1821: The End of New Spain —and the Impossible Dream of Making Mexico

Before 1810, silver capitalism made New Spain the richest kingdom in the Americas. Then in 1808, the judicial regime pivotal to stabilizing its inequities fell to militarized powers. Two years later, insurgents took arms to claim sustenance and then land, breaking commercial cultivation, mining, and global trades. This talk explores the pivotal political, economic, social, and gender transformations that preceded the break with Spain—and made the construction of the Mexico envisioned in Iguala impossible.

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John Tutino is Professor of History and International Affairs at Georgetown University. He is the author of numerous books published in English and Spanish, including From Insurrection to Revolution in Mexico: Social Bases of Agrarian Violence in Mexico, 1750-1940 (Princeton 1986; Era 1990); Making a New World: Founding Capitalism in the Bajío and Spanish North America (Duke 2011; FCE 2016); The Mexican Heartland: How Communities Shaped Capitalism, a Nation, and World History, 1500-2000 (Princeton 2018; FCE 2022); and Mexico City, 1808: Power, Sovereignty, and Silver in an Age of War and Revolution (New Mexico 2018). He is completing “The Bajío Revolution, 1800-1860: Claiming Community, Breaking Silver Capitalism, Constraining Mexico, Remaking North America” to be published by Duke. 

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