New Spain

New Spain developed after the conquest of central Mexico and eventually included territories across North America, the Caribbean and the Pacific. Mexico City was built over Tenochtitlan and became the administrative centre of a vast colonial economy.

Spanish settlers, Indigenous communities, Africans, mixed-ancestry populations and migrants from Asia lived within a legal and social order structured by Crown authority, the Catholic Church, tribute, forced labour, slavery and unequal access to office and land.

This context supports fiction about colonial Mexico from the first post-conquest decades to the wars that ended Spanish rule.