Charles Gibson

Who was Charles Gibson?

Charles Gibson was a major American ethnohistorian who wrote foundational works on the Nahua peoples of colonial Mexico. He studied history at Yale University with George Kubler, and he taught for a number of years at University of Iowa before moving to University of Michigan. His dissertation on the Nahua polity of Tlaxcala, which was a key ally of the Spaniards in the conquest of Mexico, published in 1952 as Tlaxcala in the Sixteenth Century. It was the first major study of conquest and early colonial era Nahuas from the indigenous perspective. It remains a model for scholars working on Mesoamerican ethnohistory, or more simply put, history of Mexican Indians.He served as President of the American Historical Association in 1977. He also contributed to the creation of important bibliographic guides to texts on Mesoamerican ethnohistory as well as an index to the journal Hispanic American Historical Review. The culmination of his work on colonial-era Nahuas isThe Aztecs Under Spanish Rule: A History of the Indians of the Valley of Mexico, 1519-1810.

Works:

Tlaxcala in the Sixteenth Century, New Haven: Yale University Press 1952.

The Aztecs Under Spanish Rule: A History of the Indians of the Valley of Mexico, 1519-1810. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1964.