Mexican history is frequently told through trauma — the chaos of the Spanish conquest, the humiliation of military defeat to the United States, the disruption of revolution and, today, the brutality of the drug cartels.
But historian Paul Gillingham offers a new view of Mexico a national that has shaped the world, created an early democracy and forged a society that set the standard for legal rights that were “unthinkable” north of the border.
Gillingham has published a new, wide-ranging account of Mexico’s past that argues the country’s story is too often reduced to conquest, defeat and revolution, and that its democratic and multicultural innovations deserve equal attention.
In “Mexico: A 500-Year History” the Northwestern University professor traces five centuries from the fall of Indigenous empires through Spanish colonial rule, independence, the U.S.-Mexico War, the 1910 Revolution and the modern state. He frames Mexico as both a national narrative and a global force, showing how its silver, labor systems and political ideas reshaped trade, migration and power far beyond its borders.
Rather than beginning with Hernán Cortés, Gillingham opens with Gonzalo Guerrero, a Spaniard who shipwrecked in the Yucatán, joined Maya society and married a Mayan to father what could be the first Mexicans — an outcome that foreshadowed the creation of a new people through the collision of worlds.
The 752-page narrative traces Mexico from the first decades of Spanish invasion to the present day.
The book presents a throughline that Mexico is at the center of global economic shifts, especially the way silver from New Spain fueled international trade and state power across continents. Mexico’s role in world affairs, Gillingham argues, was not peripheral: it was integral to the early modern global economy and to the movement of people, capital, and political models.
The book also emphasizes political and social “firsts” that are often overlooked. Among them: Mexico’s early abolition of slavery under President Vicente Guerrero, whose 1829 decree prohibited slavery across most of the country.
Gillingham uses episodes like Guerrero’s presidency to explore how Mexico grappled — sometimes ahead of its neighbors — with multiculturalism, citizenship, and the rights of marginalized communities.
Across five centuries, "Mexico" follows the country’s political evolution from colonial rule to independence, foreign invasions and wars, the Mexican Revolution, the consolidation of a one-party state, and today’s democratic tensions and violence, including the long shadow of the drug war.
Woven through the political narrative is cultural history: Mexico’s outsized artistic influence and the ways artists, intellectuals, and popular movements helped define national identity.
Guest:
Paul Gillingham is a prize-winning historian and professor at Northwestern University, where he specializes in politics, culture, and violence in modern Mexico. His new book is “Mexico: A 500-Year History.”
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This episode will be recorded on Wednesday, January 14, 2026, at 12:00 p.m.
