Unlike many students of the Latin American military, Sergio Vergara Quiroz has eschewed combat, golpes, and grand politics involving senior commanders to examine social and regional origins, attitudes, promotions, marriage, gender relations, widows’ pensions, and the place of the army in Chilean society. Volume 1, Ejército, sociedad, y familia en los siglos XVIII y XIX, surveys the military mission in Chile that required tough frontier forces to confront Araucanian raids, and small, sedentary garrisons in coastal and island districts to deter foreign invasions. Demonstrating a solid grasp of published research on the eighteenth-century Bourbon military reforms in other Spanish American provinces, Vergara Quiroz examines the similarities and differences of the Chilean experience. Supported by local taxation and subsidies (situados) from the Peruvian treasury, about 60 to 70 percent of the two thousand regular troops assigned to Chile manned frontier posts and garrisoned ports, such as Concepción and Valdivia.

The Bourbon military reforms following Spanish defeats in the Seven Years’ War created the army and established traditions that endured through the Chilean independence wars and much of the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, Vergara Quiroz rejects outright the conclusion of some historians that expansion of the army created una mentalidad militarista. In Chile, candidates for provincial militia commissions were too poor even to pay for their ranks or to take much advantage of the privileged fuero militar. Organization and training, however, inculcated new ideas, so that the creole-dominated militias formed the basis for the first insurgent armies of the independence era. With the exception of aging senior commanders, by 1800 Chilean creoles dominated the officer ranks, and almost all soldiers were American born. During the bloody civil wars of 1813-1818, the regular army garrisons of the south, with some Peruvian reinforcements, espoused the royalist cause, while central regions supported autonomy. In the campaigns, both creole hacendados and royalist chiefs enlisted mestizo, mulatto, and Indian soldiers, who deserted frequently and fought without adequate arms. Until 1826, the patriots had to support two or three Chilean armies for operation against Peru and to pursue guerra a muerte in the royalist south.

Because of its compact territory and relatively homogeneous population, Chile escaped some of the anarchy that made recovery difficult in other independent Spanish American nations. Although the war ruined the south, commerce, agriculture, stock raising, and mining brought growth to Santiago and the north. At the same time, Chilean army officers who viewed themselves as padres de la patria engaged in conspiracies and mutinies to defend their new prerogatives. They resisted reform plans to reduce the army and expressed anger at low pay and lack of regard by the Santiago oligarchy. Civilians who recalled the peaceful subordination of the colonial army criticized grasping officers and condemned the drunkenness, gambling, womanizing, and other vices of the soldiers. To control the officer class, liberals sought to adopt militias composed of citizen artisans. After the assassination of Diego Portales and successes in the war against the Peru-Bolivia Confederation, the army accepted, for a time, roles subordinated to civilian regimes.

The remainder of volume 1 and the collected bibliographical data of volume 2, Los oficiales y sus familias en el siglo XIX, examine and analyze military social and regional origins, family structure, pensions, marriage, and even officer funerals. Vergara Quiroz employs quantitative methods and group biography to study the officers and their dependents. Army service records (hojas de servicio), detailed information required for permission to marry (licencias de casamiento), and the pension system (montepío militar) have provided detailed data unavailable for any other major social sector. The tables and other information underscore a theme of continuity of family membership in military service over two or three generations. Throughout the period, some soldiers of lower social origin gained social advancement through promotion to officer ranks, up to, but seldom above, captain. Cadet graduates of the Escuela Militar (when it functioned), sons of army officers, and members of the elite dominated the senior posts. While military pensions did not reflect the increasing cost of living, the system served to protect some penurious widows and dependents.

Although the study is a bit disorganized in places, the almost seven hundred individual sketches, drawn from materials in the Archivo de Guerra of the Chilean National Archives, cast important new light on the internal workings of the nineteenth-century Chilean army. Quantitative research and techniques of group biography should be extended to other contemporary Spanish armies.