Description: Brooke Larson's interpretive analysis of the history of Andean peasants reveals the challenges of nation making in the republics of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia during the volatile nineteenth century. Nowhere in Latin America were postcolonial transitions more turbulent than in the Andes, where communal indigenous roots grew deep and where the "Indian problem" seemed so discouraging to liberalizing states. The analysis raises broader issues about the interplay of liberalism, racism, and ethnicity in the formation of exclusionary "republics without citizens" over the nineteenth century.
Review Quotes: "This masterful book is an expansion of Larson's important extended essay on nineteenth-century indigenes in the Andes...Larson has a commanding knowledge of the monographic literature about Andean indigenes." Journal of Interdisciplinary History Frank Safford, Northwestern University