced labor and tribute regime that funneled wealth
into individual Spanish hands and to the Spanish state. As a result, his-
tory has looked cynically upon both the justifications and judged the sup-
posed aims of Christianization and civilization as mere window dressing
on a violent and exploitative enterprise.
Such cynicism is warranted to the degree that the expansion of the
Spanish Empire represented the dawn of extractive global capitalism,
privileging the center while impoverishing the peripheries that supplied
its wealth. And yet, Spaniards were serious about their civilizational pro-
ject in the Americas. Though they patronized Indians as perpetual “new”
Christians, treating them legally like children of the distant father king,
Spanish attachment to the core ideas of Christianity and understandings
of civilization that focused on organized town life were deeply held. Of
course their certainty of the superiority of their own ways constituted
hubris. But their belief that civilized life required the foundation of re-
publics, self-​governing communities established in well-​organized towns,
because God had granted sovereignty to “the people” and to exercise it
was to obey God’s “natural law,” meant that they were forced to make a
serious effort at transferring these principles of governance, and the pos-
sibility of living a Christian life they enabled, to the people they called
Indians. That effort is encapsulated in the policies of reducción, the
forced resettlement of Andeans (and Mesoamericans, Caribbeans, and
Filipinos) into planned towns, their conversion to Christianity by priests
in those towns’ churches, including a host of religious rituals dedicated to
God and the saints, and the election in such towns of governing councils
called cabildos.
 Inca and Early Spanish Pe r u 27

The chapters of Part I introduce the settlement patterns, modes of gov-

ernance, and religiosity within the Inca empire, from the point of view
of the people of Asanaqi, an “ethnic group” or dual-​organized “kingdom”
that is the touchstone place of this book. It provides an overview of
Spanish modes of life, accounting for the centrality of urbanism to their
understanding of what it was to be civilized and Christian. Comparing
Inca and Spanish state forms and modes of taxation, as well as social hi-
erarchy makes it possible to understand what changed for Andeans and
what remained the same once Spaniards systematically imposed their re-
settlement and evangelization policies.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 This would benefit civilisation!
The form of Government in Morocco is the worst in the world. No officials
except the Customs Officers are paid. The consequence is that all live by
peculation, extortion, and bribery; or, in the words of a Moor describing the system,
‘We are like fishes—the big live by eating up the small.’ The population is reduced
to misery by the avarice of the Governors, and the latter, who have to send twice a
year large sums of money to satisfy the rapacity of the Ministers, are constantly
killing the geese (the farmers) to get the golden eggs. No security for life or
property, no encouragement to industry—and it is only a matter of wonder that the
whole country is not allowed to lie fallow.
The people are a fine race; but, since the days when they were ejected from
Spain and returned to Morocco to be subject to the rule of Sultans who are Pope-
Kings, they have degenerated gradually and become a degraded people.
I am described by Mr. Allen as being all-powerful. If so, the inference naturally
is that I have neglected to do my duty in requiring the Sultan and his Government
to introduce reforms and improvements.
I have never ceased for nearly forty years to preach and pray, to urge and beg.
My archives are full of notes addressed to Ministers of the Moorish Government,
with suggestions and propositions for improving commerce, introducing railways,
roads, telegraphs, mining operations, removal of restrictions on commerce, &c.,
&c. All this, however, to little purpose, for the venal advisers of the Sultan have no
interest in reforms or improvements when they do not see a direct means of filling
their own pockets. Promises are frequently made to me, but rarely fulfilled. I have
lately received promises that the prohibition on the exportation of barley and
wheat, now lying rotting in granaries, will be removed, and yet they hesitate and
delay; and so it is with everything.
Yet I may conscientiously declare that the few improvements which have been
effected in this country have been brought about through my representations and
acts.
I have worked hard of late to obtain the revision of the Treaty of Commerce (of
1856), which has been agreed to by the Sultan; but still the old story of promise,
pause, postpone, and then leave the matter alone.
I have frequently pointed out to my masters at home that if we consider it
desirable that the independence and integrity of a neutral Sovereign like the Sultan
should be upheld, so that the passage of our shipping through the Straits should
remain free in time of peace or war, it is our duty, it is the duty of all those Powers
who desire to maintain the status quo, to take a more active and decided part than
they have done hitherto in requiring the Sultan and his Ministers to introduce
reforms and improvements, and that the people of this country, who can be almost
seen from the shores of Europe, should not be allowed to remain in their present
degraded state—a disgrace to civilisation. But this is a totally different view of the
question from that of allowing France to become the mistress of the great gut of
commerce, where all our shipping must pass when bound for the East or for India,
and to say to us Ne plus ultra.

Again on June 13, 1884, Sir John returns to the subject of French
designs and British apathy:—

Papers will tell you much of passing events here, some correct, others,
especially French, full of mis-statements. Did you see the Standard of June 3?
It contains an admirable article and a letter from ‘One who Knows.’
John Bull ought to know what our insidious neighbours are about, though
singing to our Government ‘Lullaby, lullaby,’ whilst preparing the mine which will
explode when it suits their purpose to make themselves masters of the Straits and
Southern coast of the Mediterranean from Spartel to Tripoli!
You will have seen in the papers that Ordega returned in an ironclad and
demanded that the fort should salute the French flag with twenty-one guns before
his landing, and that the acting Minister for Foreign Affairs and all the authorities
should come down to the pier to meet him. ‘To hear is to obey,’ with the heavy
guns of the ‘Redoutable’ pointed at this wretched town; and all asked for was
conceded.
Yesterday a squadron of eight ships (!) arrived here; they remain, I am told, at
the disposition of Ordega.
P.S.—Just as I closed my letter the French squadron left, and I got a note to
say some arrangement has been made about protection to the Sheríf, and that the
question of frontier is deferred. It will come on, however, before long.

For the time the danger, as the following letter shows, was
averted:—

I said to a colleague the other day that man was prone to attribute to the
machinations of the devil anything that was adverse, whereas the poor devil is the
victim of his traducers; thus, I said, it is with me. Whatever goes wrong in Morocco
is attributed to that bête noire—Drummond Hay.
I know not whether you have seen another clever letter of ‘One who Knows’ in
the Standard of 30th ult.
 With reference to the last paragraph, I have to say that a great change has
come over Ordega since the hurried departure of the French squadron (ordered by
telegraph). He has altered his tone with the Moorish Government and the local
authorities, and has told the Sheríf he cannot support the tribes who seek for his
protection against the authority of the Sultan. The question of rectifying the frontier
has also been abandoned, and the most solemn assurances are given to Italy,
Spain, and England that France will not disturb the status quo, unless a state of
anarchy takes place in Morocco compelling her to interfere. That is, however, the
question. Insurrection has been prevented, and the Sultan has given orders for the
chastisement of the disaffected tribes. This system of ‘eating up’ rebels, which you
can remember in the time of the old Sultan, renders of course the Sovereign most
unpopular with his unfortunate subjects.

With reference to the calumnious article in the Gaulois to which he

had called Lord Granville’s attention, he writes from London on
October 18, 1884:—

I have just received a courteous private letter from Lord Granville, saying he
had delayed replying to my letter as he has been in communication with
Waddington; he asks to see me on Monday.

The result of the interview is given in a letter three days later:—

Lord Granville was very civil and kind.

Ferry shirked getting justice done by publishing a disclaimer. His Lordship
agreed that a question should be put in the House of Lords. He only asked that
Zouche should give him notice, and promised to reply in a manner that would be
satisfactory to me. I gave him a full dose; outpouring all that was in my heart, both
about abuse and my having been passed over in the course of my career by
juniors—being told my ‘services were too useful in Morocco to be dispensed
with’—and now, I said, ‘the public press declares that I am useless and stop the
way,’ &c.
Lord Granville looked blandly at me, now and then making encouraging
remarks, such as, ‘Your character stands too high to be affected by the attacks of
men like Monsieur Ordega, and that bankrupt fellow,’ meaning ———.

Before the subject was mentioned in the House of Lords, Her

Majesty’s Government had given proof that they did not underrate
Sir John’s integrity and good service, thereby affording him sincere
satisfaction.

‘I think you will be glad to hear,’ he writes from Ravensrock in November, 1884,
‘that I have just received a note from Lord Granville announcing that Her Majesty
has been pleased to confer upon me the G.C.M.G., “in recognition of my long and
good service.” I confess I care little to add some letters of the alphabet after my
name, but I am pleased at the discomfiture of enemies who have been plotting
against me. My French colleague will have an attack of the English malady,
“spleen.” He is now treating with these unfortunate Moors at the cannon’s mouth.
‘An ironclad is in the bay to support his demands. He seeks for revenge, on
account of the humiliation suffered by his protégé and dupe the Sheríf, who is now
treated almost as an outcast by the Moors of Tangier, and is called the Sheríf
“francés.”’

The question to which Sir John referred in his interview with Lord
Granville was asked by a personal friend in the House of Lords. It
elicited replies which completely exonerated him from all the blame
which had been cast upon him, and was made the occasion for the
strongest expressions of satisfaction with his long and arduous
services. The following passages are taken from the Times of
November 22, 1884:—

Lord Zouche asked Her Majesty’s Government whether any official denial had
been published by the French Government to an article which appeared in the
Gaulois newspaper in the spring of this year wherein the editor accused several of
the Foreign Representatives at Tangier of corrupt practices, and among them the
British Minister, Sir John Drummond Hay, stating that he (the editor) had obtained
this information from the French Minister at Tangier, M. Ordega, who was at that
time in Paris on leave of absence; and, as it would appear that, owing to the fact of
no denial having been given to those grave charges, other accusations were made
by French journals which were referred to in English journals to the effect that Sir
J. D. Hay had obstructed British enterprise and commerce, and had encouraged
the Sultan of Morocco in his policy of resistance to all reform and improvement,
whether there were any grounds for such grave charges having been put forward.
Sir John Hay had been passed over by many of his juniors, and had now been
upwards of forty years in his present post, and he and his friends thought it
incumbent upon them to have some sort of public contradiction of these most
unfounded charges and some sort of public vindication of his character.
 Earl Granville.—My Lords, I think the noble lord has correctly stated the facts of
the case. The editor of the Gaulois, it appears, accused Sir John Hay and his
colleagues of most intolerable practices, and gave M. Ordega as his authority.
Now, I am not sure that if I read such an article as this concerning myself I should
not treat it with contempt and trust to whatever character I had. But it is a different
thing when men serving their country in distant countries are thus unjustly
attacked, for, as in this case, the extract from the French paper is copied not only
into other foreign newspapers, but into English newspapers. However, after what
has occurred I thought it necessary, at the request of Sir J. D. Hay, to make an
application to M. Ferry, in courteous terms, that M. Ordega should be called upon
either to substantiate, or retract, or to say that he had not communicated the article
to the Gaulois. M. Ferry, in the first instance, said the Gaulois was perfectly wrong,
that no such report had been circulated by Ordega himself, and that he thought
that it was hardly worth while to contradict a statement made in a newspaper
which was well known to be so strongly opposed to the existing French
Government. M. Ordega was, however, applied to, and he telegraphed to Paris
entirely denying that he had communicated or inspired any such article in the
Gaulois. M. Ferry took the view that a great deal of time had elapsed, and that it
was really better not to call attention to the matter now. I have been in
correspondence with Sir J. D. Hay, and the last letter I received from him, only a
day or two ago, was to the effect that he was perfectly satisfied and that he should
trouble his head no more in the matter. I am glad to be able to add that I believe
there is no man in the diplomatic service more honourable or more energetic in the
discharge of his duties than Sir J. D. Hay. The noble lord says that Sir J. D. Hay
has been passed over for promotion; but I remember instances where persons
employed in the diplomatic service have been, to use a homely phrase, kicked
upstairs to get them out of a place where they were doing mischief instead of
good. I believe it to be exactly the contrary in the case of Sir John Drummond Hay.
He is most fit for the post he has held, and for that reason he has lost some
chances of personal advancement. I really can only repeat in the strongest way
that Sir Drummond Hay was quite justified in dismissing from his mind any
imputation made against him, and I have great pleasure in adding that a short time
ago the Queen granted him the Grand Cross of St. Michael and St. George.
The Marquis of Salisbury.—As the youngest and most recent of the foreign
secretaries the noble earl has referred to, I have very great pleasure in joining with
him in expressing the high estimation which was always entertained for Sir
Drummond Hay by his superiors. Not only was the charge against him ridiculous,
as it would have been against any representative of the Crown, but he is a man of
singular integrity and patriotism, and a more able, progressive, and intelligent
adviser does not exist in the diplomatic service. I always thought it a weak point in
our diplomatic arrangements that a class of men like Sir Drummond Hay, of whom
there are several in the service, who have special qualities for the particular post
they occupy, cannot be rewarded as they should be rewarded without detriment to
the public service, because by the rules of the service their rank cannot be
increased where they are, and because they cannot be removed from the post
they occupy without doing harm to the public service. I think Sir Drummond Hay
has been more than repaid by the universal confidence with which he is looked up
to and the very high esteem in which he has always been held. I think it is
unnecessary to vindicate any English statesman against foreign newspapers,
because their statements are, as a rule, absolutely phenomenal. I remember one
statement in a foreign newspaper which informed us that the noble duke for whose
eloquence we are waiting to-night was about to go abroad to spend the winter in
the South of France with his well-known greyhounds; and I remember another
such statement which informed us that a well-known statesman, and English Lord
Chancellor, was about to receive some high honour from the Crown for his
services as President of the Berlin Congress.
The Earl of Malmesbury and Lord Napier of Magdala also bore their testimony
to the high integrity and character of Sir Drummond Hay, and,
The Earl of Derby said that he did not know any person in any branch of the
public service more utterly incapable of such conduct as that imputed to him than
Sir Drummond Hay. He had always known him as an active and able public
servant.
RAVENSROCK
 CHAPTER XXV.

LAST YEAR OF OFFICIAL LIFE. 1885.

Early in 1885 Monsieur Ordega was recalled by the French

Government and succeeded by Monsieur Féraud. Of the new French
Minister Sir John writes on March 30:—

Féraud has arrived, and is all that he has been described—very friendly and
desirous to please, liked by every one.
I gave him a dinner, and we have had many chats. He disapproves entirely of
Ordega’s proceedings, especially of his conduct towards me and of his
contributing venomous articles to journals regarding me and my acts.
He is a first-rate Arabic scholar and even poet, a good artist, a great
archæologist, and is writing a work on Tripoli. In two affairs I have tested his
assurances of good-will, and have good grounds for being satisfied.
I told him positively that there was no reason why there should not always be a
perfect ‘accord’ between us, except on one point, viz. if either of our Governments
desired to take possession of Morocco. ‘Kick it out,’ I said, ‘into the Atlantic a
hundred miles, and then the sooner Morocco was colonised by a civilised people
the better.’

Subsequent intercourse confirmed the favourable impression. In a

later letter Sir John writes again of M. Féraud:—

I think I told you that Féraud complained the other day of inaccurate and
malevolent reports, about his doings, in local papers, and said he hoped I did not
believe them. I told him I was the last man to put any faith in newspapers; that I
had been the butt of their shafts, which, at first, had stung; but I had grown so
accustomed to abuse that now, when not held up as the author of evil, I feel it and
wonder whether I have ceased to be of any importance in the eyes of my revilers.
‘You,’ I said, ‘will soon be accustomed to this also, and find it pleasant.’ ‘Charmes,’
the contributor of Débats, who has been with Féraud to Fas, was in the room, and
had been introduced to me. Last year he wrote virulent articles against me,
inspired, I think, by Ordega. He was sitting on my right, a little behind me, so I took
an opportunity of letting go my shaft, and added, ‘Why, even leading papers in
France chose last year to publish virulent and untruthful articles about me; but, far
from my having any rancorous feeling against the writers, I am grateful to them.
They drew public attention to me and my conduct in such a manner that it was
taken up in our Senate, and my conduct and character were vindicated by the
Ministers of all parties, and a mark of Her Majesty’s approval conferred upon me. I
am grateful to my revilers in England and France.’
When leaving, I gave C. my hand, and my eye, I dare say, twinkled. C. has
lately written an article in the Débats on the policy of keeping the status quo in
Morocco and disapproving of all the late policy. Féraud evidently inspired it.

In June, 1885, he writes:—

Now I am an old man, having entered my seventieth year. How time glides by.
Next year, if I live till then, we shall be quitting this for good. . . .
Féraud is still at the Court. He has made a good name by rejecting the
trumped-up and usurious claims of protected Jews. He denounced them to the
Sultan, and complained of public notaries who, in league with claimants, had
drawn up false documents.
Though he told me and other colleagues he had no affair of importance at Fas,
we know better. He aims at obtaining what France wants by cajolery and presents.
He eschews menace and force. He is more dangerous and far more able than his
predecessor. I shall, I think, get on well with him; I cannot blame him for playing
the game which suits his country. If England had been as contiguous to Morocco
as is France, I think ere this we should have annexed this misgoverned country;
but it would never do for us that France should hold the Straits—the gut of
commerce, the passage to India and the East. It is far more likely to be injurious
than if she held the Canal. As a sentinel of the Straits, I fire my gun, as a warning,
when I know of a move to obtain that object.
An article in Débats says, with some reason, that England, in consequence of
her failures in the East, is no longer looked up to by the Moorish Government as
before, and Italy is the rising sun. There is some truth in this. . . .
Oh! I shall be so glad to be at rest next year, if I live. I am sick of this
Government and its stupid, blind policy. As I said to Torras[63], ‘What is the use of
a fair lady saying she loves you better than any one in the world, and yet, while
refusing to allow you to embrace her, she showers kisses on the man whom she
declares she detests?’ Moor shut up by the sillygism.
 His letters become at this time to an increasing degree full of
expressions showing that he was weary of the hopelessness of his
task. Thus he writes:—

Every day as the time draws nearer I sing, ‘Oh be joyful!’ I am sick of the
bother, and the dirty work of British subjects that I have to attend to. I am tired also
of writing and talking to this fossil Government, who cannot, or will not, understand
their true interests.

The same note is struck in a letter written from Ravensrock on

July 3, and September 7, 1885:—

We are well. Air here delightful, only 78° up till now, in the shade. Cholera
striding fast in a deadly march on the other continent.
Weber[64] just left. This time next year I shall have gone also, and go without a
pang, except to leave this lovely spot and the kindly peasantry who always
welcome me with bright faces and affectionate words. Civilised men are getting too
independent to be demonstrative of good-will and gratitude.

Sept. 7.
The Sultan has sent orders for the settlement of various long-pending affairs,
but nothing about the Convention of Commerce. Their last mot on this is, ‘How is it
possible that the Sultan’s treasury can be benefited by a reduction of duties on
exports?’ and, ‘If we export all that the English Minister suggests, in the revised
Tariff, the price of food will rise and the Moslem will be starved!’ These Moors are a
parcel of children; but we can hardly be surprised at their holding these absurd
views when a restrictive policy is pursued in commerce by the greatest nation in
the world.
As to the cable between this and Gibraltar, the Sultan’s advisers tell him that,
once it is laid, ‘Every day some Representative will telegraph for a ship of war!’
One does not know whether to laugh or to cry at such tomfoolery. I think, however,
jealous folk drop poison in the ear of the Sultan, and din in His Sherifian Majesty’s
ears that England has fallen from her high estate, and that she barks but can no
longer bite. The French papers in Arabic from Algeria sing this loudly.

The existence of slavery in Morocco called forth now and again

articles or letters which appeared in British journals, and in this and
the previous year the subject was much discussed in the
newspapers. At Sir John’s suggestion, all natives,—who as
employés of the officials attached to the Legation or Consulates
enjoyed British protection,—were required to liberate their slaves. He
believed, however, the form of slavery in that country to be lenient,
and though always urging on the Moorish Government the
desirability of abolishing an institution so obnoxious to modern ideas,
he foresaw difficulties that might, and did, prove insuperable in his
day. The following extracts from his letters on this topic, written at
different times, will show the attitude which he adopted towards the
question:—

We have no Slave Treaty with Morocco.

The British Government has at times called upon me for reports upon slavery. It
is of the mildest description. There is no slave trade by sea; five or six hundred
slaves are brought yearly by land, I believe. The men are bought for servants in
the houses of wealthy Moors, and the women as handmaids or servants. They are
very kindly treated, and when their masters die are given their liberty and a portion
of the estate.
With one exception, the only cases where I have been appealed to, to
intervene in behalf of slaves, have been to beg that the masters should not give
their slaves liberty! They preferred, they said, a comfortable home! Of course it is
desirable that slavery should be abolished even in Morocco; but it would be a
hopeless task to urge upon the Moorish Government the abolition of a domestic
institution, admitted by the laws of the Prophet, unless England had an opportunity
of rendering Morocco some great service, such as preventing her being attacked
by a stronger Power. Hitherto we have given her no aid but much advice in the
hour of need, and then deserted her.
When England has done as much for Morocco as she has done for Turkey and
Egypt, by preventing unjust aggressions, &c., &c., then she may hope to persuade
the Sultan to abolish slavery. Do you remember the long correspondence between
our dear father and the Sultan on the subject, which finished by His Sherifian
Majesty quoting Scripture in favour of slavery? I also have had a fling on the
subject. But slavery in Morocco exists in the mildest form. Slaves are not used for
agricultural purposes—not transported, like pigs, in vessels—and are generally the
spoilt children of the house.
I am not going to tell all this to the world, and thus appear to be defending
slavery.
 However, I hammer away at the Moors on the subject, and in my last note
hinted that if they do not seek to satisfy public opinion by abolishing the
objectionable institution, they may be finally abolished—or something to that effect.
...
The Anti-Slavery Commissioners came to me to say good-bye, thanked me for
courtesy to them, and volunteered to say, ‘You are much belied, Sir John, but we
have taken care to sift for truth and shall make it known.’
The story about the Jewess who was flogged last year by the Governor of Dar-
el-Baida, in the presence of the native employed as British Interpreter, is most
exaggerated. I dismissed the Interpreter as soon as I heard he had been present
at the flogging of a woman.
Esther is a pretty girl of a dissolute character. The sons of the Interpreter had
been wasting their father’s patrimony on her, and when the old father remonstrated
with his sons, caught with Esther, one of them fired a pistol at him, so the
Interpreter rushed off to the Governor to demand the arrest and punishment of the
woman and of his sons. The Governor arrested and flogged all three, in
accordance with the law of this country, but there was no brutal punishment of the
girl. What nonsense to talk about the Interpreter having left without giving
compensation! Who was to give it, and who receive it? The Governor did his duty
according to their tyrannical law. The Interpreter did not punish the woman or his
sons; it was the Governor; and the Interpreter got dismissed by me from his
employment, a very severe mode of showing my disapproval of his being present
at the flogging of a woman. Subsequently I got the Sultan to abolish the flogging of
women by Governors for immorality, and to ordain that it shall be inflicted by a
Kadi only. Now a Kadi cannot order a woman to be flogged for adultery unless six
honourable men of spotless character declare they witnessed her misdeed! So no
woman will henceforward be flogged in Morocco. This I obtained in black and
white, and Esther got a warming with a beneficial result to all females of her class.
Féraud is to join the German Minister and me in negotiation. He is one of the
best Frenchmen I ever had to deal with. I expect the Sultan will kick hard against
the reduction of the Tariff.

Another subject with which Sir John was much occupied during
the closing years of his residence at Tangier was a scheme of prison
reform and the restriction of the period of incarceration for debt.
Writing on this point in March, 1886, he says:—

As to prisons, they are no doubt very bad; and so, Mrs. Fry tells us, were ours
fifty years ago. I obtained an order from the Sultan for cleaning them, and for
bread for those who have no means to buy food; but such orders, though given, if
they entail any expense, are soon disregarded. At Tangier I send a soldier of this
Legation now and then to inspect the bread. The quality and quantity diminish, and
the profits go into the pocket of the person in charge, so I have a constant battle
with the authorities.
Unless the whole administration of the Government were reformed, it is a
hopeless task trying to sweep this Augean stable.
English humanitarians are shocked to find no beds provided for prisoners. They
do not bear in mind that the poorer classes can always take up their bed and walk
—their bed, i.e. a rug, or piece of mat. They say how horrid it is that the prisoners
should have fetters. At Tetuan the fetters were removed; one hundred and fifty
prisoners rushed to the door, knocked over the guards, and fled into the
mountains. This has often occurred when prisoners are free of fetters.
I have taken steps to put a stop to the arrest and imprisonment of debtors of
British subjects without trial. Great cruelties have been practised upon debtors at
the demand of the Foreign Representatives, often for claims that are either
fraudulent or unjust. There is an outcry against me by British creditors because I
do not back the Government in extorting money from wretched debtors, too often
the victims of usurious Christians and Jews. I have just sent in a report to the
Government on this subject.
The Jews are certainly an oppressed race, but many of those who have
obtained protection conduct themselves in such an arrogant manner, and are guilty
of such infamous proceedings in forging false documents about debts of Moors, or
in putting forward preposterous claims based upon the grossest usury, that the
Mohammedans are exasperated, and some day, when a revolution takes place or
the Sultan dies, there will be a massacre and pillage of Jews in the interior.
When the chief Jews of Fas requested Féraud, during his mission, to obtain for
them a grant of ground to add to the Mellah[65], they especially requested that
protected Jews should not be allowed to inhabit the new quarter, as they said they
expected some day an onslaught of the Mohammedans on these persons, and
they wished to be separated from them. Féraud told me this.

The revision of the Commercial Treaty of 1856 might, perhaps,

have been forced upon the Moorish Government by the united
Representatives of the Foreign Powers. But, though on this point the
various Ministers joined hands, the hope entertained by Sir John that
a Convention might be framed which would abolish the system of
irregular protection was not realised. Under the terms of the
Convention of 1882, protection is still afforded to the numerous
agents of European traders and agriculturists, who therefore are not
immediately amenable to the jurisdiction of the Moorish authorities.
On this point Sir John had been defeated by the action of his
colleagues. But the wisdom of his proposals was abundantly justified
by the course which was taken by the negotiations for a new
Commercial Treaty in 1886. On the advantages of revising the
Commercial Code of 1856 all the Representatives of Foreign Powers
were agreed, and made common cause together. But their efforts
resulted in failure, and this failure was principally due to their
previous refusal to surrender or restrict their privileges of protection.
The Moorish Government showed a natural reluctance to encourage
European trade by an improved treaty, fearing that a greater influx of
European merchants and agriculturists would only multiply the
number of irregularly protected Moorish subjects as agents, and
remove more natives from the direct control of the Moorish
authorities.
Though Sir John might reasonably derive some satisfaction from
this practical proof of the wisdom of his advice to his colleagues, his
failure to obtain a revision of the Commercial Treaty deepened his
sense of the impossibility of reforming the Moorish Government. He
was weary of the hopeless struggle which he had carried on for more
than forty years. In spite of his personal regret at severing his
connection with Morocco, he longed to throw off the official harness
under which he had so often chafed. His letters in the summer of
1886 are filled with expressions of his delight at his freedom:—

July 2, 1886. Eve of departure. The Jews have sent a deputation and address.
Moors pour in with lamentations. Torras weeps in a letter. Even British subjects join
in the wail, whilst I continue to sing, ‘O be joyful.’
Alas! dinners and lunches are the disorder of the day; and speeches, which
being pathetic about our departure, choke me and prevent a fitting response.
July 4, 1886. Here I am, with my harness off, kicking my heels like an old horse
turned out to grass. So glad to send dispatches and letters to my address to the
Chargé d’Affaires.
 I had a very flattering letter from Lord Rosebery’s private secretary, Villiers, to
say that his Lordship, in ‘recognition of my long and distinguished services,’ will
meet my wishes, &c., &c. . . .
We have been fêted successively by the diplomats here, and speeches were
made laudatory of me. In a circular, each vied in saying flattering things, such as
that I had been looked up to for my experience and clear-headedness as the
guide, &c. of the Diplomatic Corps.
We are on the look out for the s.s. Mogador. I think I told you the Forwood
Company have placed her at my disposal. . . .

Disgusted at the last proof of Moorish apathy and obstinacy, Sir

John declined to pay a formal visit of farewell to the Moorish Court,
and the Sultan’s Prime Minister addressed him a valedictory letter on
behalf of himself and his colleagues in office, a translation of which is
subjoined as a curious specimen of Oriental phraseology:—

Praise be to God!
The beloved and judicious Counsellor, who strives to promote good relations
between the two friendly Sovereigns, the Minister of the exalted Queen of Great
Britain and Empress of India, in the dominions of Morocco.
We continue to make inquiries regarding you and regarding your condition, and
we trust that you may always be prosperous.
Which premised, we have received your letter in which you inform us that, your
term of office having expired, you are about to quit this country, and you express
your regret that you are unable to have an audience of His Majesty, exalted by
God, in order to take leave of His Sherifian Majesty, and express your gratitude for
the marks of good-will, confidence, and friendship that His Majesty has shown
towards you, and you observe that you have served for forty years in these happy
dominions, and that our Lord and Master, the grandsire of our present Lord and
Master (assisted by God), and our Master the sire of His Majesty (may God
sanctify them both), bestowed on you their confidence, friendship, and trust, and
that our Lord and Master (may God assist him) has likewise held you in the same
regard, and that the friendship between the two Governments has remained in the
same state as formerly, it has neither altered nor been disturbed; and that you will
never grow weak in your devotion to the welfare of His Majesty and of his subjects,
for you are convinced of the friendship of His Majesty and of his subjects towards
you: you request us also to bid farewell in your name to the Uzirs and chief officers
of the Sherifian Court, whom you name, and you further state that, should God
prolong your life, you will return to this country after the lapse of a year, and will
reside here for a time during the winter months, and that, should it meet with Her
Majesty’s approval and your Government grant its consent, you would then visit
the Court in a private capacity with the view of taking leave in person of His
Majesty, exalted by God.
I have laid your letter before our Lord the Sultan, and His Majesty has taken
into consideration all you state in it, and (may God render him powerful) has
commanded me to reply to it and to state that your departure from these blessed
dominions causes great grief and sorrow, as it was sure to do, for you are one of
the wise and judicious persons of your illustrious Government, who have from
ancient times mediated between them and the Sherifian Government with
friendship, sincerity, and consideration, as is known to all, and about which there
can be no dispute, and which at all times has been continuously renewed, proved,
and confirmed by the strength and power of God. And the fact that your exalted
Queen selected a sagacious person like yourself, of excellent social qualities,
pleasant to have relations with, and seeking to do good, for service in this country
for so long a time, is a proof of her sincere friendship and of her desire to promote
good feeling and to strengthen the bonds of union between the two friendly
Sovereigns, and is a sign whereby is known Her Majesty’s extreme judiciousness,
wisdom, and judgment; for a person gives proof of his judgment and condition by
one of these things, viz. his envoy, his letter, or his present. His Sherifian Majesty
(may God render him powerful) has commanded me to convey the expression of
his sincere thanks and best acknowledgments to your beloved Queen, and to
yourself also, O friend, and invoked on Her Majesty an increase of power,
greatness, dignity, and grandeur; and on you, blessings on yourself, on your family,
children, relatives, and posterity.
I am to add that what you state regarding the confidence that was reposed in
you by our Lord and Master, His Sherifian Majesty’s sire (may God sanctify him), is
true and well known to every one, and His Sherifian Majesty (may God render him
powerful) likewise reposes confidence in you and regards you as a sincere friend,
and that your remark that the friendship between the two Governments has
undergone no change during the term of your office is also true, for the friendship
between the two Governments is the result of your services, verifying the opinion
held of you by your illustrious Government, the soundness of their judgment and
the accuracy of their discernment regarding yourself, and it (the friendship) has
through your assistance increased in purity, constancy and growth, in love and
affection, in word and deed. And as to what you say that you will not grow weak in
your devotion to His Sherifian Majesty and to his subjects, this is in accordance
with the opinion formed of you, and is what is confidently expected of you, for such
is the disposition of persons of a friendly and affectionate character, whether they
be near or far.
 I have taken leave in your name of the Uzirs and officers of the Sherifian Court
whom you mentioned, and they all reciprocated your affection and gave
expression to it, and praised you, and invoked blessings on you, and were not
sparing in their expressions of sorrow and grief at your departure, and recited the
lines of the ancient poet:—
‘Though severed in body we suffer no hurt; for our hearts are united, welded by
pure love.’
With regard to your statement that if God prolongs your life, and it is agreeable
to His Sherifian Majesty, you will visit the Sherifian Court (exalted by God), and
that, should your Government approve, you would come with the object you
mention, our Lord (may God make him glorious) has commanded me to reply that
he prays your life may be prolonged by the power of God, and that you may
continue in happiness and health, leading an agreeable life; and if your
Government sanction your coming with this object, you are welcome, and such
sanction will be agreeable to His Sherifian Majesty (may God assist him), for it
(your Government) desires for you and for His Sherifian Majesty only what is good,
and you seek only to promote the welfare of them both, and how indeed could your
Government refuse to grant its sanction for what is beneficial? Our friendship for
you is everlasting, and its freshness will never fade day or night. May God be
gracious on the leave-taking, and not forbid the meeting.
Finished the last day of Ramadan, 1303 (July 3, 1886).
Mohammed Mefadal Ben Mohammed Gharrit.

On his retirement, Her Majesty was pleased to make Sir John a

Privy Councillor, and, though no longer holding a responsible post,
he was constantly appealed to on Morocco affairs by the British
Government.

‘The Foreign Office,’ he writes, in December, 1886, to his daughter, Mrs.

Brooks, ‘continue to send me dispatches about Morocco to be reported on, and,
when I make suggestions as to actions, they are adopted. This is pleasing to me,
and Government, though they rather bother me with their consultations, flatter me
by their continued confidence in my counsels.’

The Emperor of Austria sent Sir John his portrait set in brilliants
on the lid of a golden casket or snuff-box, and by special permission
of Her Majesty he was allowed to accept the order of the Grand
Cross of the Danebrog from the King of Denmark—for whom as for
Austria he had so long acted as Agent in Morocco. The Danish order
was the only one he was permitted to accept of the many foreign
decorations bestowed on him during his long career.

Until the end of Sir John’s life, it may be added, his name and
personal influence retained their ascendency over the natives, as will
be seen from such passages as the three following extracts from
some of his letters, written from Ravensrock in 1891 and 1892:—

The Basha, Hadj Mohammed Ben Abd-el-Sadek, called to make known to me

an order he had received from the Sultan to tell me that His Sherifian Majesty
looked upon me as a true friend of himself and of the people of this country, and
the Basha said he was directed, should any serious question arise, to ask for my
advice, as His Sherifian Majesty felt persuaded that I would always be actuated by
feelings of justice and friendship in giving counsels, as in the time of his sire and
grandsire.
I informed the Basha that I had withdrawn from intervention in official affairs,
and that some of the Foreign Representatives might be disposed to resent such
interference, even if my counsels happened to be beneficial to them in bringing
about settlements of vexatious questions.
The Spaniards are making lime at the caves of Ashkar, and live there. The
caves are Government property, and the stone has been used for making mill-
stones for two thousand years. The poor villagers of Medióna and Jebíla
complained to me, saying that they are afraid some day that mountaineers who
visit Ashkar to buy mill-stones may kill or rob these Spaniards, and then an
indemnity will be demanded by the Spanish Government, and they (the villagers)
will be thrown into prison. (I told the villagers to complain to the Basha.) . . .

Or again, in January, 1892:—

The ‘Thunderer’ remains here, as the mountaineers belonging to the Tangier

province have revolted against the Basha, and troubles are expected. I think the
Sultan will remove the Basha, who is unfit to govern. Happen what may, I and
mine are quite safe, for the Moors on mountains and plains look upon me as their
friend; and so indeed have I been. I remained during the Spanish war, when every
Christian and Jew bolted, and no barbarian harmed me or mine. . . .

Or, once more, the following written in February, 1892:—

 When you arrive, all will be settled with the tribes. The Fahs are coming in with
presents of oxen, &c. Jebála follow. The new Basha, a good fellow, has written me
a letter, received yesterday, to say he is coming up here to pay me a visit as soon
as all the tribes have come in (and looks upon me as Baba[66]). The fact is, I was
appealed to by the tribes, &c. whether they should accept him, as he is a relative
of the late Basha. I said certainly—and told them to come. Ships of war are
leaving. All’s well that ends well.
CHAPTER XXVI.

OUT OF HARNESS.