page_title: Historiography of Colonial Spanish America
section_title: Early historiography
hierarchical_section_title: Historiography of Colonial Spanish America / Early historiography
caption_attribution_description: Español: Retrato de Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas, Cronista Mayor del Rey, y de las Indias, natural de Cuéllar
context_page_description: The historiography of colonial Spanish America in multiple languages is vast and has a long history. It dates back to the early sixteenth century with multiple competing accounts of the conquest, Spaniards’ eighteenth-century attempts to discover how to reverse the decline of its empire, and Latin American-born Spaniards' search for an identity other than Spanish, and the creation of creole patriotism. Following independence in some parts of Spanish America, some politically-engaged citizens of the new sovereign nations sought to shape national identity. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, non-Spanish American historians began writing chronicles important events, such as the conquests of Mexico and Peru, dispassionate histories of the Spanish imperial project after its almost complete demise in the hemisphere, and histories of the southwest borderlands, areas of the United States that had previously been part of the Spanish Empire, led by Herbert Eugene Bolton.
context_section_description: From the early sixteenth century onward, Spaniards wrote accounts of Spain's overseas explorations, conquests, religious evangelization, the overseas empire. The authors range from conquerors, crown officials, and religious personnel. The early development of the idea of Spanish American local patriotism, separate from Spanish identity, has been examined through the writings of a number of key figures, such as Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés, Bartolomé de las Casas, Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas, Fray Juan de Torquemada, Francisco Javier Clavijero, and others.  Spaniards grappled with how to write their own imperial history and Spanish Americas created a "patriotic epistemology."
  European rivals of Spain wrote a number of polemics, characterizing the Spanish as cruel, bigoted, and exploitative. The so-called Black Legend drew on Bartolomé de Las Casas's contemporary critique, A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies (1552) and became an entrenched view of the Spanish colonial era. Defenders of the Spanish attempts to defend the Indians from exploitation created what was called the White Legend of Spanish tolerance and protection of the Indians. The question was debated in the mid to late twentieth century and continues to have some salience in the twenty-first.
  Scottish scholar William Robertson (1721–1793), who established his scholarly reputation by writing a biography of Spain's Charles V, wrote the first major history in English of Spanish America, The History of America (1777). The work paraphrases much of Spanish historian Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas's Décadas, it also contained new sources. It reached a wide readership when Britain was rising as a global empire. Robertson drew on Las Casas's A Short Account, of Spanish cruelty, he noted Las Casas likely exaggerated. Spanish historians debated whether to translate Robertson's history to Spanish, which proponents supported because of Robertson's generally even-handed approach to Spanish history, but the project ultimately shelved when powerful politician José de Gálvez disapproved.
  Scholars in France, particularly Comte de Buffon (1707–1788), Guillaume Thomas François Raynal (1713–1796) and Cornelius de Pauw (1739–1799), whose works generally disparaged the Americas and its populations the region, which Iberian-born Spaniards ("peninsulars") and Latin American-born Spaniards ("criollos") sought to counter.
  A major figure in Spanish American history and historiography is Prussian scientist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt. His five-year scientific sojourn in Spanish America with the approval of the Spanish crown, contributed new knowledge about the wealth and diversity of the Spanish empire. Humboldt's self-funded expedition from 1799–1840 was the foundation of his subsequent publications that made him the dominant intellectual figure of the nineteenth century. His Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain was first published in French in 1810 and was immediately translated to English.  Humboldt's full access to crown officials and their documentary sources allowed him to create a detailed description of Spain's most valuable colony at the turn of the nineteenth century. "In all but his strictly scientific works, Humboldt acted as the spokesman of the Bourbon Enlightenment, the approved medium, so to say, through which the collective inquiries of an entire generation of royal officials and creole savants were transmitted to the European public,t heir reception assured by the prestige of the author."
  In the early post-independence era, history writing in the nations of Spanish America was accomplished by those from a particular country or region.  Often these writings are part of the creation of a national identity from a particular political viewpoint. Politically conservative historians looked to the colonial era with nostalgia, while politically liberal historians considered the colonial era with disdain. An important example is Mexico's conservative politician and intellectual Lucas Alamán. His five-volume Historia de Mejico is the countr
caption: Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas, early Spanish historian of Spain's overseas empire
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