Irish, British and Peruvian History

A British/Irish - Peruvian History
(This is a sequel to Seventy-Five Years of the “Britanico”: Celebrating with a Contemporary View of Pre-Columbian Textiles). On June 16 the Peruvian Times published an article Seventy-Five Years of the “Britanico”: Celebrating with a Contemporary View of Pre-Columbian Textiles.Textiles were seen as one of the sectors which had strong links with Britain – especially in the south of Peru. There were other links of course and to complement the anniversary this article sketches a brief outline of British/Irish Peruvian and Peruvian British/Irish history focusing on “those parts of time and space when and where these histories overlapped”.

Changing perspectives
In attempting a history of Britain and Peru, the last five years' economic record of continuous growth in Peru and the sluggish or “double dip” performance of the British and Irish economies have served to remind us of the changing fortunes – in world terms – of nation states.

The label on the can
The geographical entity Peru has varied over the centuries. In the early colonial period the Viceroyalty of Peru comprised virtually the whole of hispanic South America, as did the viceroyalty of New Spain (Mexico) for Hispanic North America. Peru briefly reunited with former Upper Peru / Bolivia during the Confederation (1836-39). Its department of Tarapaca was annexed to Chile following the War of the Pacific. The label Britain and British (sometimes translated as inglés or inglesa) has been also subject to changing definitions. In particular historical protagonists with Irish roots often got labelled British.

The historiographical debate
In Peru during the early Republican period historians had been more concerned with evaluating the legacy of Spanish rule and with the issue as to what extent Peru itself had participated in its own liberation (or simply resigned itself to the pincer movement of Bolivar's forces from the north and those of San Martin from the south). Analysis of the war with Chile (1879 to 1883) has (understandably) produced one of the longest-running debates amongst historians, who subjected Britain's role in the war to critical gaze. A milestone in Peruvian historiography occurred with the publication of Jorge Basadre's History of the Republic, a chronicle noted not only for its thoroughness and length but also for occasional chapters on social and educational topics. However history was still being written essentially by Euro-Peruvians (criollos) and little attention was given to the pre-hispanic period unless under the label of archaeology and “pre-history”. Exceptions were the “indigenista” writers who in an attempt to redress the balance, exalted the Inca period and promoted a quasi-romantic image of the pre-European past. The actual contemporary ninety percent non-criollo population hardly scored a mention. To an extent the emergence of a “nueva historia” from the late 1960's has helped to focus more on the “subaltern” sectors of the population. The “new” historians might have had a French rather than Anglo-Saxon education and have brought additional perspectives or set of tools – say those of sociology (Manrique) or photography (Chambi). However much local Andean history-telling remained in the hands of the anthropologists. In turn the “nueva historia” has been challenged by a more eclectic and heterogenous tendency amongst younger historians who reject the unintentional “victimisation” of the Andean, Afro-Peruvian and Amerindian. Digital media also permit a wider story to be told. So few books have been published on specifically British & Irish – Peruvian history that it is difficult to generalise. In Ireland and the United Kingdom little (in the form of books) so far has been produced on the history of the Peruvian-British and Peruvian-Irish. However there is a growing output of scholarship regarding Peruvian history and that with a British connection. In that we can distinguish several (NNME) groupings (1) the work of nineteenth century writers such as Markham (2) the increasing interest of historians who may have started out as Hispanists and then specialised as Peruvianists (3) the first graduates trained as Latin Americanists / Peruvianists (doctorates on Peruvian themes) and the emergence of the Parry centres (4) the dependency and neo-structuralist schools (5) Peruvians who within the last five years or so have obtained posts in senior universities in Britain and Ireland. A high water-mark of (4) was a debate which took place between Platt and Frank at the annual conference of the Society for Latin American Studies in April 1980. Key works which represent the output of UK and Irish scholars [a flavour which can be distinguished from that of France and (less so) from that of the U.S.] include Thorp, Fisher, Miller. ..

In the beginning
From the “big picture perspective” on Peruvian History the old idea that Peru was a late starter, that its first cities were established well after those of, for example, Mesopotamia (and others in the fertile crescent) has had to be reassessed in the light of more recent research (see link Caral). This leaves us with a paradox. The big-picture historians maintained that the early development of the area which is now Peru would have been slowed down by the wiping out of large animals (possible future “Peruvian” horses, cows, oxen), by the late arrival of humans on the scene (though estimates are getting earlier) and the north-south orientation of the Americas (which made seed transfer more difficult). Small farms or “vegetable gardens” had begun to complement hunting around ten thousand years ago. First the pacae, the pallar (broad bean) and the chili were domesticated. Above all, Peru’s extra resource was that of the sea so that by 3500 BC fishing allied with agriculture were producing sufficient surplus (spare capacity) to permit the construction of massive temple complexes. This relative abundance also allowed early Peruvians to “compensate” for the comparative advantage that cities in Eurasia were enjoying: ceramics, horses and carts (and thus the wheel) and the beginnings of writing. In Peru around 3500 BC humans were starting to live in towns, to build monumental religious sites, to specialize in trade and to form hierarchical (classes and castes) societies. Ditto (there was a similar development) for that part of Asia called the fertile crescent centred on Mesopotamia. However Britain was on the far margins of that development and in effect beyond it. Stonehenge was 1000 years later than Caral and the intensive clusters of early towns and religious sites in the surrounding Norte Chico area. Compared to Britain and Ireland, Peru had been blessed and cursed with a headstart. This is the reverse of the view just fifteen years ago which was that Peru had been a late starter – see below. By the first millennium of our era it was enjoying something of a golden era – now referred to as the Classic period (0 to 500 AD) - with the flowering of the Moche culture to the north, the early-Lima culture to the centre and the Nasca to the south. However it had achieved this without the benefit of the horse and in-scribable writing systems. On the other hand Britain had been during much of that period a remote colony of the Roman Empire.

Early contact?
There was of course no contact that we know of between Britain & Ireland and Peru in the periods up to and including the Inca (to 1532). Thor Hyerdahl had attempted to prove the feasibility of early transcontinental contact through the Ra and Kon-tiki expeditions (with Egypt and Polynesia). And suggestions that “Atlantis” lay in the Upper Peruvian highlands - in the Titicaca basin or the Bolivian salt flats – were taken sufficiently seriously to warrant a few column inches in New Scientist. And the jury is still out concerning the proposition that China “knew about” the Americas prior to 1492.

The first empires
Towards the end of the Classic period in Peru, political states had formed to the extent that two of them, Tiawanaku and Wari —probably in alliance and enjoying advances in metal technology (tin-bronze), food production and storage, political organization, etc— were able to impose economic control and cultural hegemony over substantial parts of what today are areas of Peru, Bolivia and N. Chile. Arguably by 600 AD there are the makings of the first “empire.” So with a certain degree of hesitation we label the period up to about 500 / 700 “Before Empire.” Three empires then follow in rough succession: Wari-Tiawanaku to 1100, Inca 1200 to 1532/70 and Spanish from 1532 to 1821/5. It is argued here that Britain benefited from “Peru” and the resources of the Americas from a much earlier date than previously supposed - from before the Bourbon reforms of the Spanish imperial system.

Peru's and the America's gift to Britain and Europe.

In 1421 a Chinese fleet came close to encountering the Americas. Had they done so and had the “existence” of the Americas had the remarkable effect on China, Korea and Japan that it came to have on Britain and Western Europe, then with some probability South East Asia would have become the crucible of the first industrial revolution, (and of democracy* and the enshrinement of personal freedoms*). Without the “New World” Britain would have remained for much longer an island in a backwater on the global map.

Britain, France, Holland, Spain and Portugal - being the littoral states (those on the edge of Europe facing the Americas) - were to benefit from their geographical position, sometimes in quite different ways. Britain, in particular, was transformed. The opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics showed this change from an [unmodernised] green and pleasant land to an industrial powerhouse. At that point with much of the world's population watching on their TV screens it would have been a courtesy to say “thank-you, World” and especially “thank-you, the Americas”.

Thank you for what? Well, in the first instance, for being there, opposite Ireland and Britain across the Atlantic. Had continental drift some millions of years ago been more forceful and the Americas “floated” a tad nearer towards Asia then – in the fifteenth century - the Ming fleets of China might well have “discovered” and perhaps settled [for example] Peru a good hundred years before the arrival of Pizarro and the Spanish in 1532. America would then have been called something entirely different – perhaps Mings-land – and there would have been a score of other what-ifs. Pointless speculation for the historian perhaps. In the event nature [note: and the closing-in of China under a new dynasty] “gave” the Americas to Western Europe and in particular to Britain.

Britain seems to have been the greatest beneficiary by far. Coincidentally as Pizarro was taking over the lands of the Inca in the name of the Catholic church and the Spanish crown, the same church was losing its territories in England as Henry VIII carried out the greatest [religious and] land reform programme in Europe. Known as the dissolution of the monasteries it provided the necessary conditions for the (eventual) emergence of both an entrepreneurial aristocracy and a yeoman-class of inventors, the ensuing agrarian revolution, precursor of the better known industrial revolution starting if you like with the invention of the steam engine in 1690. Moreover it set England up in deadly competition with “Papist” Spain. The Americas, including the Caribbean, was to provide the playing field on which this competition was to be played out: Catholic Spanish colonies versus those which were mainly Protestant and Anglophone.

Note
[If Philip II – Hapsburg Emperor of Peru – were also, through marriage, King of England then Peru would or could have been seen as a joint dependency of Spain - together of course with the Netherlands of Holland and (then) parts of Belgium and the remainder of the Hispanic Empire.]

Next
What Peru and the Americas did for Britain. Partly because many of the histories seem to stress “what Britain including Ireland in the nineteenth century did to and for Peru”, we start the next part with the reverse proposition. Summary of the main points to be considered: (1) Britain above all was changed because the Americas and Peru “were there” - and not off the coast of Asia - and cultural and economic development had reached a conjuncture in Shakespearean and Elizabethan England such that it might benefit; (2) Forming a playing field for Britain v. Europe; (3) A vision for the thinkers of the Enlightenment: Voltaire's Candide and the Mozartian opera The Cherokees; (4) Gold and silver extracted from Peru fostered a demand (by Spain) for early industrial products from e.g. Britain and France; (5) Profits from the transatlantic slave trade kick-started investment in the industrial revolution in Britain; (6) A place for settlement for surplus population and a safe-haven for religious and political dissenters; (7) A source of cheap raw materials (in addition to gold and silver) especially guano (which halted the declining productivity of British agriculture) and alpaca wool; (8) An outlet for surplus capital; (9) A market for new industrial products; (10) An “overseas prison” for political and other prisoners (11) A test-bed for the “imperialism of free-trade”; (12) The Thirty Years War, The War of the Spanish Succession (Queen Ann's War), the Seven Years War (French and Indian Wars) could be seen as part of the struggle between Catholic and Protestant Europe and directly or indirectly for hegemony in the Americas.