Kingdom of Mexico

The Kingdom of Mexico was New Spain's core kingdom from 1548 to 1821, the Mexico Tenochtitlan that the viceroys ruled directly. Beneath the viceroyalty's vast claims from California to Manila, the kingdom proper meant central Mexico: the audiencias' provinces of Mexico, Puebla, Oaxaca, Valladolid, Guanajuato and Toluca, taxed, mined and missionized up close. Mendoza, first viceroy, founded its administration; Revillagigedo, the enlightened one, paved Mexico City, lit its streets and counted its people. The Bajio silver made the kingdom the richest land under any European crown; the intendants of 1786 squeezed it harder and mapped every village. Hidalgo's 1810 cry shook but did not take it; Morelos's congresses wrote constitutions in the hills. The end came from the royalists themselves: Iturbide, sent to crush the last rebels, turned his army around with the Plan of Iguala in 1821, marched into Mexico City, and made the kingdom an empire with himself on the throne. New Spain dissolved around it; the kingdom's three centuries as Spain's model province closed, and Mexico's turbulent century began.