Juan Bautista Muñoz

Juan Bautista Muñoz (1745–1799) was a Spanish historian born at Museros near Valencia. A Dominican philosopher, he taught at Valencia University until Charles III made him cosmographer-major of the Indies in 1770. In 1779 the king charged him with writing an archive-based history of the Spanish Americas.

In Seville from 1784 he persuaded ministers to gather all overseas documents into one repository; the result was the Archive of the Indies in a former merchants' exchange. The first volume of his History of the New World appeared in 1793, and he died in Madrid six years later.