Caribbean and Latin America
Ward Stavig's book joins this list of distinguished
works. Focusing primarily on the late seventeenth to
the late eighteenth centuries, the author adds a fascinating portrayal of the indigenous populations of the
distinct, although contiguous, rural provinces of
Quispicanchis and Canas y Canchis. Located in the
Cuzco region, these provinces were the center of the
massive Tupac Amaru rebellion that began in 1780.
Although Tiipac Amaru, the revolt's celebrated leader,
appears in the book's title, Stavig gives relatively little
attention to the rebellion and its immediate causes,
emphasizing instead that passive resistance, including
recourse to the Spanish legal system, was the normal
form of protest against Spanish impositions. Employing a "ground up" approach, his study is a detailed and
wonderfully rich portrait of ordinary indigenous lives
in the Cuzco region within the context of colonial
economic and political institutions.
Following an introductory outline of the scope and
approach of the book, a background chapter traces
Quispicanchis and Canas y Canchis from pre-Spanish
conquest through the establishment of Spanish provincial officials (corregidores), the reforms of Viceroy
Toledo in the 1570s, notably the creation of new
villages (reducciones) and the introduction of the
PotOS! mita, the introduction of Christianity and its
agents, and the incorporation of European livestock
into an established herding tradition. Stavig makes an
important link between the natives' participation in
the mita and their belief that this service was part of a
reciprocal agreement with the crown that guaranteed
their right to land.
The author devotes subsequent chapters to indigenous sexual values and marital life; robbers, rustlers,
and highwaymen; indigenous-Spanish struggles over
land; ethnic land conflict; labor in the Spanish realm;
community, identity, and the labor draft (mita); and
rebellion, redemption, and Tupac Amaru. Throughout
he provides rich archival evidence that documents the
actions of the Andeans both toward their compatriots
and toward colonial and clerical officials and other
nonindigenous persons. He concludes his study with a
brief chapter that emphasizes the altered, heavily
Eurocentric perceptions of the nonindigenous population toward the native peoples in the wake of the
Tupac Amaru rebellion.
Stavig underscores the importance of complementary indigenous and Spanish values in maintaining
colonial rule. Noting that unequal exchange between
rulers and their peoples predated the imposition of
Spanish rule, he stresses that the resources remaining
with the naturales were more important than the
undeniable and often onerous Spanish exactions by the
colonial state, notably the demand for mita labor for
Potosi, He also emphasizes the significance of face-toface relations, custom and tradition, and incompletely
developed market relations within a colonial system
that rested on the crown's supremacy and lacked the
reciprocity that typified the historic relationship be-
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
977
tween Andean rulers and their peoples. The relationship between native rulers (curacas) and their communities, he argues, was as important as that between the
native population and the colonial state.
Particularly fascinating chapters of this thoughtful
study are the two focused on sexual values and marital
life and robbers, rustlers, and highwaymen. The Andean custom of trial marriage disturbed Spanish clerics, although most tolerated what they could not
eliminate. Once an indigenous couple married, however, Christian values coincided with and thus reinforced indigenous values emphasizing faithfulness.
Stavig stresses the significance of such overlapping
values in reinforcing the legitimacy of colonial rule.
Similarly, indigenous communities, routinely charged
with maintaining internal tranquility, enjoyed the support of the colonial state and its officials as they
enforced traditional values of law and order.
Clearly and often vividly written, this book is based
upon archival research in Bolivia, Peru, and Spain as
well as an extensive bibliography of relevant secondary
works. Both specialists in Andean ethnohistory and
social historians of colonial Spanish America in general will benefit from Stavig's study.
MARK A. BURKHOLDER
University of Missouri,
St. Louis
JOEL OUTTES. 0 Recife: Genese do Urbanismo 19271943. (Serie Estudos e Pesquisas, number lJ3.) Pernambuco, Brazil: Editora Massangana. 1997. Pp. 250.
As the subtitle makes clear, Joel Outtes is concerned
with the genesis of urbanism, or with the concept of
the city as a part of the modern landscape. He has
written on the transformation of Recife, the largest
city of the Brazilian northeast and one of the most
important industrial cities of the country, as a kind of
case study in the development of modern, scientific
urban planning. Outtes, who is an architect as well as
a historian of urban planning, examines the renovation
of Recife's city center during the llJ30s and early
1940s. The story of renewal begins in the waning years
of the First Repuhlic, when the general preoccupation
with building Brazil's import/export economy was very
much a part of the political and cultural agenda of the
entrepreneurial elites. Not until the end of the Republic and the introduction of the administration of
Getulio Vargas did the push for modernity reach
fruition, however. Given the technocratic and authoritarian nature of the Vargas period, the engineers,
technicians, and urban planners pursued a path quite
different from the piecemeal and halting renovations
of the 1920s, when urban improvements were preceded
by lengthy consultations with political forces and medical personnel concerned with combating the environmental sources of disease.
Outtes contends that the main difference in the
1930s and 1940s from the earlier Republican reforms
was the triumph of "new rationality," an ideology that
JUNE 2000
978
Reviews of Books
dictated the city's transformation as a part of a larger,
abstract vision of "urbanism." Under this new rational
urbanism, the city was like a factory with specific zones
for different tasks: commerce, industry, residence,
port, universities, etc. According to Outtes, this "Process of urban Taylorism implied a conception of
extreme modernity: that of the city in the era of the
machine" (p. 214). If earlier urban renewal projects
had been concerned with beauty, health, combating
disease, crime, and other "urban pathologies," urban
planners of the 1940s were preoccupied with constructing fast arteries for traffic flow and good communications, and doing so with an eye toward costs, financing,
taxes, and occupancy rates rather than style or beauty.
The new rationality triumphed in an era of the
political hegemony of the technocratic urban planner.
Vargas's suppression of the institutions of representative governance, especially after 1936, granted free
rein to the engineers, technocrats, and urban planners
who no longer needed to concern themselves with the
encumbrances of opinions from political parties, labor
unions, and representative bodies. The only trade
unions consulted were those of the engineers and the
association of newspapermen. The bulk of the book is
a reconstruction of the process through which individual engineers and urban technicians reached unity on
their plan. For those interested in the ins and outs of
meetings, proposals, plans, and contracts of urban
renewal, the book will be useful; others may find it
tedious.
Finally, the book would have benefited both in
readability and scope by placing the in-house debates
of Recife's urban planners within the broader context
of debates concerning urban planning and renewal
projects in other cities. While Outtes asserts that the
French were influential, and I agree, he does not tell us
why the Brazilians sought out this model. Certainly
French influence was instrumental in the earlier renovation of Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires, Argentina, but that was so because of the high regard
accorded French civilization and the Brazilian elites'
penchant to emulate French styles. Outtes argues that
the Brazilian planners copied the model of U.S. cities
in the 1930s and especially the 1940s but does not
explain what it was about American zoning that captivated the Brazilian technocrats. Moreover, the author discounts the centrality of technical issues such as
traffic flows, financing, and zoning in earlier urban
renewal projects. Certainly these issues were of great
importance in the renovations of Rio de Janeiro, Sao
Paulo, Buenos Aires, and Montevideo, In addition,
whether imposing a factory-based design or copying a
European city, the class character of the urban renewal
heavily influenced decisions at the turn of the century
as well as during the 1940s, a point I wish Outtes had
discussed more. In summary, Outtes asserts the ideology of modernity, captures the centrality of technocratic solutions to urban problems, and offers a por-
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
trait of some of the personalities involved in the
renewal projects.
TERESA MEADE
Union College
ROSEMARIJN HOEFTE. In Place of Slavery: A Social
History of British Indian and Javanese Laborers in
Suriname. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.
1998. Pp. xii, 275. $49.95.
After the slave emancipations in the Western hemisphere, in those cases where plantation slavery was still
potentially profitable but a supply of free labor was not
forthcoming, indentured labor from India, China, and
Indonesia was brought in to fill the gap. Where the
ratio of land to labor was low-Antigua is an example-former slaves had few opportunities beyond return to the plantation. Where the land-labor ratio was
high, the locallabor supply dried up, and continuation
of a profitable plantation system required a new source
of workers.
Planters everywhere complained that the freed
slaves wanted high wages and were undisciplined. This
should have surprised no one: if the labor force were
willing to work for sufficiently low wages and forego a
premium for undergoing the onerous discipline of
plantation agriculture, there would have been no need
for slavery in the first place. It should have been
obvious that, given an alternative, former slaves would
not return at low levels of remuneration. Indentured
servitude was seen as the remedy at hand.
The system of indentured servitude has been described as just another form of slavery or coerced
labor, an "exile into bondage." When one considers
the living standards and working conditions of the
indentured servants of the post-emancipation period,
this is perhaps understandable. Yet it is true only
metaphorically. In the abstract, an indenture is a
contract, between two parties: those who wish to
emigrate (presumably to better their status) contract
for the cost of their passage with future employers and
repay them with specified amounts of labor. At the
expiration of the contract they will then be free to
pursue their lives at the desired place. With perfect
information and perfect enforcement of the terms of
the contract, this is just a case of free labor making a
voluntary choice: there is nothing like slavery involved.
Indentured servants formed an important part of the
labor force in colonial British North America and the
British West Indies in the pre-slave period, and it can
be demonstrated that many of them approximately fit
this description. But it is only by assessing the crucial
assumptions of perfect information and perfect contract enforcement that we can judge the nature of
indentured servitude.
Rosemarijn Hoefte has written a splendid account of
indentured servitude in Suriname, a solid book that
documents the reality behind the theory of indentured
servitude there. it should be on the shelf of anyone
interested in the history of labor supply in the Western
JUNE 2000