New Spain

The Kingdom of New Spain was established on 18 August 1521, following the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, as a New World kingdom ruled by the Crown of Castile. The initial funds for exploration came from Queen Isabella. Although New Spain was a dependency of Castile, it (Mexico) was a kingdom and not a colony, subject to the presiding monarch on the Iberian Peninsula.

The monarch had sweeping power in the overseas territories, with not just sovereignty over the realm but also property rights. All power over the state came from the monarch. The crown had sweeping powers over the Catholic Church in its overseas territories, and via the Patronato real, a grant by the papacy to the crown to oversee the Church in all aspects save doctrine. The Viceroyalty of New Spain was created by royal decree on 12 October 1535, in the Kingdom of New Spain with a viceroy appointed as the king's "deputy" or substitute. This was the first New World viceroyalty and one of only two that the Spanish Empire administered in the continent until the 18th-century Bourbon Reforms.

At its greatest extent, the Spanish crown claimed on the mainland of the Americas much of North America south of Canada, that is: all of modern Mexico and Central America except Panama; most of the United States west of the Mississippi River, plus the Floridas. The Spanish West Indies, settled prior to the conquest of the Aztec Empire, also came under New Spain's jurisdiction: Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, Trinidad, Martinica and the Bay Islands. New Spain also claimed jurisdiction over the overseas territories of the Spanish East Indies in Asia and Oceania: the Philippine Islands, the Mariana Islands, the Caroline Islands, parts of Taiwan, and parts of the Moluccas. Although asserting sovereignty over this vast realm, it did not effectively control large swaths. Other European powers, including England, France, and the Netherlands established colonies in territories Spain claimed.

Much of what was called in the United States the "Spanish borderlands" is territory that attracted few Spanish settlers, with less dense indigenous populations and apparently lacking in mineral wealth. Huge deposits of gold in California were discovered immediately after it was incorporated into the U.S. following the Mexican–American War (1846–1848). The northern region of New Spain in the colonial era was considered marginal to Spanish interests compared to the most densely populated and lucrative areas of central Mexico. To shore up its claims in North America in the eighteenth century as other powers encroached on its claims, the crown sent expeditions to the Pacific Northwest, which explored and claimed the coast of British Columbia and Alaska.

Religious missions and fortified presidios were established to shore up Spanish control on the ground. On the mainland, the administrative units included Las Californias, that is, the Baja California peninsula, still part of Mexico and divided into Baja California and Baja California Sur; Alta California (modern Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah, western Colorado, and southern Wyoming); (from the 1760s) Louisiana (including the western Mississippi River basin and the Missouri River basin); Nueva Extremadura (the modern states of Coahuila and Texas); and Santa Fe de Nuevo México (parts of Texas and New Mexico).

The Viceroyalty was administered by a viceroy residing in Mexico City and appointed by the Spanish monarch, who had administrative oversight of all of these regions, although most matters were handled by the local governmental bodies, which ruled the various regions of the viceroyalty. First among these were the audiencias, which were primarily superior tribunals, but which also had administrative and legislative functions. Each of these was responsible to the Viceroy of New Spain in administrative matters (though not in judicial ones), but they also answered directly to the Council of the Indies.

The Captaincy Generals were the second-level administrative divisions and these were relatively autonomous from the viceroyalty. The viceroy was captain-general of those provinces that remained directly under his command. Santo Domingo (1535); Philippines (1565); Puerto Rico (1580); Cuba (1608); Guatemala (1609); Yucatán (1617); Commandancy General of the Provincias Internas (1776) (analogous to a dependent captaincy general). Two governorates, third-level administrative divisions, were established, the Governorate of Spanish Florida (Spanish: La Florida) and the Governorate of Spanish Louisiana (Spanish: Luisiana).

Spanish officials in New Spain used cartography as a tool to assert political authority. Maps served to define territorial claims and impose order on Indigenous communities, as mapmaking became closely tied to imperial governance. This shaped how land was conceptualized and controlled across the colony.

The high courts, or audiencias, were established in major areas of Spanish settlement. In New Spain the high court was established in 1527, prior to the establishment of the viceroyalty. The First Audiencia was headed by Hernán Cortés's rival Nuño de Guzmán, who used the court to deprive Cortés of power and property. The crown dissolved the First Audiencia and established the Second Audiencia.

The audiencias of New Spain were Santo Domingo (1511, effective 1526, predated the Viceroyalty); Mexico (1527, predated the Viceroyalty); Panama (1st one, 1538–1543); Guatemala (1543); Guadalajara (1548); Manila (1583).

Audiencia districts further incorporated the older, smaller divisions known as governorates (gobernaciones, roughly equivalent to provinces), which had been originally established by conquistador-governors known as adelantados. Provinces which were under military threat were grouped into captaincies general, such as the Captaincies General of the Philippines (established 1574) and Guatemala (established in 1609), which were joint military and political commands with a certain level of autonomy. The viceroy was captain-general of those provinces that remained directly under his command.

At the local level there were over two hundred districts, in both indigenous and Spanish areas, which were headed by either a corregidor (also known as an alcalde mayor) or a cabildo (town council), both of which had judicial and administrative powers. In the late 18th century the Bourbon dynasty began phasing out the corregidores and introduced intendants, whose broad fiscal powers cut into the authority of the viceroys, governors and cabildos. Despite their late creation, these intendancies so affected the formation of regional identity that they became the basis for the nations of Central America and the first Mexican states after independence.

As part of the sweeping eighteenth-century administrative and economic changes known as the Bourbon Reforms, the Spanish crown created new administrative units called intendancies, to strengthen central control over the viceroyalty. Some measures aimed to break the power of local elites in order to improve the economy of the empire. Reforms included the improvement of public participation in communal affairs, distribution of undeveloped lands to the indigenous and Spaniards, ending the corrupt practices of local crown officials, encouraging trade and mining, and establishing a system of territorial division similar to the model created by the government of France, already adopted in Spain.

The establishment of intendancies was strongly resisted by the viceroyalties and general captaincies similar to the opposition in the Iberian Peninsula when the reform was adopted. Royal audiencias and ecclesiastical hierarchs opposed the reform for its intervention in economic issues, for its centralist politics, and the forced ceding of many of their functions to the intendants. In New Spain, these units generally corresponded to the regions or provinces that had developed earlier in the center, South, and North.

Many of the intendancy boundaries became Mexican state boundaries after independence. The intendancies were created between 1764 and 1789, with the greatest number in the mainland in 1786: 1764 La Habana (later subdivided); 1766 Nueva Orleans; 1784 Puerto Rico; 1786 México, Veracruz, Puebla de Los Ángeles, Guadalajara, Guanajuato, Zacatecas, San Luis Potosí, Sonora, Durango, Oaxaca, Guatemala, San Salvador, Comayagua, León, Santiago de Cuba, Puerto Príncipe; 1789 Mérida.

The social structure of New Spain was organized around a hierarchy that placed peninsulares and criollos at the top, while Indigenous peoples, Africans, and mixed-race groups faced restrictions on mobility and rights. Over time, there were demographic shifts and economic changes that challenged the hierarchy and created new opportunities for social advancement among certain groups.

By the eighteenth century, New Spain had developed a distinctive legal culture that blended Spanish judicial traditions with local practices and regional autonomy. Courts relied on a wide array of legal documents and negotiations that allowed Indigenous communities and settlers to assert rights and/or resolve conflicts.

The history of mainland New Spain spans three hundred years from the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire (1519–1521) to the collapse of Spanish rule in the Mexican War of Independence (1810–1821).

Beginning with the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire in 1521 by Hernán Cortés, Spanish rule was established, leading to the creation of governing bodies like the Council of the Indies and the Audiencia to maintain control. It involved the forced conversion of indigenous populations to Catholicism and the blending of Spanish and indigenous cultures in both the mainland and the Caribbean islands of Martinica and Hispaniola.

During the 17th and 18th centuries Spanish settlers founded major cities such as Mexico City, Puebla, and Guadalajara, turning New Spain into a vital part of the Spanish Empire. The discovery of silver in Zacatecas and Guanajuato significantly boosted the economy, leading to conflicts like the Chichimeca War. Missions and presidios were established in northern frontiers, aiding in the expansion and control of territories that later became part of the southwestern United States. The 18th century saw the implementation of the Bourbon Reforms, which aimed to modernize and strengthen the colonial administration and economy. These reforms included the creation of intendancies, increased military presence, and the centralization of royal authority. The expulsion of the Jesuits and the establishment of economic societies, were part of the efforts to enhance efficiency and revenue for the crown.

The decline of New Spain culminated in the early 19th century with the Mexican War of Independence. Following Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla's 1810 Cry of Dolores, the insurgent army waged an eleven-year war against Spanish rule. The eventual alliance between royalist military officer Agustín de Iturbide and insurgent leader Vicente Guerrero led to the successful campaign for independence. In 1821, New Spain officially became the independent nation of Mexico, ending three centuries of Spanish colonial rule. During a period that was especially important to the social development of America, the movement to expel the Moors and Jews from Spain stirred up a previously dormant aspect of Spanish social structure.

During the era of the conquest, to pay off the debts incurred by the conquistadors and their companies, the new Spanish governors awarded their men grants of native tribute and labor, known as encomiendas. The encomienda became one of the defining institutions of early Spanish rule in New Spain, thus formalizing the right of colonists to Indigenous labor. While some supporters justified the system as a means of "protecting" native communities, in practice, it often intensified the already present exploitation. New Spain, these grants were modeled after the tribute and corvee labor that the Mexica rulers had demanded from native communities. This system came to signify the oppression and exploitation of natives, although its originators may not have set out with such intent. In short order, the upper echelons of patrons and priests in the society lived off the work of the lower classes. Due to some horrifying instances of abuse against the indigenous peoples, Bishop Bartolomé de las Casas suggested bringing black slaves to replace them. Fray Bartolomé later repented when he saw the even worse treatment given to the black slaves.

In colonial Mexico, Encomenderos de Negros were specialized middlemen during the first half of the seventeenth century. While encomendero (alternatively, encomenderos de indios) generally refers to men granted the labor and tribute of a particular indigenous group in the immediate post-conquest era, encomenderos de negros were Portuguese slave dealers who were permitted to operate in Mexico for the slave trade.

In Peru, the other discovery that perpetuated the system of forced labor, the mit'a, was the enormously rich single silver mine discovered at Potosí, but in New Spain, labor recruitment differed significantly. Except silver mines worked in the Aztec period at Taxco, southwest of Tenochtitlan, Mexico's mining region was outside the area of dense indigenous settlement. Labor for the mines in the north of Mexico had a workforce of black slave labor and indigenous wage labor, not draft labor. Indigenous who were drawn to the mining areas were from different regions of the center of Mexico, with a few from the north itself. With such diversity, they did not have a common ethnic identity or language and rapidly assimilated into Hispanic culture. Although mining was difficult and dangerous, the wages were good, which is what drew the indigenous labor.

The Viceroyalty of New Spain was the principal source of income for Spain in the eighteenth century, with the revival of mining under the Bourbon Reforms. Important mining centers like Zacatecas, Guanajuato, San Luis Potosí and Hidalgo had been established in the sixteenth century and suffered a decline for a variety of reasons in the seventeenth century, but silver mining in Mexico out-performed all other Spanish overseas territories in revenues for the royal coffers.

The fast red dye cochineal was an important export in areas such as central Mexico and Oaxaca in terms of revenues to the crown and stimulation of the internal market of New Spain. Cacao and indigo were also important exports for the New Spain, but was used through rather the vice royalties rather than contact with European countries due to piracy, and smuggling. The indigo industry in particular also helped to temporarily unite communities throughout the Kingdom of Guatemala due to the smuggling.

There were two major ports in New Spain, Veracruz the viceroyalty's principal port on the Atlantic, and Acapulco on the Pacific, the terminus of the Manila galleon. In the Philippines Manila near the South China Sea was the main port. The ports were fundamental for overseas trade, stretching a trade route from Asia, through the Manila galleon to the Spanish mainland.

These were ships that made voyages from the Philippines to Mexico, whose goods were then transported overland from Acapulco to Veracruz and later reshipped from Veracruz to Cádiz in Spain. So then, the ships that set sail from Veracruz were generally loaded with merchandise from the East Indies originating from the commercial centers of the Philippines, plus the precious metals and natural resources of Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. During the 16th century, Spain held the equivalent of US$1.5 trillion (1990 terms) in gold and silver received from New Spain.

However, these resources did not translate into development for the Metropolis (mother country) due to the Spanish Roman Catholic Monarchy's frequent preoccupation with European wars (enormous amounts of this wealth were spent hiring mercenaries to fight the Protestant Reformation), as well as the incessant decrease in overseas transportation caused by assaults from companies of British buccaneers, Dutch corsairs and pirates of various origins. These companies were initially financed by, at first, by the Amsterdam stock market, the first in history and whose origin is owed precisely to the need for funds to finance pirate expeditions, as later by the London market. The above is what some authors call the "historical process of the transfer of wealth from the south to the north".

In the colonial period, basic patterns of regional development emerged and strengthened. European settlement and institutional life was built in the Mesoamerican heartland of the Aztec Empire in Central Mexico. The South (Oaxaca, Michoacán, Yucatán, and Central America) was a region of dense indigenous settlement of Mesoamerica, but without exploitable resources of interest to Europeans, the area attracted few Europeans, while the indigenous presence remained strong.

The North was outside the area of complex indigenous populations, inhabited primarily by nomadic and hostile northern indigenous groups. With the discovery of silver in the north, the Spanish sought to conquer or pacify those peoples in order to exploit the mines and develop enterprises to supply them. Nonetheless, much of northern New Spain had sparse indigenous population and attracted few Europeans. The Spanish crown and later the Republic of Mexico did not effectively exert sovereignty over the region, leaving it vulnerable to the expansionism of the United States in the nineteenth century.

Regional characteristics of colonial Mexico have been the focus of considerable study. For those based in the vice-regal capital of Mexico City, everywhere else were the "provinces". Even in the modern era, "Mexico" for many refers solely to Mexico City, with the pejorative view that anywhere outside the capital is a hopeless backwater. "Fuera de México, todo es Cuauhtitlán" ("outside of Mexico City, it's all Podunk"), that is, poor, marginal, and backward, in short, the periphery.

The picture is far more complex, however; while the capital is enormously important as the center of institutional, economic, and social power, the provinces played a significant role in colonial Mexico. Regions (provinces) developed and thrived to the extent that they became sites of economic production and tied into networks of trade. "Spanish society in the Indies was import-export oriented at the very base and in every aspect," and the development of many regional economies was typically centered on support of that export sector.

Mexico City was the center of the Central region, and the hub of New Spain. The development of Mexico City itself was vitally important to the development of New Spain as a whole. It was the seat of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, the Archdiocese of the Catholic Church, the Holy Office of the Inquisition, the merchants' guild (consulado), and home of the most elite families in the Kingdom of New Spain. Mexico City was the single most populous city, not just in New Spain, but for many years the entire Western Hemisphere, with a high concentration of mixed-race castas.

Significant regional development grew along the main transportation route from the capital east to the port of Veracruz. Alexander von Humboldt called this area Mesa de Anahuac, which can be defined as the adjacent valleys of Puebla, Mexico, and Toluca, enclosed by high mountains, along with their connections to the Gulf Coast port of Veracruz and the Pacific port of Acapulco, where over half the population of New Spain lived. These valleys were linked trunk lines, or main routes, facilitating the movement of vital goods and people to get to key areas.

Even in the relatively richly endowed region of Mexico, the difficulty of transit of people and goods in the absence of rivers and level terrain remained a major challenge to the economy of New Spain. This challenge persisted during the post-independence years until the late nineteenth-century construction of railroads. In the colonial era and up until the railroads were built in key areas in post-independence in the late nineteenth century, mule trains were the main mode of transporting goods. Pack mules were used because unpaved roads, mountainous terrain, and seasonal flooding could not generally accommodate carts.

In the late eighteenth century, the crown devoted some resources to study and remedy the poor roads. The Camino Real (royal road) between the port of Veracruz and the capital had some short sections paved and bridges constructed. The construction was done despite protests from some indigenous settlements when the infrastructure improvements, which sometimes included rerouting the road through communal lands. The Spanish crown finally decided that road improvement was in the interests of the state for military purposes, as well as for fostering commerce, agriculture, and industry, but the lack of state involvement in the development of physical infrastructure was to have lasting effects, constraining development until the late nineteenth century. Despite the road improvements, transit was still difficult, particularly for heavy military equipment.

Although the crown had ambitious plans for both the Toluca and Veracruz portions of the king's highway, improvements were limited to a localized network. Even where infrastructure was improved, transit on the Veracruz-Puebla main road had other obstacles, with wolves attacking mule trains, killing animals, and rendering some sacks of foodstuffs unsellable because they were smeared with blood. The north-south Acapulco route remained a mule track through mountainous terrain.

Veracruz was the first Spanish settlement founded in what became New Spain, and it endured as the only viable Gulf Coast port, the gateway for Spain to New Spain. The difficult topography around the port affected local development and New Spain as a whole. Going from the port to the central plateau entailed a daunting 2000 meter climb from the narrow tropical coastal plain in just over a hundred kilometers. The narrow, slippery road in the mountain mists was treacherous for mule trains, and in some cases mules were hoisted by ropes. Many tumbled with their cargo to their deaths.

Given the transport constraints, only high-value, low-bulk goods continued to be shipped in the transatlantic trade, which stimulated local production of foodstuffs, rough textiles, and other products for a mass market. Although New Spain produced considerable sugar and wheat, these were consumed exclusively in the colony even though there was demand elsewhere. Philadelphia, not New Spain, supplied Cuba with wheat.

The Caribbean port of Veracruz was small, with its hot, pestilential climate not a draw for permanent settlers: its population never topped 10,000. Many Spanish merchants preferred living in the pleasant highland town of Jalapa (1,500 m). For a brief period (1722–76) the town of Jalapa became even more important than Veracruz, after it was granted the right to hold the royal trade fair for New Spain, serving as the entre for goods from Asia via Manila galleon through the port of Acapulco and European goods via the flota (convoy) from the Spanish port of Cádiz.

Spaniards also settled in the temperate area of Orizaba, east of the Citlaltepetl volcano. Orizaba varied considerably in elevation from 800 metres (2,600 ft) to 5,700 metres (18,700 ft) (the summit of the Citlaltepetl volcano), but "most of the inhabited part is temperate". Some Spaniards lived in semitropical Córdoba, which was founded as a villa in 1618, to serve as a Spanish base against runaway slave (cimarrón) predations on mule trains traveling the route from the port to the capital. Some cimarrón settlements sought autonomy, such as one led by Gaspar Yanga, with whom the crown concluded a treaty leading to the recognition of a largely black town, San Lorenzo de los Negros de Cerralvo, later called the municipality of Yanga.

European diseases immediately affected the multiethnic Indian populations in the Veracruz area and for that reason Spaniards imported black slaves as either an alternative to indigenous labor or its complete replacement in the event of a repetition of the Caribbean die-off. A few Spaniards acquired prime agricultural lands left vacant by the indigenous demographic disaster. Portions of the province could support sugar cultivation and as early as the 1530s sugar production was underway. New Spain's first viceroy, Don Antonio de Mendoza established an hacienda on lands taken from Orizaba.

Indians resisted cultivating sugarcane themselves, preferring to tend their subsistence crops. As in the Caribbean, black slave labor became crucial to the development of sugar estates. During the period 1580–1640 when Spain and Portugal were ruled by the same monarch and Portuguese slave traders had access to Spanish markets, African slaves were imported in large numbers to New Spain and many of them remained in the region of Veracruz. But even when that connection was broken and prices rose, black slaves remained an important component of Córdoba's labor sector even after 1700. Rural estates in Córdoba depended on African slave labor, who were 20% of the population there, a far greater proportion than any other area of New Spain, and greater than even nearby Jalapa.

In 1765 the crown created a monopoly on tobacco, which directly affected agriculture and manufacturing in the Veracruz region. Tobacco was a valuable, high-demand product. Men, women, and even children smoked, something commented on by foreign travelers and depicted in eighteenth-century casta paintings. The crown calculated that tobacco could produce a steady stream of tax revenues by supplying the huge Mexican demand, so the crown limited zones of tobacco cultivation. It also established a small number of factories of finished products, and licensed distribution outlets (estanquillos). The crown also set up warehouses to store up to a year's worth of supplies, including paper for cigarettes, for the factories. With the establishment of the monopoly, crown revenues increased and there is evidence that despite high prices and expanding rates of poverty, tobacco consumption rose while at the same time, general consumption fell.

In 1787 during the Bourbon Reforms Veracruz became an intendancy, a new administrative unit.

Founded in 1531 as a Spanish settlement, Puebla de los Angeles quickly rose to the status of Mexico's second-most important city. Its location on the main route between the viceregal capital and the port of Veracruz, in a fertile basin with a dense indigenous population, largely not held in encomienda, made Puebla a destination for later arriving Spaniards. If there had been significant mineral wealth in Puebla, it could have been even more prominent a center for New Spain, but its first century established its importance. In 1786 it became the capital of an intendancy of the same name.

It became the seat of the richest diocese in New Spain in its first century, with the seat of the first diocese, formerly in Tlaxcala, moved there in 1543. Bishop Juan de Palafox asserted that the income from the diocese of Puebla was twice that of the archbishopic of Mexico, due to the tithe income derived from agriculture. In its first hundred years, Puebla was prosperous from wheat farming and other agriculture, as the ample tithe income indicates, plus manufacturing woolen cloth for the domestic market. Merchants, manufacturers, and artisans were important to the city's economic fortunes, but its early prosperity was followed by stagnation and decline in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

The foundation of the town of Puebla was a pragmatic social experiment to settle Spanish immigrants without encomiendas to pursue farming and industry. Puebla was privileged in a number of ways, starting with its status as a Spanish settlement not founded on existing indigenous city-state, but with a significant indigenous population. It was located in a fertile basin on a temperate plateau in the nexus of the key trade triangle of Veracruz–Mexico City–Antequera (Oaxaca). Although there were no encomiendas in Puebla itself, encomenderos with nearby labor grants settled in Puebla.

Spanish settlers brought to the American continent smallpox, measles, typhoid fever, and other infectious diseases. Most of the Spanish settlers had developed an immunity to these diseases from childhood, but the indigenous peoples lacked the needed antibodies since these diseases were totally alien to the native population. There were at least three separate, major epidemics that devastated the population: smallpox (1520–1521), measles (1545–1548) and typhus (1576–1581).

At least 12 epidemics are attributed to cocoliztli, with the largest occurring in 1545, 1576, 1736, and 1813.

During the 16th century, the native population of Mexico fell from an estimated pre-Columbian population of 8 to 20 million to less than two million. Therefore, at the start of the 17th century, continental New Spain was a depopulated region with abandoned cities and maize fields. These diseases did not affect the Philippines in the same way because they were already present; Pre-Hispanic Filipinos had contact with other foreign nationalities prior to the arrival of the Spaniards.

While different intendancies would conduct censuses to get insights into their inhabitants (namely occupation, number of persons per household, ethnicity etc.), it was not until 1793 that the results of the first national census would be published. That census is known as the "Revillagigedo census" because its creation was ordered by the Count of the same name. Most of the census' original datasets have reportedly been lost; thus most of what is known about it comes from essays and field investigations made by academics who had access to the census data and used it as reference for their works, such as Prussian geographer Alexander von Humboldt. Each author gives different estimates for the total population, ranging from 3,799,561 to 6,122,354 (more recent data suggest that the population of New Spain in 1810 was 5 to 5.5 million individuals) and not much variation in ethnic composition, with Europeans ranging from 18% to 23% of New Spain's population, Mestizos ranging from 21% to 25%, Amerindians ranging from 51% to 61% and Africans being between 6,000 and 10,000. It is concluded then, that across nearly three centuries of colonization, the population growth trends of Europeans and Mestizos were steady, while the percentage of the indigenous population decreased at a rate of 13%–17% per century. The authors assert that rather than Europeans and Mestizos having higher birthrates, the reason for the indigenous population's decrease lies with their higher mortality, due to living in remote locations rather than in cities and towns founded by the Spanish colonists, or being at war with them. It is also for these reasons that the number of indigenous Mexicans presents a greater variation between publications, with their numbers in a given location estimated rather than counted, leading to possible overestimations in some provinces and underestimations in others.

~Europeans are included within the Mestizo category.

Regardless of the imprecision related to the counting of indigenous peoples living outside of the colonized areas, the effort that New Spain's authorities put into considering them as subjects is worth mentioning, as censuses made by other colonial or post-colonial countries did not consider American Indians to be citizens/subjects. For example the censuses made by the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata would only count the inhabitants of the colonized settlements. Another example would be the censuses made by the United States, that did not count Indigenous peoples living among the general population until 1860, and indigenous peoples as a whole until 1900.

Once New Spain achieved independence, the legal basis of the colonial caste system was abolished and mentions of a person's caste in official documents was also abandoned, which led to the exclusion of racial classification from future censuses, and made it difficult to track demographic development of each ethnicity in the country. More than a century would pass before Mexico conducted a new census on which a person's race was listed, in 1921, but even then, due to its huge inconsistencies with other official registers as well as its historic context, modern investigators have deemed it inaccurate. Almost a century after the 1921 census, Mexico's government has begun to conduct ethno-racial surveys again, with results suggesting that the population growth trends for each major ethnic group haven't changed significantly since the 1793 census.

The capital of Viceroyalty of New Spain, Mexico City, was one of the principal centers of European cultural expansion in the Americas. Some of the most important early buildings in New Spain were churches and other religious architecture. Civil architecture included the viceregal palace, now the National Palace, and the Mexico City town council (cabildo), both located on the main square in the capital.

The first printing press in the New World was brought to Mexico in 1539, by printer Juan Pablos (Giovanni Paoli). The first book printed in Mexico was entitled "La escala espiritual de San Juan Clímaco". In 1568, Bernal Díaz del Castillo finished La Historia Verdadera de la Conquista de la Nueva España. Figures such as Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Juan Ruiz de Alarcón, and don Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora, stand out as some of the viceroyalty's most notable contributors to Spanish literature. In 1693, Sigüenza y Góngora published El Mercurio Volante, the first newspaper in New Spain.

Architects Pedro Martínez Vázquez and Lorenzo Rodriguez produced some visually frenetic architecture known as churrigueresque in the capital, Ocotlan, Puebla and some remote silver-mining towns. Composers including Manuel de Zumaya, Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla, and Antonio de Salazar were active from the early 1500s through the Baroque period of music.