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was the first of the American colonies in which, at the era of the Conquest, the spirit of rebellion against the Mother Country broke out. During the Colonial epoch the mixed races frequently rebelled against their Spanish masters. At the end of the eighteenth century Tupac-Amaru, who came of the old royal race of the Incas, made an attempt to restore the kingdom of his forefathers. But these insurrections had no root in the soil, they were but the convulsive efforts of a conquered race reduced to slavery. When they were quelled the country remained at peace for many long years. Peru, like to one of the tracts of perennial calm upon the ocean, felt nothing of the currents which ebbed and flowed around her; she was isolated from the world; the movements which convulsed America in 1809 and 1810 were hardly felt there. The instinct of nationality, which is the germ of independence, was not entirely wanting; but there was no cohesion among the masses of the people, whose inertness presented a dead weight against the progress of the revolutionary idea.

Peru was at the Conquest truly an imperial colony, embracing all the Spanish possessions in South America, from Cape Horn to the Equator. The word Peru became synonymous with wealth. After the creation of the Viceroyalties of New Granada and La Plata, that of Peru