Changes in Spanish American Empire

The eighteenth century brought great changes to the Spanish American empire. Spain's Bourbon dynasty tried to implement in its colonies a series of economic, political, and financial measures that would guarantee greater commercial and industrial stability and hence a larger income for the Crown. Spain implemented these measures in order to avert a possible economic disaster for the empire. However, the new policies, both in America and Spain, upset many Spaniards, criollos (those of Spanish descent born in the Americas), and indigenous people. The old, established methods had changed, and their incomes were decreasing. Together with the late eighteenth century's growing philosophic and revolutionary mood, these policies led to a growing disaffection of the Spanish authorities.

Napoléon's invasion of Spain and Portugal and the collapse of royal authority in 1808 created a vacuum of political power, both in the Iberian Peninsula and in the colonies, which criollos and Spaniards alike in both places rushed to fill. After 1810, war, hunger, diseases, the collapse of the mining industry, and higher taxes overwhelmed the viceroyalty of New Spain. The loss in population and commerce limited the economic and political possibilities of the new country born after the Plan de Iguala, signed by Vicente Guerrero and Agustin de Iturbide in 1821.

Throughout Mexico municipal councils, or cabildos, feared the new situation. For the first time since the viceroyalty's establishment in New Spain, power and authority were not distant forces in Europe, but were closer, in Mexico City. Enormous territories and regions held for centuries by overlapping authorities, mostly named by the king and the Council of Indies in Spain, were now forced to seek approval from a central government installed in the new capital. Spain had not organized a centralized empire but rather a loose one. Most Mexican cities, such as Guadalajara, which were controlled by local merchants and wealthy landowners whose incomes were not necessarily controlled by their relationship to Mexico City, tried to stay autonomous in their urban and regional actions, although they gave lip service to the "nation" and the problems that were dealt by the officials in Mexico City. Regionalism was deeply set in Mexico and was controlled by cities and their leaders throughout most of the early Independence period.

In 1803, the scholar Alexander von Humboldt assigned the viceroyalty of New Spain a total population of 5,800,000. Mexico City, its administrative center and largest city, had approximately 137,000 inhabitants. At the time there was a growing urban population, especially in cities located in mining and commercial regions, such as Guadalajara, Guanajuato, Veracruz, and Morelia. However, studies indicate that the urban growth in those cities and elsewhere stopped or decreased during and after Independence. Few of the studied cities were able to attain the population level reached in 1803 until the last years of the nineteenth century, and some not until after the Revolution of 1910.