Oldal 41 [41]
FRANCISCO QUIROZ CHUECA
thought), which increasingly had in the Spanish tradition a central theme
of their interests. It is true that the historical view of Herrera would have
to wait for the next century to reach acceptance and to be developed by
Peruvian Hispanist historians, but already in the nineteenth century the
colonial history was vindicated after suffering the inclemencies of ideological
battles during the separatist war (1820-1826). Historians such as Manuel
de Odriozola, Manuel de Mendiburu, Manuel Atanasio Fuentes, Sebastian
Lorente, José Toribio Polo and writers such as Ricardo Palma, would have the
colonial period as a very important and positive part of Peruvian history.!°
NATIONALIST HISTORIOGRAPHY
The flourishing of nationalist historiography in Europe had echoes in Peru.
Indeed, in the second half of the nineteenth century, two versions emerge
that can be considered as nationalist and linked to the construction of the
nation-state. Sebastian Lorente and Mariano Felipe Paz Soldän gave — each
one on their side — an overview of the history of Peru in structured narratives.
Both aimed to present the historical trajectory of the country to show its
current achievements as a civilized country in the context of nineteenth¬
century Western modernity. But their proposals differed substantially from
each other.
Sebastian Lorente was actually the author of a new paradigm in Peruvian
historiography, an integrating vision of the history of the country. In his
essays of 1866 and 1879, Lorente made a vindicating history, harmonizing
different versions to have a patriotic and nationalist narrative, a history that
was neither Cusco-centrist nor Lima-centrist in the strict sense. However,
Lorente worked out a conciliatory version of local and Creole traditions that
included the Spanish legacy as an important part of the Peruvian national
identity.
However, his more important contributions were related to the role Indians
should play in the new nation. Lorente vindicated the legacy of native peoples
of the Andes using the then new studies by Mariano de Rivero and the Swiss
Johann Jakob von Tschudi on the pre-Inca and Inca periods to consider them
as constitutive stages of the Peruvian nationality. In 1841 Rivero published his
Antigtiedades peruanas and ten years later Tschudi reissued it in Vienna with
his own contributions. As a matter of fact, Lorente’s position was inclusive
but not egalitarian. Lorente found in ancient history the links that he felt
could help in the task of “civilizing” the native population so that they could
10 See Joseph Dager: Historiografta y naciôn en el Per del siglo XIX, Lima, Fondo Editorial de
la Pontificia Universidad Catdlica del Pert, 2009; and Francisco Quiroz, Romanticismo y
nacionalismo en la historiografia peruana del siglo XIX, Silex, 7, 1, 2017, 15-48.
* 40 +