Neufeld, Stephen,

The Blood Contingent : The Military and the Making of Modern Mexico, 1876-1911 / Stephen B. Neufeld. - First edition. - Albuquerque : University of New Mexico Press, (c)2017. - 1 online resource.

Includes bibliographies and index.

Chapter One: Recruiting the Servants of the Nation -- Chapter Two: Sculpting a Modern Soldier through Drill and Ritual -- Chapter Three: Women of the Troop: Religion, Sex, and Family on the Rough Barracks Patio -- Chapter Four: The Traditional Education of a Modern Gentleman-Officer: The Next Generation -- Chapter Five: The Touch of Venus: Gendered Bodies and Hygienic Barracks -- Chapter Six: The Disordered Life of Drugs, Drinks, and Songs in the Barracks -- Chapter Seven: Lieutenant's Sally from Chapultepec: Junior Officers Deploying into Nation -- Chapter Eight: Hatred in their Mother's Milk: Savage, Semi-Savage, and The Civilized.

"In the pursuit of the modern, the armed forces served as instrument, model, and metaphor for national progress. I examine in this book how the military experience, as representative of the process, failed or fulfilled aspects of the broad national transition towards hegemony and sovereignty. This is the first work combining personnel records and military literature with cultural sources to address the setting of military life for soldiers and their families rather than politics or officers. In connection with nation formation and identity, this book moves away from studies of the army as an institution to broaden understandings of inculcations and the limits and fault lines of building Mexico as a nation. More social and cultural in historical outlook, I examine the creation of political cultures rooted in or derived from the personal experiences of the lower ranks. In doing so, the book removes some of the privileged view that official narratives emphasize in order to explain the making of a bureaucratic institution from the bottom up, and to more clearly describe how this process both encouraged the development of nationalism and limited it in important ways. In this fashion I build on the works of scholars whose focus has centered more on officers, education, and political conflicts"--Introduction.



9780826358066

2016028897


Mexico. Ejército --History--19th century.
Mexico. Ejército --History--20th century.
Mexico. Ejército --Military life--History.


Soldiers--History.--Mexico
Nation-building--History.--Mexico
Nationalism--History.--Mexico
Political culture--History.--Mexico
Social change--History.--Mexico


Electronic Books.

UA603 / .B566 2017