Mexico: Volume 2, the Colonial Era

This 2002 book is the second in a three-volume history of Mexico, a major work that conveys the full sweep of Mexican history in all its social, economic, and political diversity. Focusing on the period from 1521 to 1821, Volume 2 offers a comprehensive narrative and analysis of colonial Mexico following the Spanish conquest. In explaining colonial patterns of development, Alan Knight pays particular attention to the political economy of the colony: the formation and growth of the hacienda and its impact on the Indian peasantry; the dynamics of the colonial state and its relationship to the church; the role of trade, demography, warfare and taxation; and contrasting patterns of regional development, of class and ethnic conflict, and of popular protest in both city and countryside. The book concludes with an analysis of the accumulating tensions of the Bourbon era and of the bloody struggle for Mexican independence.