El merito y la estrategia: clerigos, juristas y medicos en Nueva Espana (review)

Rodolfo Aguirre Salvador intended to identify how university degreed men obtained their positions in eighteenth-century New Spain. He posited that holding a job, a professional position, implied possessing social honor. Drawing on historical studies of universities and university students, Aguirre Salvador divided his analysis of royal university graduates in New Spain into two parts. The first part assesses employment policies and the employment market and the second the university as a corporation and the significance of social quality (calidad). He adopted a prosopographic approach and included in a valuable appendix the archival citations for the resumes (relaciones de mérito) for over 1,000 university graduates.

There are some fascinating data in the early chapters. For example, 20,036 individuals received bachiller degrees between 1703 and 1810; 2% received degrees in medicine, 4% in civil law, 12% in theology, 14% in canon law, and the remaining 68% in the humanities. Just 4.6% of those with bachiller degrees obtained doctorates between 1701 and 1810, but only .67% of those doctorates were in the humanities while 20% were in theology and 10% in canon law. The distribution of advanced degrees reflected the broad market for jobs in the Church. Additionally, during the course of the eighteenth century there were at least thirty-five students to whom the university denied a licenciatura or doctoral degree because they failed to meet the social quality standards of the time. Those standards excluded men of unknown parentage, men whose parents had not married, and men of African or indigenous descent who did not obtain papal dispensation for their lack of social quality. The resumes permitted Aguirre Salvador to develop all sorts of descriptive information about graduates and their families for about half of those receiving doctoral degrees. Graduates put down fathers, uncles, and grandfathers with high profile and honorable professions in government, the military, and the Church; just three mentioned that they had an artisan grandfather or uncle. At least twenty-seven men who received doctoral degrees had fathers whose incomes depended on trust funds (lay capellanías).

Subsequent chapters explore patron/client dynamics in Church jobs, the role of colegios in academic career tracks for both students and faculty, and the overwhelming significance of the Church as New Spain's most vibrant employer. With much of family law contained in canon law and lay trust funds administered through the tribunal of chaplaincies, not to mention most educational institutions managed under the auspices of the Church, university graduates in pursuit of job security evidently looked toward the Church. Clearly, university graduates insured the continued institutionalization of the Church in New Spain.

Turning to graduates who did not pursue employment in the Church, Aguirre Salvador focused attention on audiencia jobs, membership in the Colegio de Abogados, and general opportunities in the royal sector. Drawing on data developed by this reviewer, Aguirre Salvador noted that only 12% of royal sector jobs went to those with a university degree during the second half of the eighteenth century. Most assuredly, high positions on the audiencia were few and quite competitive within the imperial sphere. Physicians had even fewer secure job opportunities to pursue than lawyers because hospital positions and teaching opportunities were quite limited and not growing job markets. Aguirre Salvador concludes that while formal degrees and the law expressed preference for those with academic and social merit, patronage and favoritism not infrequently substituted for merit in the limited job markets both in the Church and government sectors. While the full body of evidence for that conclusion might be lacking, the author does provide substantial evidence for all the other patterns he discusses in this path breaking study.

Aguirre Salvador certainly provides a fascinating set of data for exploring the career trajectories of university graduates during the...