The fall of civil man: Ancient Mexicans and Peruvians in William Robertson’s History of America

Abstract

According to the prominent Scottish historian of the Enlightenment William Robertson in his History of America, the stagnation of primary arts and the feeble and violent savage character of the natives were related to the incipient state of social cohesion in the New World. But due to the addition of superstitious institutions under the control of sagacious leaders, original forms of political organization emerged on dark horizons to contain the savage and make them obedient to working under primitive and defective techniques. In this context, terror would be the rule, as seen in the case of Motecuzoma’s government in Mexico or the blind submission to the Incas in Peru. The shoots of progress of indigenous America appear to be the cancers of the stagnant world that had been destroyed during the Spanish conquest. If the Jesuit José de Acosta was one of the main contributors to the “fall of natural man” in the Renaissance era, the Presbyterian Robertson produced in the Enlightenment the great story of the “fall of civil man” in the Americas. Both influential writers, each in his own time, considered limits and impasses for Mexicans and Peruvians in reaching the fullness of civil life. Robertson, specifically, was directly influenced by Scottish views on progress through social and material stages, as well as the notion of providential history. In History of America, the much-vaunted Mexican and Peruvian empires linked to the savage world peculiarly and strangely turned away from the correct progress of nations.

Keywords: savage world in the Enlightenment, Mexican and Peruvian empires, William Robertson.