The historiography of Spanish America in multiple languages is vast and has a long history.See the volumes of Handbook of Middle American Indians (HMAI), Guide to Ethnohistorical Sources. 4 vols. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1972 for a compendium of early modern sources and histories.J. Benedict Warren, "An Introductory Survey of Secular Writings in the European Tradition on Colonial Middle America, 1503–1818." HMAI vol. 13, pp. 42–137.Ernest J. Burrus, S.J. "Religious Chroniclers and Historians: A Summary with Annotated Bibliography." HMAI vol. 13, pp. 138–186 It dates back to the early sixteenth century with multiple competing accounts of the conquest, Spaniards’ eighteenth-century attempts to discover how to reverse the decline of its empire,Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, How to Write the History of the New World: Histories, Epistemologies, and Identities in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World. Stanford: Stanford University Press 2001. and people of Spanish descent born in the Americas (criollos) search for an identity other than Spanish, and the creation of creole patriotism.D.A. Brading, The First America: The Spanish Monarchy, Creole Patriots, and the Liberal State, 1492–1867. New York: Cambridge University Press 1991. Following independence in some parts of Spanish America, some politically engaged citizens of the new sovereign nations sought to shape national identity.see Lucas Alamán, Historia de Mejico. 5 vols. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, non-Spanish American historians began writing chronicles important events, such as the conquests of the Aztec Empire and the Inca Empire,William H. Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico (1843) and History of the Conquest of Peru (1847), which have gone through multiple editions. dispassionate histories of the Spanish imperial project after its almost complete demise in the hemisphere,Edward Gaylord Bourne, Spain in America, 1450–1580. 4 vols. A new edition with a new introduction and supplementary bibliography was published in 1962. New York: Barnes & Noble. and histories of the southwest borderlands, areas of the United States that had previously been part of the Spanish Empire, led by Herbert Eugene Bolton.Herbert Eugene Bolton, "The Epic of Greater America," American Historical Review 38–448–474 (April 1933), presidential address. At the turn of the twentieth century, scholarly research on Spanish America saw the creation of college courses dealing with the region, the systematic training of professional historians in the field, and the founding of the first specialized journal, Hispanic American Historical Review.Howard F. Cline, "Latin American History: Development of Its Study and Teaching in the United States Since 1898," in Latin American History: Essays on Its Study and Teaching, 1898–1965. Howard F. Cline, ed. Austin: University of Texas Press 1967, pp. 6–16.J. Franklin Jameson, "A New American Historical Journal", Hispanic American Historical Review 1:2–7 (Feb. 1918). For most of the twentieth century, historians of colonial Spanish America read and were familiar with a large canon of work. With the expansion of the field in the late twentieth century, there has been the establishment of new subfields, the founding of new journals, and the proliferation of monographs, anthologies, and articles for increasingly specialized practitioners and readerships. The Conference on Latin American History, the organization of Latin American historians affiliated with the American Historical Association, awards a number of prizes for publications, with works on early Latin American history well represented. The Latin American Studies Association has a section devoted to scholarship on the colonial era.

General works

Although the term "colonial" is contested by some scholars as being historically inaccurate, pejorative, or both,James Lockhart and Stuart B. Schwartz, Early Latin America. New York: Cambridge University Press 1983. They state in the final sentence of the textbook that "at the deepest level, there are only two periods in the history of the Western Hemisphere, preconquest and postconquest, with the entire span since the arrival of the Europeans a single, unbroken continuum in most respects." p. 426.Mark A. Burkholder,(2016) "Spain’s America: from kingdoms to colonies, Colonial Latin American Review, 25:2, 125–153, Annick Lempérière. 2004. "La ‘cuestión colonial.’ Nuevo Mundo Mundos Nuevos. http://nuevomundo.revues.org/437; it remains a standard term for the titles of books, articles, and scholarly journals and the like to denote the period 1492 – ca. 1825.

The first two volumes of the ten-volume Cambridge History of Latin America focus on the colonial era, with the following eight volumes concerned with the independence era to circa 1980.Cambridge History of Latin America, Leslie Bethell, ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1984. The purpose of the project was "to produce a high-level synthesis of existing knowledge which will provide historians of Latin America with a solid basis for future research, which students of Latin America will find useful and which will be of interest to historians of other areas of the world" (vol. 1, p. xiv). Volume One deals with the prehispanic era, conquest and settlement, and the establishment of government and commerce. Volume Two focuses on economic and social history, with chapters on Blacks, Indians, and women, groups that were generally excluded from scholarly attention until the late twentieth century.McFarlane, A. (1987). Latin American History: A new synthesis? History, 72(236), 453–463. Retrieved from Some colonial historians reviewing the first two volumes criticized the overall structure of the series and the colonial-focused volumes themselves. These concern the “presentist,” structure of the project, seeing the colonial era as a prelude to the modern era rather than giving full weight to the three hundred years of rule by the Spanish Empire and Portuguese Empire; cursory treatment of the linkages between Europe and the Americas; the lack of linkages between the articles; and lack of comparison between Spanish America and Brazil.McAlister, Lyle N. (1985). American Historical Review, 90(5), 1304–1305. The emphasis on social and economic history and the general lack of discussion of the institutions of the Catholic Church and the State may be a reflection of academic interests of the contributors and the era of the 1960s and 1970s when many contributors were trained.Wells, Alan. (1987). The History Teacher, 20(3), 429–431. The almost complete absence of contributions by Latin American or Spanish scholars comes in for criticism, with one reviewer considering that issue “the fundamental flaw of this entire production to date.”Hamnett, B. (1986). The English Historical Review, 101(400), 688–690. Retrieved from

A number of general works used as textbooks have focused on the colonial era for both Spanish America and Brazil, providing an overview of the field. A major synthesis comparing Spanish America and Brazil, by two contributors to the Cambridge History of Latin America, is James Lockhart's and Stuart B. Schwartz's 1983 Early Latin America.James Lockhart and Stuart B. Schwartz, Early Latin America: A History of Colonial Spanish America and Brazil. New York: Cambridge University Press 1983. They argue that Spanish America and Brazil were structurally similar and "that political and cultural differences between Spanish and Portuguese America were less significant than the economic and social differences between central and peripheral regions." This idea was proposed in Stanley J. Stein and Barbara H. Stein's The Colonial Heritage of Latin America (1970),Stanley J. Stein and Barbara H. Stein, The Colonial Heritage of Latin America. New York: Oxford University Press 1970 but which Lockhart and Schwartz work out in more detail, examining both internal as well as external linkages. Early Latin America is written as a textbook and although it has not undergone multiple editions for a mass market, it remains an important and affordable work synthesizing considerable material found in the first two volumes of the Cambridge History of Latin America.McFarlane, A. (1987). Latin American History: A new synthesis? History, 72(236), p. 462. Retrieved from A standard work on colonial Latin America that has gone through multiple editions is Mark Burkholder and Lyman L. Johnson's Colonial Latin America.Mark Burkholder and Lyman L. Johnson, Colonial Latin America 9th edition. New York: Oxford University Press 2014. Matthew Restall and Kris Lane have published Latin America in Colonial Times for the textbook market.Matthew Restall and Kris Lane, Latin America in Colonial Times. New York: Cambridge University Press 2011 Collections of primary source documents have been published over the years, which are especially valuable for classroom use.James Lockhart and Enrique Otte, Letters and People of the Indies: Sixteenth Century. New York: Cambridge University Press 1976.Kenneth Mills and William B. Taylor, eds. Colonial Spanish America: A Documentary History. Lanham MD: SR Books 1998.Kenneth Mills, William B. Taylor, and Sandra Lauderdale Graham, Colonial Latin America: A Documentary History. Lanham MD: SR Books 2002.Richard Boyer and Geoffrey Spurling, Colonial Lives: Documents on Latin American History, 1550–1850. New York: Oxford University Press 1999.

There are relatively few general works on in English on a single country, but Mexico has been the subject of a number of histories.Michael C. Meyer, William Sherman, and Susan Deeds, The Course of Mexican History. 10th ed., New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. There is a significant portion of it on colonial history.Michael C. Meyer and William H. Beezley, The Oxford History of Mexico. New York: Oxford University Press 2000.William H. Beezley, A Companion to Mexican History and Culture. Malden MA: Wiley-Blackwell 2011. Two general works concentrating on the colonial period are by Ida Altman and coauthors.Ida Altman, Sarah Cline & Juan Javier Pescador, The Early History of Greater Mexico. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2003 and Alan Knight.Alan Knight, Mexico: The Colonial Era, 1540–1810, New York: Cambridge University Press 2002.