"Inquisition of the Indians?": The Inquisitorial Model and the Repression of Andean Religion in Seventeenth-Century Peru

Abstract

As the Portuguese eventually discovered, the so-called white Christians were in fact Chinese. On the East African coast, Vasco da Gama’s men apparently were first mistaken for Chinese, for the last pale-skinned strangers in large wooden ships seen in that area came from China. In a sense, the Portuguese may be said to have first encountered the Chinese on the western coast of India, about twenty years before Portuguese ships reached China itself. Malabar traditions of the sixteenth century imperfectly preserved the memory of the voyages of Zheng He, the Triple-Jeweled Eunuch, the Grand Commandant of the Treasure Fleet of the Ming Empire, sometimes called the Vasco da Gama of China. Between 1405 and 1433—just as Portuguese exploration was launched along the Moroccan coast—Ming emperors dispatched seven expeditions to western Asia, numbering as many as 300 ships and 28,000 men in one fleet.

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