Bearing Arms for His Majesty: The Free-Colored Militia in Colonial Mexico. By Ben Vinson III. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2001. ISBN 0-8047-4229-4. Maps. Tables. Appendix. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xii, 304. $60.00.
This well-researched and well-written institutional history by Ben Vinson
III focuses on the origins, development, structure, and privileges of
the free-colored (mulatto, pardo, or moreno) militias in
Colonial Mexico. The author attempts to "uncover historical trends and
discontinuities" involving the free-colored militias both before and after
the Bourbon reforms of the 1760s (p. 2). Vinson uses a multi-regional
approach, as New Spain's free-
colored population was highly dispersed and lived in both major cities
and in rural coastal areas, in order to assess their participation in
the military. He uses numerous primary sources, from the environs of
Tamiagua, Puebla, Igualapa, Veracruz, and Mexico City, to analyze what
"race might have meant through the lens of a corporate institution"
(p. 4). New Spain had one of the largest free-colored populations in
Spanish America with around 370,000 persons in 1793 and the crown used
thousands of free-colored militiamen to guard the colony and provide
local ancillary defense to municipal and provincial authorities when
needed (p. 1). Vinson illustrates how, from the 1550s on, free-colored
forces "figured prominently in the colony's military defense scheme"
and how units of free-colored soldiers acquired increasing autonomy
through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (p. 2). However, he
points out that by the 1790s militia units were being disbanded and
that the "corporate-based racial identity began to fragment" since the
structure of privilege was being eliminated (p. 5). The author concludes,
therefore, that the Bourbon reforms of the 1760s—which expanded
the military establishment and the role of Spanish soldiers born in the
New World (creoles)—came at the expense of free colored
companies, which experienced a reduction in numbers and institutional
privileges. Vinson's discussion of free-colored participation in New
Spain's militias provides insight into social mobility, race relations,
racial identity, and racial categorization during the colonial period. His
comparison in Chapter 3 of members of the militia with their civilian
free-colored counterparts with respect to
[End Page 230]
occupational and marriage patterns is particularly interesting and
will be appreciated by social and military historians alike. The many
anecdotal stories involving individual free colored militiamen mentioned
throughout Vinson's work, not only provide for a captivating read but
also give a nuanced view of freedom and society in New Spain. While
studies of Colonial Mexico conducted over the past two decades have
contributed enormously in analyzing the issue of race within colonial
society and in reconstructing racial demographic profiles, relatively
few have used the military as a means of evaluating this issue. Vinson
does draw upon previous studies by Christon Archer and Lyle McAlister
concerning New Spain's colonial militias. However, his work remains unique
and groundbreaking as it focuses on previously understudied free-colored
militias. Historians interested in the Bourbon reforms, Colonial Mexico,
or social history (and do not mind the price) should certainly add this
work to their libraries.
Iris Marcia Cowher
United States Military Academy
West Point, New York
