Nicola Miller, Republics of Knowledge: Nations of the Future in Latin America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020), pp. vi + 304, $39.95; £34.00, hb.
political treatise within a historical account, a plan of government and reformation that would have envisioned a new Peru. Fuerst is aware that this perspective is still only a possibility without clearer evidence. As a result, the author often employs expressions like ‘possibly’, ‘seem to be’, ‘indirectly’, ‘implicitly’, etc., as his arguments rely strongly on intricate interpretations based on potential meanings or connotations from the Indigenous worldview that we must assume the Andean readers not only would have detected, but also would have assimilated to create an alleged critical message that may oppose what Garcilaso was literally stating elsewhere. Besides this caveat regarding its methodology, Fuerst’s analysis is valuable and innovative, for it explores a new set of concepts and allusions for Andean readers, and revaluates and expands previously discussed ones.