Mexico City, once the dominant city in the Aztec Empire, became one of the most important cities in the Spanish Empire and, undoubtedly, in the history of global colonialism.
First founded as Tenochtitlan in 1325, the city fell in August 1521 to Spanish conquerors led by Hernan Cortes (ca. 1484-1547). Destroyed by the conquest, Tenochtitlan was not immediately selected as the site of the conquerors’ new settlement; however, the strategic and symbolic advantages of the site outweighed its disadvantages, and within months the reconstruction and repopulation of the city were underway. The city was soon designated a center for imperial secular and clerical administration. In 1535 Tenochtitlan became the capital of New Spain, the first viceroyalty to be created in the Americas. In 1547 Mexico’s bishopric was recreated as an archdiocese. In 1571 the city received a tribunal of the Holy Office (the holy office of the inquisition, charged with policing Catholic orthodoxy and, increasingly, the behavior of the faithful).
By the end of the sixteenth century, then, Mexico City exercised spiritual and temporal jurisdiction over a vast area comprising much of Central America, the Caribbean, and even the Philippines. The viceregal capital also acted as an important financial center and a conduit for the bullion that issued from the mines to the north of the city after the mid-1540s. A significant amount of this silver flowed through the city to the port of Veracruz and on to Spain. However, much also remained in the churches and merchant houses of New Spain’s capital, fueling both local ostentation and, through lending activities, the continued economic growth of the region.
Throughout the colonial period, Mexico City would act as a centripetal force throughout the Spanish-speaking world, attracting both wealth and a disproportionate number of settlers. With an estimated population of 170,000 on the eve of Mexican independence in 1820, Mexico remained the largest city in Latin America and one of the colonial world’s major centers throughout its colonial history.
