New Spain Spain, at 42d north (now the northern boundary of the U.S. states of California, Nevada, and Utah). In the 1821 Declaration of Independence of the Mexican Empire, both Mexico and Central America declared their independence after three centuries of Spanish rule and formed the First Mexican Empire, although Central America quickly rejected the union. After priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla's 1810 Grito de Dolores (call for independence), the insurgent army began an eleven-year war. At first, the Criollo class fought against the rebels. But in 1820, a military coup in Spain forced Ferdinand VII to accept the authority of the
Historiography of Colonial Spanish America disdain. An important example is Mexico's conservative politician and intellectual Lucas Alamán. His five-volume "Historia de Mejico" is the country's first history, covering the colonial era up to and including the struggle for independence. Alamán viewed crown rule during the colonial era as ideal, and political independence that after the brief monarchy of Agustín de Iturbide, the Mexican republic was characterized by liberal demagoguery and factionalism. Writing in the mid-nineteenth century, Mexican liberal Vicente Riva Palacio, grandson of insurgent hero Vicente Guerrero, wrote a five-volume history of the colonial era from a liberal viewpoint, During the era of Porfirio Díaz