Page:The Incas of Peru.djvu/207

Rh collectively held the land under the domination of the most powerful among them. So that Peru is not the prototype of a paternal monarchy. Communism was not imposed by the Incas. It was not a system conceived by them, and brought into practice by means of conquests and clever alliances. Ancient Peru was not the archetype of socialism, but a vast agglomeration of village communities. After the publication of Cunow's work there appeared 'The Evolution of Political Doctrines and Beliefs' by the Belgian sociologist William de Greef, who devotes an interesting chapter to Peru. His view is practically the same as that of Cunow.

Belaunde then explains the views of two eminent South American writers, Don Bautista Saavedra, a Bolivian, and Don José de la Riva Aguero, a Peruvian.

Saavedra in his work 'El Ayllu' also holds that the ayllus, as communities, existed before the rise of the Inca empire. Riva Aguero describes the gradual aggregation of the constituent tribes.

Belaunde proceeds to discuss the views of Prescott, Lorente, Letourneau, Wiener, D'Orbigny, Desjardins, Spencer, and Bandelier, and of the present writer in his essay written for Winsor's narrative and critical history of America. The earlier writers have not attempted to discuss the condition of things previous to the rise of the Incas, and Spencer's theories respecting Peruvian civilisation, in his great work on sociology, are based on misconceptions and inaccurate information.

The present writer, in the course of his studies, was gradually approaching the discovery that Peruvian socialism was not a conception of the Incas, but the result of much more ancient organisations recognised and adopted by the Incas. As will be seen from the present chapter, he has practically come to the same conclusions as Cunow and others who are in agreement with him, which are so