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The Blood Contingent: The Military and the Making of Modern Mexico, 1876-1911 . By Stephen B. Neufeld . Albuquerque : University of New Mexico Press , 2017. Pp. 383. $95.00 cloth. $29.95 paper.
In the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth, Porfirio Díaz pursued an aggressive campaign to modernize Mexico, conceiving of a powerful national military as a crucial instrument of change. Bringing men from all over the country together in a technologically advanced, Europeanized military would foster a great sense of pride in an emerging Mexican identity. It would also provide educational opportunity to the masses, at least those who served the nation. Mexico at the time faced no foreign enemy; therefore, Díaz turned his attention to putting down restive regions such as Sonora in the far north and the Yucatán in the south, binding them more firmly to the rest of the country through military might.
The present book is a thorough reworking of Neufeld's 2009 University of Arizona doctoral dissertation, which...