Mexico becomes independent
Three centuries of Spanish rule, ended after eleven years of war
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New Spain was the Spanish colonial domain in North America, governed from Mexico City for three centuries. Independence began in 1810 with Miguel Hidalgo's call, which mobilised Indigenous and mestizo people, and ended in 1821 in a settlement led by Creole elites — a shift in social content that shaped the instability which followed. Mexico lost more than half its territory over the next thirty years, first Texas in 1836 and then everything north of the Rio Grande in 1848. It is the largest territorial upheaval in the continent's modern history.
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After eleven years of war Mexico became free from Spain. The new state was enormous — it reached from Guatemala to what is now Oregon, and took in California, Texas and the whole American Southwest.
Sources
- Van Young, The Other Rebellion (2001)
- Encyclopædia Britannica: «Mexican War of Independence»
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