UNSILENCED.
ENESFRDEPTAR
AnswerUnsilenced Archive

Who colonized Mexico?

North America — the powers that ruled Mexico, the dates, and what independence did and did not change.

In short

Who colonized Mexico?

Spain. Cortés destroyed the Mexica capital of Tenochtitlan in 1521 and Spain ruled New Spain for three centuries until independence was completed in 1821.

The conquest of Mexico is often told as a military story; it was overwhelmingly an epidemiological and administrative one. Smallpox preceded Cortés into Tenochtitlan, and the encomienda system converted survivors into tribute labour.

Reference

Who ruled Mexico, and when

before 1521
Mexica (Aztec), Maya, Purépecha and other states
1521–1821
Viceroyalty of New Spain

At a glance

Key facts

Colonising powers
Spain
Independence
27 September 1821
Population collapse
From an estimated 15–25 million to about one million within a century
Silver
New Spain supplied a large share of the world's silver, mined by forced labour
Codices
Most Mesoamerican books were destroyed as idolatry

Chronology

Key dates

  1. 1519

    Cortés lands at Veracruz.

  2. 1521

    Tenochtitlan falls after siege and smallpox epidemic.

  3. 1545 & 1576

    Cocoliztli epidemics kill a large share of the surviving population.

  4. 1546

    Silver found at Zacatecas; the encomienda and repartimiento drive mine labour.

  5. 1810–21

    War of independence.

Context

What the record shows

Silver from Zacatecas and Guanajuato financed Habsburg Spain and entered the global economy through Manila — an early world market built on forced mine labour.

Questions

Frequently asked

Who colonised Mexico?
Spain, from the fall of Tenochtitlan in 1521 to independence in 1821.
How many Indigenous people died?
Estimates of population decline in central Mexico in the first century after contact commonly exceed 90%, driven by epidemics compounded by forced labour and displacement.
When did Mexico gain independence?
The war began in 1810 and independence was consummated on 27 September 1821.

Read on

Related in the archive

References

Sources — colonial Mexico

  1. [1]Bartolomé de las Casas, Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (Seville, 1552).
  2. [2]Noble David Cook, Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492–1650 (Cambridge University Press, 1998).
  3. [3]Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America (Monthly Review Press, 1971; English 1973).
  4. [4]Adam Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost (Houghton Mifflin, 1998).
  5. [5]Thomas Pakenham, The Scramble for Africa (Random House, 1991).
  6. [6]Shashi Tharoor, Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India (Hurst, 2017).
  7. [7]Caroline Elkins, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya (Henry Holt, 2005).
  8. [8]Alfred W. McCoy, Policing America's Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State (Wisconsin, 2009).
  9. [9]Daniel Immerwahr, How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019).
  10. [10]Jürgen Zimmerer, "The birth of the Ostland out of the spirit of colonialism", Patterns of Prejudice 39:2 (2005), on the German South-West Africa → Holocaust lineage.
  11. [11]Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Bogle-L'Ouverture, 1972).
  12. [12]Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I (1867), Chapter 31 ("Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist").

All works cited in good faith for documentary, educational and critical use. Errors and omissions: contact the archive.