Peruvian and South American First Editions (1584-1619)
Documentary heritage submitted by Peru and recommended for inclusion in the Memory of the World Register in 2013.
A collection of thirty nine books printed between 1584 and 1619, which give a firsthand account of the encounter between Western culture represented by the Spanish Conquistadors and the civilization of the Incas. The cultural encounter between Europe and America was a milestone in modern universal history and reconfigured the geopolitical panorama of the 16th Century. It contains a grammar of Quechua, the Incas language in its original form at the time of the Spanish conquest, and brings to wider attention an Amerindian language that is, like all languages, an example of world heritage. The collection has an emotional dimension, given the survival of customs whose origins are linked to it, as well as a historic dimension deriving from the book as a cultural artefact.