Ben Vinson Bearing Arms for His Majesty sku-107976496

Ben Vinson's Bearing Arms for His Majesty is a hardcover title in Latin American History Books, sku-107976496. It examines race, identity, social mobility and racial categories in colonial Mexico through the service of free colored men in New Spain's militias, including mulatos, pardos and morenos. By 1793, nearly 10 percent of New Spain's population had some African ancestry.

These people faced more legal disabilities and discrimination than mestizos within a social hierarchy that placed white creoles below the Spanish-born. Drawing on the lives of tens of thousands of volunteer and conscript soldiers across regions, Vinson traces differences in military service and the meaning of freedom beyond slavery.

Free colored forces served from the 1550s onward and gained increasing autonomy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The book concludes that the Bourbon reforms of the 1760s expanded the military and the role of Spanish soldiers born in the New World while reducing the numbers and privileges of free colored companies.