Ida Louise Altman (born 1950) is an Americanhistorian ofearly modern Spain andLatin America. Her bookEmigrants and Society: Extremadura and Spanish America in the Sixteenth Century received the 1990Herbert E. Bolton Prize of theConference on Latin American History.^[1] She is Professor Emerita of History at theUniversity of Florida and served as Department Chair.

Altman is noted as a social historian for herprimary research intomigration patterns and individual migrations in theSpanishcolonial period and the effects of source communities in theOld World on the economies and social development of destination communities in theNew World, and vice versa.^[2]

Ida Altman was born inWashington, D.C. She graduated fromWashington-Lee High School (now Washington-Liberty High School) inArlington, Virginia. She received herB.A. from theUniversity of Michigan,Ann Arbor; amaster's degree from theUniversity of Texas at Austin; and herPh.D. fromJohns Hopkins University, where she studiedAtlantic history.

Altman taught at theHebrew University inJerusalem and taught for many years at theUniversity of New Orleans, where she was Professor of History and then designated University Research Professor. She served aschair of the Historydepartment until shortly afterHurricane Katrina in 2005.^[3] Dr. Altman joined the faculty of the University of Florida in August 2006^[4] and became chair of the history department in August 2010.

In 2002, she married Richmond F. Brown (1961-2016), a historian of Guatemala (PhD Tulane University).

Altman's first article was published in 1976, "A Family and Region in the Northern Fringe Lands: The Marqueses de Aguayo ofNuevo León andCoahuila", in the now classicanthology on regional variation incolonial Mexico.^[5] For her study of the elite Marqueses de Aguayo over several generations, she drew on rich archival sources, mainly at theUniversity of Texas, with specificity of locale and individuals, and placed them within the larger colonial world.

When Altman finished her Ph.D. in 1982, the idea of theAtlantic World was not widely accepted as a field in history, although Johns Hopkins University was an important innovator in this field. Through meticulous archival research, she traced patterns of Spanishconquistadors returning to their home region ofExtremadura in Western Spain. Her doctoraldissertation brought attention to the whole field of Spanish Atlantic history, which culminated when she was a co-winner of the Conference onLatin American History's Bolton Prize (1990) for the book, followed quickly by a prize awarded by theSpanish Ministry of Culture.

Altman followed upEmigrants and Society quickly with her second co-edited and co-authored volume,"To Make America": European Immigration in the Early Modern Period, which broadened the conversation about transatlantic migration.^[6]

In her second single-authormonograph,Transatlantic Ties, Altman focused on two particular localities, the textile-producing Spanish town ofBrihuega and Mexico's second-most important colonial city,Puebla de los Angeles. She traced social and economic networks, as well as cultural continuities and discontinuities in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Puebla was a natural way-station between the port ofVeracruz and the viceregal capital,Mexico City, but it developed as a richagricultural zone and as a locus fortextile production for a colonial mass market. Push factors from Spain as local industry declined meant that Puebla represented new economic horizons for skilled Spanish immigrants. Altman's research and reconstruction of social networks in Brihuega and Puebla shows how immigrants maintained their identity in a new location. Her work demonstrates thatidentity politics of immigrants is not a modern phenomenon, but one with a long history.^[7]

In her third major monograph,The War for Mexico's West, Altman brings to an English-speaking readership the story of the Spanish attempts to conquer and settle Western Mexico, a far more complex and lengthy endeavor than the quick and decisive victory which they had gained in CentralMexico with the aid of indigenous allies. This historical study blends narrative history of the early campaigns from both the Spanish and indigenous perspectives, without the benefit of contemporary accounts by the participants. Through the close reading of Spanish-language documentation she has been able to produce a multifaceted picture of the indigenous peoples' response to Spanish conquest, settlement, and attempts to extract labor and tribute where there were no indigenous precedents. Unlike the conquest of central Mexico, the war in the west was protracted and marked by the most serious challenge to Spanish triumphalist expansion in the multi-ethnic region rebellion known in history as theMixtón War (1541). Altman examines the initial Spanish expeditions to the region, one by a kinsman ofHernán Cortés, and then the more horrific campaign ofNuño de Guzmán.

Altman's examination of the historical dynamics of the Mixtón rebellion is concrete evidence for long-term, complex planning by multiple indigenous groups to expel theSpaniards and regain their autonomy. Her examination of the role of viceroy DonAntonio de Mendoza in putting down the rebellion supports the general picture of Mendoza as a remarkable administrator. In Altman's close examination of Mendoza's end-of-term assessment (residencia) she recounts incidents that show even he had a ruthless andpragmatic side.^[8] Altman's book brings narrative back into history, which is particularly for non-specialists.

In Altman's fourth single-author monograph,Life and Society in the Early Spanish Caribbean: The Greater Antilles, 1493–1550 (2021), she examines the half century of European activity in the Caribbean that followedColumbus’s first voyages. Those brought enormous demographic, economic, and social change as Europeans, Indigenous people, and Africans whom Spaniards imported to provide skilled and unskilled labor came into extended contact for the first time. The book examines their interactions and the transformation of the islands of the Greater Antilles, addressing the impact of disease and ongoing conflict, the Spanish monarchy’s efforts to establish a functioning political system and an Iberian church, the islands’ economic development, and the formation of a highly unequal and coercive but dynamic society. She discusses the work in an author interview withJames Boyden.^[9]

With Mexicanist colleagues Sarah Cline and Javier Pescador, Altman co-authored a textbook entitledThe Early History of Greater Mexico. It is described in a review as "the best textbook on colonial Mexico to date. It is unrivaled in its breadth of coverage and its insight."^[10] There is ample coverage of theconquest of Mexico as an event as well as a separate chapter on narratives of the conquest. There is a strong emphasis onsocioeconomic history of different regions of Mexico. "Greater Mexico" in the title alludes to the territorial expanse of New Spain's northwest, which is now the Southwest of the U.S.

• Life and Society in the Early Spanish Caribbean: The Greater Antilles, 1493–1550. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press 2021.ISBN 978-0807175781
• "Failed experiments: negotiating freedom in early Puerto Rico and Cuba." Colonial Latin American Review: Vol 29, No 1. April 2020
• ed. with David Wheat.The Spanish Caribbean and the Atlantic World in the Long Sixteenth Century. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press 2019.ISBN 978-0803299573
• Contesting Conquest: Indigenous Perspectives on the Spanish Occupation of Nueva Galicia, 1524–1545. Penn State University Press 2017.ISBN 978-0-271-07856-4
• "Key to the Indies: Port Towns in the Spanish Caribbean: 1493-1550."The Americas 74:1(Jan. 2017):5-26.
• The War for Mexico's West.Indians and Spaniards in New Galicia, 1524-1550.Albuquerque, New Mexico, 2010.ISBN 978-0826344939
• "The Revolt ofEnriquillo and theHistoriography of Early Spanish America,"The Americas vol. 63(4)2007, 587-614
• (with Sarah Cline & Juan Javier Pescador),The Early History of Greater Mexico.Upper Saddle River,NJ:Prentice Hall, 2003.ISBN 978-0130915436
• Transatlantic Ties in the Spanish Empire: Brihuega, Spain, and Puebla, Mexico, 1560-1620.Stanford,CA:Stanford University Press, 2000.ISBN 978-0804736633
• Editor, (with James J. Horn)."To Make America": European Emigration in the Early Modern Period.Berkeley:University of California Press, 1991.ISBN 978-0520325678
• Emigrants and Society: Extremadura and Spanish America in the Sixteenth Century. Berkeley:University of California Press, 1989.ISBN 978-0520064942
• Editor, (withJames Lockhart).Provinces of early Mexico: variants of Spanish American regional evolution.Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center Publications,University of California, 1976.ISBN 978-0879030360
• "Marriage, Family, and Ethnicity in the Early Spanish Caribbean,"William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser. 70:2(2013):226-250.

• Conference on Latin American History
• University of Florida Department of History
• Ida Altman author picks for books on the early Caribbean
• LSU Press, live author interview with Altman
• Queen Sofía Spanish Institute roundtable: La primera globalización, The voyage that shaped the world, May 2022, Altman roundtable participant

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