The Cátedra for the History of the Colonial Church at the University of Seville has recently added the history of the army to its responsibilities in recognition of the central importance of the military institution to the eighteenth-century empire. Unpublished theses have been completed on the armies of Florida, 1783-1821, of Río de la Plata, 1700-1810, and of Cuba, 1700-1762. Another is in progress on the army of Louisiana and similar works are projected for Panama and Chile, as is a sociologically focused analysis of the colonial militia. At the forefront of this burst of interest in the military stands Juan Marchena Fernández, author of La institución militar en Cartagena de Indias en el siglo xviii (Seville, 1980) and the volume under review.
In the present book, Marchena presents an ambitious sociological study of the American regular army from 1700 to 1810. Through a computerized analysis of some twelve thousand officer service records and of the enlistment rosters for several thousand soldiers, supported by ample auxiliary documentation, he explores a broad range of subjects. They include geographic and social origins, promotion patterns, wages, age and mortality rates, health and medicine, and aspects of daily life such as economic status, literacy, religiosity, and matrimony. Despite existing monographs on the army of Mexico by Lyle N. McAlister and Christon I. Archer, Peru by Leon G. Campbell, and New Granada by the reviewer, Marchena makes an original contribution through the variety of topics that he addresses and by the breadth of his analysis. The presentation is rich in graphs, charts, and statistics, even to the point of including catalogs of military actions and troop mutinies.
While the book’s most pervasive theme is the hopeless misery of the enlisted man, its most striking data concern leadership. Marchena traces the americanization of the officer corps from the early century, when high rank was virtually a Spanish monopoly, to 1810, when native sons enjoyed overwhelming dominance. Significantly, the point at which creoles overtook Spaniards was the late 1770s, early 1780s, in the midst of José de Gálvez’s anti-American administration. While Marchena does not address the politics of Gálvez, he explains why the crown was unable to stem the growing percentage of creole officers. Given the enormous cost of sustaining a competitive military establishment and the usual delays that beset the transfer of funds to the coastal strongpoints, short-term loans from American investors became an on-going necessity. The political compromises that resulted made impossible the denial of native aspirations for offices and promotions. By the late century, Marchena argues, Spain’s control over the colonies essentially had come to depend upon “moral” authority.
A parallel development was the increasing dominance of the officer corps by elites. While many talented individuals of humble birthright enjoyed commands during the early century, men of condition gradually came to monopolize offices almost completely. Marchena’s documentation of this phenomenon shows that, insofar as the military was concerned, colonial Spanish America conformed to the broader pattern of western civilization as synthesized some years ago by R. R. Palmer in his Age of Democratic Revolutions.
This is an impressive book. It raises substantial questions and reaches convincing conclusions of major significance. While subjects such as the percentage of soldiers who confessed before dying may be of minor interest to the average reader, the broader themes that Marchena has developed bear unmistakable importance.
