Of Structures, Culture and Other Demons: A Review of Late Eighteenth-Century Andean Insurrections

Abstract

This review essay visualizes eighteenth-century popular insurrections not as casual or isolated
episodes, but rather as symptomatic expressions of social tensions and heightened conflict;
feelings that increased in intensity during the latter half of the century and culminated in
the Great Rebellion of 1780-1783 in the Southern Andes, the 1765 Quito uprising and
the 1781 Comunero Revolt in Nueva Granada. The article examines journal articles and
monographs that address these revolts, acknowledging that academic production on late
eighteenth-century insurrections in the Spanish colonies is itself suspended within larger
scholarly debates that address insurrections outside the Andean context and incorporate
questions raised by scholars of peasant revolts and agrarian conflict in other fields and
time periods.