Empires for Peace: Denis Veiras’s Borrowings from Garcilaso de la Vega

What is it about?

Writing The History of the Sevarambians in the 1670s, the Huguenot Denis Veiras borrowed many ideas from Garcilaso de la Vega, also known as El Inca, whose Royal Commentaries of the Incas was published in 1609. Both works describe the history of an empire and justify it on the ground that it brought peace and unity. While Garcilaso’s book purported to be a history, his selection of facts reflected his goal of improving the treatment of the Incas by the Spanish. Veiras’s story also claimed to be a history, but it was transparently a fiction, even to the point of lifting many elements from Garcilaso’s book. What both works equally emphasized was that empires could aim at, and could be justified by, the benefits they provided their subjects. Both tell stories of benevolent and paternalistic rulers who founded nearly ideal societies in the countries they conquered. These were models of empire for peace and unity rather than merely promoting toleration of differences or concord among differing parties. Veiras’s utopia thus offers an instructive case study of the effects of cross-cultural borrowings of literary and political ideas.

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