The Colonial Crisis in Mexico and Peru: Methodological Problems of Comparison

In historiography, the crisis of the Spanish overseas Empire and the process of Spanish American State formation have been the object of innumerable books and studies, mostly of a traditional, purely political-military type. During recent decades, fortunately, students have also increasingly turned their attention to the economic, social and cultural aspects of the giant, twin processes. Apart from the traditional type of essayist historians, there are today a considerable number of professional historians in the various Latin American countries, who like their Latin Americanist colleagues in Europe and the United States, are quite specialized in geographical, chronological and thematical terms. Certain specialization is per se a prerequisite for serious research.