Mercenary, citizen, victim

doi:10.1017/CBO9781139540964.004

2 - Mercenary, citizen, victim

The rise and fall of conscription in the West

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 April 2013

Richard Lachmann

Edited by

John A. Hall and

Siniša Malešević

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John A. Hall: Affiliation:
McGill University, Montréal
Siniša Malešević: Affiliation:
University College Dublin

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Summary

States take risks when they arm troops and ask them to fight, kill, and die on their behalf. Most obviously, soldiers hold weapons that they could turn on their employers. There is a long literature on when and why soldiers mount coups, but that is not my concern here. Instead, I want to examine how states incur moral, political, and financial obligations when they hire, draft, or recruit troops to fight wars and how those obligations affect states' capacities to fight wars.

My focus is restricted to “Western” polities. Rulers in medieval and early modern Europe relied primarily upon mercenaries and upon aristocrats and their armed retainers. Rulers were limited in the length and intensity of commitment they could demand from either sort of fighter. The relationship between soldier and state was fundamentally transformed when and where states were able to impose conscription or convince citizens to volunteer. Beginning with the revolutionary United States and France, states offered draftees and volunteers a growing array of political and social rights. The transformation of subjects into citizens gave states access to armies of unprecedented size, endurance, and commitment, and made possible the bloodbaths of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from the Napoleonic Wars to the American Civil War, to the world wars (Rhodes 1988). The first part of this chapter is devoted to explaining the process and consequences of the transition from mercenary to civilian armies.

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Type: Chapter
Information: Nationalism and War , pp. 44 - 70

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139540964.004 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2013

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