Protecting women : US Army culture in the second US-Seminole War and the US-Mexican War / Justine Meberg.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Meberg, Justine, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Mexican War, 1846-1848--Women.

Mexican War, 1846-1848.

Seminole War, 2nd, 1835-1842--Women.

Seminole War, 2nd, 1835-1842.

Women--United States--Social conditions--19th century.

Women.

Women--Mexico--Social conditions--19th century.

Women--Crimes against--United States--Prevention.

Women--Crimes against--Mexico--Prevention.

Women--Crimes against--Prevention.

Mexico.

United States.

Physical Description:

xv, 331 pages : illustrations (chiefly color) , color maps ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY, USA : Cambridge University Press, 2026.

Summary:

Recovering the rarely heard voices of immigrant soldiers, Indigenous women, and Mexican women alongside officers' narratives, this book richly portrays the US Army at war in Florida and Mexico. Its unique focus on interactions between the army and local women uncovers army culture's gendered foundations. Countering an almost exclusively officer-focused historiography, it amasses enlisted men's accounts to describe what life was like for ordinary soldiers, show how enlisted men participated in and shaped army culture, and demonstrate how officers wrote their reports to achieve specific ends. By piecing together scattered mentions of women from personal writings, military and civilian newspapers, court-martial proceedings, and official records, it also shows the wide spectrum of Indigenous and Mexican women's wartime activities. Army authors erased or reframed evidence of women's combatancy to bolster their status as women's protectors, but undoing this process reveals that even in the most understudied conflicts, evidence exists to tell women's stories.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

ebook version :

ISBN:

1009647261

9781009647267

9781009647281

1009647288

OCLC:

1534694812

Publisher Number:

CIPO000304577