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Although the army of New Spain exhibited few if any signs of praetorianism or militarism prior to the independence wars, 1810-1821, many observers in the decades following national independence described the military as one of the negative impediments to progress in the young Mexican republic. Clearly, the decade of insurgency, guerrilla warfare, and fragmentation of the old polity caused dramatic changes in the attitudes and behavior of army officers. The present article analyzes the impact of the war on the royalist army, which in 1821 largely transformed itself to declare for independence. To develop effective counterinsurgency programs, officers assumed active political and administrative roles. After years of exercising power, they did not wish to return to their barracks.

A late-comer in the privileged corporate structure of New Spain, the army struggled to wrest a position and to gain recognition. Other jurisdictions such as the merchant consulados, the Acordada, the Mining Guild, and the jealous creole-dominated ayuntamientos, contested military pretensions and triggered numerous judicial and jurisdictional disputes over how far the military could extend its legal powers. Representatives of the reformed Bourbon civil administration, unsure in some instances of the limits of their own authority, did not welcome a dynamic and grasping presence. For their own part, the army officers dispatched to command Mexican regular and militia units often represented the aggressively haughty airs of the European Spaniard – attitudes that rasped at the deep-rooted inferiority of the creoles and left them enraged. Little wonder that there was a constant stream of disputes, misunderstandings, and challenges directed against the army and the fucro militar.1

Historians have long grappled with the problem of defining the precise nature of eighteenth-century Mexican society. Not only was the confused tangle of racial types which resulted from the three centuries of miscegenation vitally important in establishing social status, but special corporations further divided the population into privileged groups and jurisdictions. Society was split into three general categories: ethnic whites,criollo(American-born) andgachupín(European-born); Indians; and finally thecastas(castes) who belonged to the many racial permutations.

"The growing number of books on military history and the lively interest in military history courses at colleges and universities show that the study of war is enjoying considerable popularity. The reasons for this are arguable, but of immediate interest is the kind of military history that is taught and written. Here the student of war comes across an interesting division of opinion as to how military history should be written. Military history, lying as it does on the frontier between history and military science, requires knowledge of both fields. This fact often presents a difficulty to the history teacher.Generally speaking, history is a discipline by virtue of its subject matter, not by virtue of a particular methodology such as is characteristic of the sciences and of some social sciences. The perspective of Men at War is a cross between a professional internalist approach and a civilian contextual view. This separation is not unique to military history, for the same dualism tends to occur in those areas of history, such as law and medicine, that can be written both by members of the profession concerned? lawyers and doctors? and by those outside the profession.The problem is that at one extreme the contextual view can take the emotional content out of war, while at the other extreme the internalist view can put too much in. Men at War seeks to locate a military history that combines the professional, internalist method and the civilian, contextual method by showing that these are two fundamental sources from which a war derives. Seen in this way, this volume breaks new ground in defining the sources of twentieth-century power."--Provided by publisher.