Customer Reviews

The Irish Soldiers of Mexico

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A friend loaned me a copy of this startling book and I had to have a copy for my own library. What an eye-opener! Not only does Hogan give us startling insights in Irish history and immigration, but he reveals facts about the U.S. war with Mexico that I for one was never taught in school. And who knew that the death of these Irishmen in Mexico was "the largest hanging affair in North America"? Also interesting is the fact that while this book is required reading in Mexico, it is not even carried in U.S. bookstores. As far as I could find, amazon.com is the only place it's available. Excited to see that Hogan has a novel out now entitled" Molly Malone and the San Patricios" which has won a major fiction award in Mexico. If the novel is half as good as the history, Hogan will be a household name (at least among Irish-Americans) before long. Thanks amazon.com for making these books available to the U.S. public.

As a full-time teacher working in Mexico I have found it hard to find a fair and factual account of the Mexican War, with the exception of Michael Hogan's The Irish Soldiers of Mexico. Eisenhower's book on the war is obviously biased toward justifying the American invasion, Shaara's novel is merely light entertainment and makes no attempt to be historically ballanced. Hogan's Irish Soldiers, on the other hand, is not only well-researched and well-documented but his is the only work which draws heavily on Mexican journals, manuscripts and archives. It also clarifies the reasons for the war, and the active participation of immigrant people (most notably Irish but also Scots and Germans) who joined the Mexican side and paid for that decision with their lives. As Mexico and the United States draw ever closer as neighbors, trading partners, and allies it is important that we come to understand this period of our mutual past through the clear lens of even-handed history, reading about it not only from U.S. sources and documents but from Mexican and European sources as well. Michael Hogan has provided an invaluable service. It is the only major book by a foreigner which is used in Mexican universities today. The rest are consider merely propaganda.

Michael Hogan provides a fascinating look at the fate of the Irish who chose to fight for Catholic Mexico against the predominantly Protestant US. His work offers an excellent summary of the US Invasion of Mexico, which is virutally ignored by US history books as well as a focus on the special circumstances encountered by the Irish in the American Armies, some of whom decided that they preferred the other side in the conflict. It is well researched and written, and the narrative is very well supported by maps, photos, and illustrations

Mr. Hogan has revealed in it's full complexity a time in the life of America which is little known, little documented, and greatly missed as an opportunity to understand ourselves and our southern neighbors. This is a solidly researched book, written in an engrossing and freindly style. Having spent years of research and written a screenplay several years ago on the San Patricios (The Companies of St. Patrick), I fully appreciate his ardent journey into their previously widely speculated and mythologized story, and he does so as a master Storyteller. It is "a whale of a tale". The truth here is more interesting and curious than the myths put out by both sides. I highly recommend this work. It is a good read in every sense. It's educational. It's fascinating. It is also important to anyone who wishes to understand this country, and our relationship with Mexico. There is no work that comes close to his grand perspective and context of the times, no! r one which gives such a balanced and fair account . It diserves widespread recognition.

At long last--a book that treats the tragic story of the Irish soldiers who deserted to the enemy during the Mexican-American War as neither hagiographic soap opera (brave Catholic soldiers aiding an embattled Catholic nation) nor a Manifest Destiny morality play (traitors getting their just desserts). Forming what they called the Batallón de San Patricio (St. Patrick's Battalion), these 260 men became popularly known as "San Patricios." What author Michael Hogan brings to this embarrassing episode in our history is scholarship.
This is hardly surprising. Hogan is the author of eight books, one of them the highly regarded Making Our Own Rules. A member of the Organization of American Historians, he is also a consultant to the Advanced Placement Program of the College Board. Currently based in Mexico, he heads the Department of Letters and Humanities at Guadalajara's American School.
What initially impressed me was the depth of Hogan's research. Though this is not an overly long work (less than 250 pages of text), the author has not only consulted every book written on the subject but also manuscripts, papers, documents, monographs, newspapers and both primary and secondary accounts by participants and contemporaries. Much of the research material is in Spanish, which constitutes no problem for the bilingual author.
Hogan never permits his own Irish-Catholic heritage to stand in the way of scrupulous objectivity. He understands how the Irish soldiers--so discriminated against in the U.S. Army that they were not even allowed to have their own chaplains--would go over to an "enemy" with whom they shared a common faith. At the same time, he also sees how a trend from regionalism to federalism would be the perfect tinder for a doctrine as arrogantly chauvinistic as Manifest Destiny, the belief in continuing territorial expansion, especially at the expense of people whose skins were darker and whose religious views differed from Anglo-Protestantism. As people stopped thinking of themselves as Virginians or New Yorkers and began acquiring an identity as Americans, what better way to demonstrate their nascent Americanism and extend it as far and as forcibly as they could.
As for the anti-Catholicism, that was pretty much an accident of chronology. In colonial times, the Puritans persecuted Quakers like William Penn and Dissenters like Roger Williams. In the 1840s, when the Mexican War took place, there was a massive wave of Catholic immigration and Protestants banded together to persecute Catholics. Later, Catholics would unite with Protestants to bash Jews. In the future--who knows?--Judeo-Christians may well form a united front against Muslims or Buddhists.
We hear much talk these days about what I would call the "Vichy syndrome," describing people who serve an oppressor as auxiliaries against their own kind. Edward Said refers to Arafat's Palestinian Authority as the "Vichy Palestinians"; leaders of a Kanaka separatist movement call native Hawaiians who serve in the state legislature "Vichy Hawaiians." One of Hogan's most fascinating profiles has nothing to do with the Iish soldiers who went over to the Mexican side. Instead, it focuses on the repellent figure of Lt. Col. (later General) William S. Harney, an Irish-Catholic officer in the U.S. Army who became notorious for his sadistic treatment of captured San Patricios. As a Catholic in an anti-Catholic army, Harney felt he had to be more royalist than the King and, so to speak, more Catholic than the Pope in demonstrating his loyalty. Brutal, incompetent and lustful, Harney had been frequently charged with disobeying orders and of sexually abusing Indian women during the Black Hawk War and then hanging them the next day. As a group of San Patricios was waiting to be executed, Harney knocked out the teeth of one man who had taunted him. Yet, he was politically well-connected and ended his career as a general.
Those inclined toward condemning the San Patricios should bear in mind that the Meican War was, with the possible exception of the Vietnam conflict, the most unpopular in U.S. history. Hogan's list of prominent contemporary peaceniks reads like a gallery of distinguished Americans. Thoreau went to jail rather than pay taxes to support the war; Lincoln denounced it in Congress. John Greenleaf Whittier and James Russell Lowell wrote poems against it, and Ulysses S. Grant, who served in Mexico, described the conflict as "the most unjust war ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation.¨
Whether your inclination is historical or cultural, this is one book on Mexico you won't want to miss.

Jim Tuck.
Ojo Del Lago Magazine.
Ajijic, Jalico, Mexico.

Patrick Hogan's book is an excellent insight into the North American invasion of Mexico. Although not particularly well written, it does get the message across extremely well. However, as a Scot living in Mexico, and one who has read the book, visited the memorial plaque in San Angel and the ex-convent at Churubusco and will attend the memorial service at San Angel in September,I feel that potential readers should be aware that not only Irishmen fought and died in the St Patrick's Batallion. One look at the names on the memorial plaque should get that message across - it was a multinational force made up predominantly, but not solely, of Irishmen.

Michael Hogan's exciting and exacting non-fiction book about young soldiers trapped between their Church and their new country's imperialism strips away much of the nonsense surrounding the Mexican-American war. America's first unpopular war, a war designed to add slave states to the South and ultimately to bring about the Civil War, is shown in a new light. The brutal execution of the Irish Brigade soldiers, in contravention of all the rules of war and simple morality is bound to cause us to see our history for what much of it has been: conquering and often destroying weaker people. Hogan has given us all valuable lessons that should guide our national policy in the future.

To many, history can overwhelm, and in the information age of instant news and events, history can crush you quicker than a tweet. Yet, ironically, as we speed through our daily lives, the appreciation to slow down one's pace and actually pause to study, breathe, and absorb history has never been more gratifying.

With a renewed interest in the 150th anniversary of The Civil War and the countless of books that chronicle and dissect it, another 19th century war --the Mexican American War (or the First American Intervention)-- has begun to gain more scholarly attention. The reasons for this are simple: as the United States of the 21st century grapples with a nation that is clearly getting more Latino and more Spanish-speaking, learning more about the Mexican American War could provide a better historical perspective of our country's complex relationship with our southern neighbor.

Michael Hogan, author of the exceptional THE IRISH SOLDIERS OF MEXICO --a 1998 edition that is now available in a 2011 e-book and paperback formats-- and a foremost expert on the US-Mexico conflict, achieves what very few scholarly historians can accomplish: examine historical events and seamlessly synthesize those events into a prose that is readable, informative, thought-provocative, and perspective-changing.

Hogan's chronicles of the famed San Patricios, a battalion of mostly Irish Catholic soldiers who deserted the US Army to fight for Catholic Mexico, with an attention to fact and historical detail. Yet at the same time that the reader learns of this heroic group of fighters who valiantly defended the Mexican side even during defeat, Hogan weaves some of the most concise and comprehensive history of the war, from its origins of new Texans rebelling against the Mexican government and exploiting the United States' belief in expansion to the chronicles of a bloody struggle that claimed thousands of lives.

Not only do we learn of how the San Patricios were seen as heroes to the Mexican forces but betrayers and traitors by the United States (leading to the execution of most San Patricio survivors), we are treated to a glimpse of a time when pre-Cvil Wat America was at a crossroads.

Hogan' style is direct and to the point. Although he writes like a history professor (just the facts, please, then we can analyze the what), his story does not drown in a wave of references and theories. Instead, Hogan just tells the story and respects his readers to think about those facts. As this paragraph suggests:

"Thus it is that little is known in the United States about the group of Irish soldiers who fought for the Mexicans during this war. Shadowy and obscure figures, a barely legible footnote in American history, they enjoy widespread acclaim as heroes in Mexico. They were known as the San Patricio Battalion and they carried in battle a green banner with the Mexican eagle on one side and the image of St. Patrick and "Erin Go Bragh" on the other. These "Soldiers of St. Patrick" were decorated for valor after capturing American cannon at the Battle of Buena Vista, and for a last ditch defense of the Convent of Churubusco in Central Mexico in the final days of the War."

With paragraphs like these, Hogan leads the reader to explore the overarching themes he covers so eloquently in such a brief book (268 pages, notes including): religion, culture, allegiances, politics, ambition (see Santa Anna), anti-war sentiment (see Abraham Lincoln), and loyalty. And his reasons to write about Los San Patricios couldn't be any clearer:

"While the unit was not exclusively Irish nor Catholic, its distinctive flag, its name, the idealism of the group and its esprit de corps was central to the values of both Catholic and Irish which included among others: (a) defending a weaker country against a powerful aggressor; (b) defending a Catholic nation against a Protestant invader; (c) feeling comfortable in the ritual and symbolism of Catholicism as expressed in Mexico; (d) inspired by shared values to transcend whatever individual weaknesses they exhibited prior to their acceptance in the group; (e) willing to fight to the death for what was obviously the losing side."

Hogan delivers with a historical masterpiece, one of the best books about US-Mexican History since John Womack's ZAPATA AND THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION.

The more facts that one has of history, and of its accuracy, the more interesting people, and, life itself becomes. This book was extraordinary.

Know this one irrefutable fact; the United States fostered its preemptive war and invasion of Mexico in 1846 for no other reason than to fulfill its egoistic Manifest Destiny. Was it a righteous war? Only if you believe stealing another country's property under false pretenses is some how justifiable. Mike Hogan's "The Irish Soldiers of Mexico" tells the truthful and tragic story of the Mexican-American War through the saga of the San Patricio's, a battalion in the Mexican army composed of American deserters, primarily Catholics of Irish, German, Scottish and French descent, who fought to the bitter end and paid the "ultimate price" in their fight against intolerance, abuse, depredations and hypocrisy by America's 19th century version of the "military-industrial complex". This is an excellent read and one highly recommended if you're interested in knowing the truth about the Mexican American War. A "dirty little" secret America's purveyors of history would prefer remain forgotten. Also, when push gets to shove Mexico doesn't back down.