Abstract

Colonial Chile is known in part for its continual military conflicts that forced the Spanish Crown to station there a permeant standing army. This paper looks at a unique aspect of this conflict, in that it focuses on the administrative details of a specially created system by which common soldiers could purchase officer´s titles and form part of a newly created semi-retired officer corps. Many of these officers on paper were then able to enter the civilian society with an acquired level of nobility that permitted them to receive specific economic benefits reserved for those of noble birth.