The book explores the intellectual and literary history of Spanish colonial South America, analyzing the writings of chroniclers, explorers, and ecclesiastics over a period of two and a half centuries. Bernard Moses investigates the primary sources of colonial society, examining social currents, popular sentiments, and contemporary perspectives that official laws failed to capture entirely. The narrative covers the establishment of Spanish rule, the complex administrative agencies directed from the mother country, and the severe restrictions placed upon the importation and publication of books by the Crown and the Inquisition. The text details the eyewitness accounts of the conquest of Peru by participants such as Francisco de Xerés and Pedro Sancho, the sharp moral debates over the treatment of indigenous populations initiated by figures like Bartolomé de las Casas, and the vast geographical and historical compilations of Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo and José de Acosta.
Major attention is devoted to the chroniclers of the Inca empire, including the unique cultural perspective of Garcilaso de la Vega and the critical inquiries of Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa and Polo de Ondegardo. The narrative extends through the turbulent civil wars of the conquistadores, the literary echoes of the Araucanian wars in Chile immortalized by Alonso de Ercilla and his imitators, and the metrical chronicles of New Granada and the Río de la Plata penned by Juan de Castellanos and Martín del Barco Centenera. Throughout the volume, Moses demonstrates how the literature of each epoch reflects the vision of contemporary witnesses, operating under the dual pressures of royal autocracy and ecclesiastical tradition.
