Report a correction
Mexico becomes independent
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.
Factual errors are corrected without argument once documented. What you send is read by a person and checked against sources — nothing changes automatically. See the editorial policy.