Gibson, Charles (1920–1985)

Charles Gibson, one of the leading historians of colonial Latin America, inspired a generation of scholars who went on to found the field of ethnohistory. Born in Buffalo, New York, Gibson received a bachelor of arts degree from Yale in 1941, a master's from the University of Texas, Austin, in 1947, and a doctorate from Yale in 1950. He served in the army during World War II and then from 1949 taught at the University of Iowa. In 1965 he accepted a position at the University of Michigan, where in 1977 he was named the Irving A. Leonard Distinguished University Professor.

Gibson's first major publication, with George Kubler, was a 1951 study of the sixteenth-century calendar by Juan de Tovar. In 1952 he published Tlaxcala in the Sixteenth Century. This work served as a prelude for his ground-breaking 1964 study of native peoples in the Valley of Mexico in the colonial period, The Aztecs under Spanish Rule, which became the touchstone for all further research on the general topic. He wrote scores of articles and several other books, including, in 1966, Spain in America, a synthesis of colonial Latin American history. Gibson served as the president of the American Historical Association in 1977 and was a member of the editorial boards of the Hispanic American Historical Review, the American Historical Review, and the Handbook of Latin American Studies.

See alsoHandbook of Latin American Studies; Hispanic American Historical Review; Indigenous Peoples; Tlaxcala.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Gibson, Charles. Tlaxcala in the Sixteenth Century. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1952. Reprint, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1967.

Gibson, Charles. The Aztecs under Spanish Rule: A History of the Indians of the Valley of Mexico, 1519–1810. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1964.

Gibson, Charles. Spain in America. New York: Harper and Row, 1966.

Gibson, Charles. The Spanish Tradition in America. New York: Harper & Row, 1968.

Gibson, Charles. The Inca Concept of Sovereignty and the Spanish Administration in Peru. New York: Greenwood, 1969.

Gibson, Charles. The Black Legend: Anti-Spanish Attitudes in the Old World and the New. New York: Knopf, 1971.

Gibson, Charles, and George Kubler. The Tovar Calendar: An Illustrated Mexican Manuscript ca. 1585. New Haven, CT: The Academy, 1951.

                                   John F. Schwaller