The Wages of Conquest

The Mexican Aristocracy in the Context of Western Aristocracies

Hugo G. Nutini


A thorough account of the development of Western aristocracies as a unitary system.

In The Wages of Conquest, Hugo Nutini provides a detailed description and analysis of the Mexican aristocracy from the Spanish Conquest to the present. While some previous writings have tended to exaggerate the role of the aristocracy in Western societies, and the work of many social scientists has ignored or denied its continuing importance since the demise of the ancien régime, Nutini achieves a balanced and integrated account that places the institution in socio-anthropological perspective and considers its importance in a global context.

The first part of the book constitutes an outline of Western social stratification from Greco-Roman times, through the Dark and Middle Ages, to the transition from estate to class after the French and American Revolutions. Nutini examines the concepts of class and estate with reference to social mobility, the expressive components of stratification---the behaviors and practices that identify members of different groups---and the various combinations of social, ruling, and political functions that these institutions have had over two and a half millennia. He demonstrates that all Western aristocracies share the same ideology, world view, and expressive configuration.

Turning in the second part of the book to the particular case of Mexico, Nutini identifies four main stages of development, which he analyzes in relation to the social, economic, and political evolution of the country. The emphasis is on the aristocracy, but the overall social structure receives significant attention as he explores the transformation of Mexico throughout colonial and republican times.

This volume will find its primary audience among sociologists, historians, political scientists, and anthropologists interested in Latin America, where several local aristocracies have played inordinately powerful roles until recently. Its thorough examination of the development of Western aristocracies will make it urgent reading for students of social stratification in general.

Hugo G. Nutini is University Professor of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh.

Return to New Books subject areas

6 x 9, ca 550 pages

ISBN 0-472-10484-5

cloth 60.00E (tentative)

November