New Books in History Paul Gillingham, "Mexico: A 500-Year History" (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2025)
Mar 7, 2026
Paul Gillingham, Northwestern historian of modern Mexico, guides a sweeping 500-year tour. He traces early contact and conquest, colonial extraction, independence, the 1910 Revolution, Cárdenas’s reforms, PRI-era politics, and the 21st-century drug war. Short, vivid takes explore debt, urban modernity, land dispossession, and what U.S. historians can learn from Mexico.
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Conquest Was An Indigenous Civil War
- The Spanish takeover of the Aztec capital depended on hundreds of thousands of indigenous allies, making the "conquest" effectively an indigenous civil war.
- For 150 years after 1521, much of the territory remained under indigenous autonomy — a conquista inconclusiva.
Spanish Rule Was Hands Off Until Europe Collapsed
- Spanish rule in Mexico was hands-off, focusing on silver extraction and keeping basic peace, granting surprising local autonomy and vice-royal status.
- Independence arose mainly from a European power vacuum after Napoleon's invasion of Spain, not solely long-term colonial grievances.
Fragile Central State Yet Robust Local Democracy
- Post-independence Mexico combined severe national instability and economic collapse with a democratic surge at the local level as communities formed autonomous municipios.
- Despite fragmentation and foreign pressures, Mexico endured as a state while losing much of its northern future to the U.S. in 1848.
