Mercedarian friar Martín de Murúa’s General History of Peru (Historia General del Piru, 1616) is one of the most significant Spanish chronicles of Inca history and Peru’s early colonial period yet to be published in English. Written over several decades and approved by King Philip III for publication, Murúa’s magnificent manuscript disappeared from public view for nearly 350 years until its publication in 1964. Here, translators Brian S. Bauer, Eliana Gamarra C., and Andrea Gonzales Lombardi present the first English translation of Book 1 of Murúa’s comprehensive three-part work.
 
Book 1 covers both the history of the Inca Empire and the first forty years of the Spanish occupation, up to and including the fall of Vilcabamba in 1572. While the J. Paul Getty Museum produced a digital facsimile of Murúa’s full Historia in 2008, it remained underused and, until now, untranslated. This translation revitalizes the momentous early volume with an introduction offering a window into Murúa’s life and the writing of his Historia, and extensive footnotes that provide the scholarly context of Murúa’s work.
 
This edition of The General History of Peru: Book 1 provides long-awaited access to Murúa’s contribution to Indigenous Andean history and early colonial Peru. The book is valuable for English-speaking students and scholars of pre-Hispanic Andean history, especially those interested in the ancient Andean world and colonial Peru’s literary production.
 

Brian S. Bauer is professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois Chicago. He received his PhD from the University of Chicago. He has published numerous books on Andean prehistory, including Voices from Vilcabamba, and is particularly well known for his work on the Incas.

Andrea Gonzáles Lombardi is a PhD student at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú and teaches at the Universidad Privada Antenor Orrego in Piura, Perú. She earned her MA from the University of Illinois Chicago, and her work focuses on the early contact between local groups and the Spanish empire in the Northern Andes during the sixteenth century.
 
Eliana Gamarra C. received her licenciatura in archaeology from the Universidad Nacional de San Antonio Abad del Cusco and is pursuing a master’s degree in art history at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos. She has worked extensively in the Peruvian Ministerio de Cultura and the Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores.