He received a first-rate but informal European education in Spain after he moved there at age 21. His works are considered to have great literary value and are not simple historical chronicles. He wrote from an important perspective, as his maternal family were the ruling Inca. He portrays the Inca as benevolent rulers who governed a country where everybody was well-fed and happy before the Spanish came. Having learned first-hand about daily Inca life from his maternal relatives, he was able to convey that in his writings. As an adult, he also gained the perspective to describe accurately the political system of tribute and labor enforced by the Incas from the subsidiary tribes in their empire. Baptized and reared as
Roman Catholic, he portrayed
Incan religion and the expansion of its empire from a viewpoint influenced by his upbringing. He did not acknowledge or discuss the human sacrifices that are now known to have been part of Inca practice. It is unknown whether that was an effort to portray his Inca ancestors in a more positive light to a Spanish audience or his ignorance of the practice having lived most of his life in Spain.
Historia de la Florida De la Vega's first work was
La Florida del Inca, an account of
Hernando de Soto's expedition and journey in Florida. The work was published in
Lisbon in 1605 and became popular. It describes the expedition according to its own records and information Garcilaso gathered during the years. He defended the legitimacy of imposing the Spanish sovereignty in conquered territories and submitting them to
Catholic jurisdiction. At the same time, he expresses and defends the dignity, the courage, and the rationality of the
Native Americans. It was translated and published in English in 1951. Historians have identified problems with using
La Florida as an historical account.
Jerald T. Milanich and
Charles M. Hudson warn against relying on Garcilaso, noting serious problems with the sequence of events and location of towns in his narrative. They say that "some historians regard Garcilaso's
La Florida to be more a work of literature than a work of history." Lankford characterizes Garcilaso's
La Florida as a collection of "
legend narratives," derived from a much-retold oral tradition of the survivors of the expedition.
Comentarios Reales de los Incas While in Spain, Garcilaso wrote his best-known work,
Comentarios Reales de los Incas, published in Lisbon in 1609. It was based mostly on stories and oral histories told him by his Inca relatives when he was a child in Cusco, but also on the remnants of the history by
Blas Valera which was mostly destroyed in the sacking of
Cádiz in 1596. The
Comentarios have two sections and volumes. The first was primarily about Inca life. The second, about the
conquest of Peru, was published in 1617. It was first published in English in London in 1685, translated by Sir Paul Rycaut and titled
The Royal Commentaries of Peru. More than a century and a half after its initial publication, in the 1780s, as the uprising against colonial oppression led by
Tupac Amaru II was gaining momentum,
Charles III of Spain banned the
Comentarios from being published in the
Quechua language in
Lima or distributed there on account of its "dangerous" content. The book was not printed again in the Americas until 1918, but copies continued to be circulated secretly. It was translated and printed in English in 1961 in the United States as
The Incas, and in another edition in 1965 as
Royal Commentaries of the Incas (see below). File:Garcilaso de la Vega La Florida Del Ynca title page 1605.jpg|Title page of
La Florida del Ynca (1605) File:Garcilaso de la Vega Commentarios Reales 1609.jpg|Title page of
Comentarios Reales de los Incas (1609) ==Honors==