des sudostlichen Boliviens," _Centralb. f. Min., Jahrg._ (1904), pp. 1-4. (A. J. L.) HISTORY The country now forming the republic of Bolivia, named after the great liberator Simon Bolivar (q.v.), was in early days simply a portion of the empire of the Incas of Peru (q.v.). After the conquest of Peru by the Spaniards in the 16th century the natives were subjected to much tyranny and oppression, though it must in fairness be said that much of it was carried out in defiance of the efforts and the wishes of the Spanish home government, whose legislative efforts to protect the Indians from serfdom and ill-usage met with scant respect at the hands of the distant settlers and mine-owners, who bid defiance to the humane and protective regulations of the council of the Indies, and treated the unhappy natives little better than beasts of burden. The statement, moreover, that some eight millions of Indians perished through forced labour in the mines is a gross exaggeration. The annual diminution in the number of the Indian population was undoubtedly very great, but it was due far more to the result of European epidemics and to indulgence in alcohol than to hard work. The abortive insurrection of 1780-82, led by the Inca Tupac Amaru, was never a general rising, and was directed rather against Creole tyranny than against Spanish rule. The heavy losses sustained by the Indians during that outbreak, and their dislike and distrust of the colonial Spaniard, account for the comparative indifference with which they viewed the rise and progress of the 1814 colonial revolt against Spain, which gave the South American states their independence. War of Independence.