Silvio Zavala and the Institutionalization of Rankean History in Post-Revolutionary Mexico

Despite Edmundo O’Gorman’s criticisms, Silvio Zavala vigorously defended the Rankean model and institutionalized it as the core of professional historical training in Mexico. His advocacy ensured that a simplified image of Leopold von Ranke—emphasizing archival obsession and objective truth—dominated the curriculum. While other historiographical understandings were present, this focus on method often came at the expense of deeper theoretical reflection. Many scholars argue that this early sidelining of philosophical debate within the academy contributed to later perennial declarations of history as a "discipline in crisis."

The foundational context for this professionalization was the arrival of exiled Spanish intellectuals at the Casa de España in 1938, later transformed into El Colegio de México in 1940. These scholars, including Rafael Altamira, sought to continue on Mexican soil the liberal project of renewing the humanities that had been halted by Franco's victory. Zavala, a disciple of Altamira, became the pivotal figure, establishing the Centro de Estudios Históricos at El Colegio in 1941 after a similar attempt at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) had failed due to a lack of dedicated students.

Zavala’s influence was magnified by his simultaneous occupancy of key administrative posts, effectively making him a director of the nation’s historical enterprise. He led the Centro de Estudios Históricos (1941-56), the Museo Nacional de Historia (1946-54), and the Comisión de Historia of the Panamerican Institute of Geography and History (1947-65). With funding from the Guggenheim Foundation, he launched critical source-publication projects like Fuentes para la Historia del Trabajo en la Nueva España. By 1953, luminary Alfonso Reyes hailed Zavala as the model historian, explicitly comparing his source-driven impartiality to the idealized image of Ranke.

Zavala’s vision was directly inherited from Altamira, who had adopted Ranke’s objective history as a tool for understanding national spirit. This approach was underpinned by Krausism, a German Romantic philosophy that promoted a universal "world society" and deeply influenced Spanish liberalism. Translated to Mexico, this philosophy helped institutionalize history as a discipline for national reconciliation and regeneration after the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920). Altamira himself, teaching in Mexico in 1948, argued that historians must understand events within their context to re-establish civilizational harmony, a direct echo of Rankean principles.

The reform pushed by Altamira and Zavala advocated for a history that looked beyond politics to the environmental, economic, and cultural factors shaping a people’s spirit. This broader scope serendipitously echoed the contemporary call for global history by Lucien Febvre and Fernand Braudel of the French Annales School. In practice, Zavala and Spanish historian José Miranda focused seminars on the legal institutions of Spanish America, aiming to provide an objective history that could bridge the bitter national divide between hispanicists and indigenists.

This professionalization occurred within the specific political climate of post-Revolution Mexico, characterized by the institutionalization of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) in 1946 and a postwar emphasis on national unity. History was tasked with explaining the Mexican past in a way that would heal divisions and foster patriotism. A 1944 address to the Academia Mexicana de la Historia explicitly stated that a broadly studied history would bring justice to past conflicts and solidify national union.

A seminal sign of this new, cooperative academic climate was the first North American-Mexican history conference in 1949, organized by Zavala and American historian Lewis Hanke. Hanke emphasized building a professional esprit de corps through shared commitment to primary sources and truthful history, aiming to ease historiographic tensions between the two nations. This formalized exchange, later expanded to include Canada, endures today, cementing the transnational academic framework that Zavala’s Rankean project helped initiate.