First published in 1955, this book is by the author of the well-known L’Empire socialiste des Inka (1928). Considering the time he has devoted to the Peruvian field, one would expect Baudin to have here produced a useful work on Inca culture. The reverse is true.

This book is in general a confused and ill-digested mass of Inca and non-Inca Peruvian miscellany somewhat like a farmer’s almanac or a medieval bestiary. Baudin insists on calling the Peruvian Indian “mystical” and then almost in the same breath “utilitarian.” Such generalizations are unfortunate. Inca culture was ceremonial, warlike, dour; it was caught in an almost impossible logic of empire while having only the flimsy base of the Peruvian ayllu upon which to create this sophisticated politique—none of this was either mystical or utilitarian. Having changed his earlier point of view, Baudin refers to the Inca empire as “uncouth and unattractive” and as a “mechanism of gloomy perfection.” This is of course a matter of opinion. He fails utterly, however, to see it as a process. Furthermore he radically distorts much of Inca history when he states that after Pachacuti there were no more revolts, when he calls the first Chincha raid a success, when he repeats Velasco’s error on the parentage of Atahualpa, etc. His presentation of the Carangui war in the reign of Huayna Capac is seriously misrepresented.

Assuming that the above are after all matters of opinion—and in fairness one must state that Inca history is not conducive to statements of fact—there is little excuse for such errors as restricting the Titicaca balsa to the Urus, or confusing the llauto with the mascapaycha, equating the huarachicoy ceremony with the so-called university education of the Inca brave, describing the paving of the Inca roads as pirca, assuming that the huaoqui was the totem of the Peruvian ayllu, etc. This is only a sampling of the misstatements.

When one adds to these Baudin’s apparent belief in Mu, or a sunken Pacific land mass like it, his incredible naval armada of 20,000 Peruvian Indians under Topa Inca cruising about Polynesia for about a year (based on the wild tale of Sarmiento), his belief that Maori and Quechua are related, his strange description of the ruins of Cajamarquilla (obviously he could not have seen them himself, yet they are just beyond the suburbs of Lima), one concludes that he is a poor mentor to follow in Peruvian matters. Rowe in the Handbook of South American Indians, Vol. II, is still the preferable guide; Mason, Ancient Civilizations of Peru (Penguin) is also excellent but is Pan-Peruvian and not specifically Inca.