The Mexican National Army

The army of thirty-five thousand that engineered Mexico''s independence was a melting pot of insurgent and royalist forces held together by the lure of rapid promotions and other military remuneration. Overwhelmed with internal threats such as Indian skirmishes and peasant uprisings this poorly motivated ill-trained army seldom enjoyed the respite resources or direction necessary to overcome challenges to territorial sovereignty posed by Spain France Texas and the United States during Mexico''s first three decades of nationhood. William A. DePalo Jr. studies the birth and tumultuous adolescence of the Mexican National Army and examines how regional social political and economic factors ate away at its institutional framework and on the Mexican government''s attempts at military reform causing Mexico to eventually lose nearly one-half of its national territory.