Witness to the Age of Revolution

The Tupac Amaru rebellion of 1780-1783 began as a local revolt against colonial authorities and grew into the largest rebellion in the history of Spain's American empire-more widespread and deadlier than the American Revolution. An official collector of tribute for the imperial crown, José Gabriel Condorcanqui had seen firsthand what oppressive Spanish rule meant for Peru's Indian population and, under the Inca royal name Tupac Amaru, he set events in motionthat would transform him into one of Latin America's most iconic revolutionary figures. While he and the rebellion's leaders were put to death, his half-brother, Juan Bautista Tupac Amaru, survived but paid a high price for his participation in the uprising.This work in the Graphic History series is based on the memoir written by Juan Bautista about his odyssey as a prisoner of Spain. He endured forty years in jails, dungeons, and presidios on both sides of the Atlantic. Juan Bautista spent two years in jail in Cusco, was freed, rearrested, and then marched 700 miles in chains over the Andes to Lima. He spent two years aboard a ship travelling around Cape Horn to Spain. Subsequently, he endured over thirty years imprisoned in Ceuta, Spain'smuch-feared garrison city on the northern tip of Africa. In 1822, priest Marcos Durán Martel and Maltese-Argentine naval hero Juan Bautista Azopardo arranged to have him freed and sent to the newly independent Argentina, where he became a symbol of Argentina's short-lived romance with the Incan Empire.There he penned his memoirs, but died without fulfilling his dream of returning to Peru.This stunning graphic history relates the life and legacy of Juan Bautista Tupac Amaru, enhanced by a selection of primary sources, and chronicles the harrowing and extraordinary life of a firsthand witness to the Age of Revolution. .

a formidable teaching tool, An engaging text that will be of particular value to teachers who want to convey the human aspect of a tumultuous era as well as how it has been interpreted through history....Walker and Clarke should be applauded for their research and attention to detail....Perhaps the most important value of this genre is that it brings into stark relief the human experiences and suffering of the era of Atlantic Revolution in ways that traditional historical narratives simply cannot convey It is a very good example of the pedagogical value of graphic history. The book should also serve as a call to revisit the historical and pedagogical value of biography. Witness to the Age of Revolution shows how they can not only weave multiple historical themes into one narrative but also put a very human face on these events., A formidable teaching tool....The graphics are well crafted and their rich, comic-like aesthetics, truly powerful. Maps, family trees, primary documents, and other visual resources effectively condense large amounts of information and vividly convey Juan Bautista's plea, making the story easy to follow, even for students with little to no knowledge of the subject....Juan Bautista's experiences...put a human face to...epochal transformations....As he reminisced about his forty-year ordeal...[He] did not merely recount the recent colonial past, he also helped to resignify it, rendering it useful to the nascent Latin American nations struggling to gain (and legitimize) their independence from Spain., This book manages to rescue one of the most elusive figures in Peruvian history and is a persuasive invitation to take his sources as a starting point to relocate his historical legacy in the debates about the past, present and future of the Peruvian republican project in its bicentennial.... The appearance of Witness to the Age of Revolution contributes to revitalizing the subgenre of graphic adaptations of central documents of Peruvian historiography, which in Peru has very little precedent., Part action comic, part historical biography: an attempt to correct the record and give a pivotal figure the prominence he deserves... [Witness to the Age of Revolution is] an educational hybrid, with vivid illustrations backed by scholarly context.

Charles F. Walker is Professor of History and the Director of the Hemispheric Institute on the Americas at the University of California, Davis. He is the author of The Tupac Amaru Rebellion, named one of the best books of the year by the Financial Times, among other works on Latin American history.Liz Clarke is a professional illustrator based in Cape Town, South Africa.