Mexico: A History

This sweeping new history of Mexico spans 500 dramatic years of conquest, innovation and revolution

'A one-of-a-kind book, populated by large and small characters, spanning five hundred years of conflict and resilience, all in a masterful prose and a sharp, intelligent dialogue with the reader' - Pablo Piccato, author of A Brief History of Violence in Mexico and Professor of History, Columbia University

'A rollicking and stereotype-busting tour through five centuries of Mexican history... Sweeping from the Sonoran copper mines to the rainforests of Chiapas to Mexico City’s mansions, Gillingham dissects the country's politics, ideas, and contradictions with flair. The rare book that is as entertaining as it is learned and ingeniously argued' - Deborah Cohen, author of Last Call at the Hotel Imperial and Director of the Roberta Buffett Institute for Global Affairs

It begins in 1511 with the shipwreck of two Spanish sailors in Yucatán. Only ten years later, an army of European adventurers and indigenous rebels seized the island city of Tenochtitlán, seat of one of the world’s great empires. It would become Mexico City, and marked the collision of two radically different worlds. Spaniards discovered tomatoes, chocolate and the most sophisticated city they had ever seen. For Mexicans the encounter brought horses, wheels, but also lethal germs – sparking a cataclysmic century of disease that would kill a majority of the indigenous population.

Paul Gillingham’s superb history chronicles how this convulsion led to a startling recombination of cultures. He shows how the industrial mining of Mexico’s silver transformed the wealth and trade of the world, making it the centre of the first truly global economy. We then see how independence from Spain went on to bring calamitous wars with the United States and France. One of the world’s great social revolutions then remade Mexico and ushered in a one-party state that, whatever its shortcomings, brought peace throughout many of the global horrors of the twentieth century – before the country collapsed into violence in the drug wars of the 2000s.

Mexico: A History uses the latest research to dazzling effect, showing how often Mexico has been one of the world’s great innovators; a dynamic and vital shaper of world affairs.

Review

This is the history of a country at the center of the world, from the precarious beginnings of colonialism to the violent throes of democracy. Gillingham has written a one-of-a-kind book, populated by large and small characters, spanning five hundred years of conflict and resilience, all in a masterful prose and a sharp, intelligent dialogue with the reader. The universality and uniqueness of this story makes us all Mexican -- Pablo Piccato, author of A Brief History of Violence in Mexico and Professor of History, Columbia University

A rollicking and stereotype-busting tour through five centuries of Mexican history. As Gillingham demonstrates, it's Mexico ― not the United States ― that merits the title of the world's earliest and greatest melting pot. Sweeping from the Sonoran copper mines to the rainforests of Chiapas to Mexico City’s mansions, Gillingham dissects the country's politics, ideas, and contradictions with flair. The rare book that is as entertaining as it is learned and ingeniously argued -- Deborah Cohen, author of Last Call at the Hotel Imperial and Director of the Roberta Buffett Institute for Global Affairs

The result of a long and erudite engagement with what Mexico has meant historically, Paul Gillingham’s book offers a unique and enlightening view of the five centuries that made Mexico. The local, the national, and the global meet, blending the big with the minute. Wonderful storytelling, one of those rare happenstances of informing, explaining, and delighting -- Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo, author of Latin America: The Allure and Power of an Idea and Professor of History, University of Chicago

In taking on half a millennium of Mexican history, Gillingham deftly maneuvers to convey both its ironies and complexities. It is a wild ride -- Erika Pani, author of Torn Asunder: Republican Crises and Civil Wars in the United States and Mexico, 1848-1867 and Professor of History, El Colegio de México

About the Author

Paul Gillingham is the author of the prize-winning books Cuauhtémoc’s Bones and Unrevolutionary Mexico. He is Professor of Latin American History at Northwestern University.