Introduction
A New Chronicle
Several decades after the fall of the Inca empire, a native Andean from the area of Huamanga in the southern Peruvian Andes wrote to king Philip III of Spain. Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala's aim was to seek the reform of Spanish colonial governance in order to save the Andean peoples from the destructive forces of colonial exploitation, disease, and miscegenation.
Finding his most persuasive medium to be the visual image, he composed 398 full-page drawings which are an integral part of his 1200-page Nueva corónica y buen gobierno.
A Digital Research Center
Less than 50 years after it was completed in Lima, Guaman Poma's autograph manuscript of the Nueva corónica y buen gobierno apparently became part of the library of king Fredrick III of Denmark. Long forgotten on the shelves of the Royal Library, it was rediscovered in 1908 and published in a retouched facsimile edition in Paris in 1936. A critical and annotated transcription, based on autoptic study of the manuscript, was published in Mexico City in 1980, edited by John V. Murra, Rolena Adorno, and Jorge L. Urioste (revised edition, 1987).
In May 2001, a complete digital facsimile of the original manuscript was launched on the Internet by the Royal Library. In August 2004, this facsimile was embedded in a newly revised, digital, and online searchable version of the 1987 edition of the Nueva corónica y buen gobierno, to which the annotation and bibliography have been updated. Archival documents illustrating Guaman Poma's life, as well as digitized versions of a number of scholarly articles concerning his life and work, have been added. Further developments of this website as a Guaman Poma digital research center are envisioned to include such topics as ethnohistory, colonial politics, the processes of literary and cultural exchange, the iconography of the period, and so forth.
Scholarly Editor: Rolena Adorno, Yale University. Project Direction: The Department of Manuscripts and Rare Books, Det Kongelige Bibliotek.
