Veracruz was the most important strategic point in the defenses of New Spain throughout the three centuries of Spanish occupation. It was the only important commercial center which allowed easy access to the interior highlands of the viceroyalty and as such, attracted any potential invader who might wish either to carry out a raid on commerce or to undertake more ambitious conquests. This study will consider some of the major themes involved in the defense of Veracruz in the last three decades before 1810 to see how such a vital position affected military developments and to test a main theme of recent historical research on the period which has established the origins of praetorian-spirited, privilege-hungry soldiers in the period following the Seven Years War.

THE Mexican Revolution was almost two and a half years old when General Victoriano Huerta captured the presidential chair. The chaotic period between November, 1910 and February, 1913 witnessed an ever-increasing militarization of the country which just a few years earlier had prided itself as the most stable republic and lucrative investment field in Latin America. When the military campaigns of the anti-Díaz movement began to assume serious proportions early in 1911, the government in Mexico City set out to increase at once the size and efficiency of the federal army and the rurales. Although Díaz efforts were for naught, the preparations themselves augured ominously for the immediate future. When the rebel general Pascual Orozco captured Ciudad Juárez in May of 1911, the die was cast. A small but effective revolutionary army, adept at guerrilla warfare, had humbled a professional fighting force schooled in the nineteenth-century German tradition.

PERHAPS the most vexing problem in the historiography of Michoacán is the question of the authorship of the Relación de las ceremonias y ritos y población y gobernación de los indios de la Provincia de Michoacán, commonly known as the Relación de Michoacán. This small volume, conserved in the Library of the Escorial in Spain (MS. Ç. IV.5.), is our principal source of information regarding the pre-conquest history and culture of the Tarascan Indians of Michoacán and their first contacts with the Spaniards. It originally consisted of three parts, which the author described in his introductory letter as follows:

IN the early fall of 1969, I agreed to write an article for a special issue of The Americas honoring France V. Scholes. My contribution would be an essay on the status of biography in the literature of New Spain. Within a week after the selection of a topic, I was invited, as a last-minute replacement, to attend the Third Meeting of United States and Mexican Historians in Oaxtepec, Morelos. I served as discussant in a session devoted to Mexican biography since 1800. Ideas brought out in the discussion and commentary at the Oaxtepec meeting are gratefully acknowledge in this essay. An additional source for this paper is a questionnaire mailed to leading scholars of the United States in the field of colonial Mexican history. Several friends and colleagues have been kind enough to offer positive encouragement for this project. I have made no attempt here to survey all biographies of colonial personalities in New Spain, nor will I inflict my judgment of each study on the scholarly community. Book reviewers, past and present, have done their work. Generally, emphasis is on New Spain proper rather than the peripheral areas of the viceroyalty. I shall approach the subject of biography in a rather broad and unorthodox context. Interpretations and conclusions are mine, not the responsibility of trusting colleagues who gave me permission to quote them.