Officers, Entrepreneurs, Career Migrants, and Diplomats - (History of Warfare) (Hardcover)

About the Book

No war without military entrepreneurs - How officers, entrepreneurs, career migrants, diplomats kept the early modern war machine running by supplying the armies with essential goods, services, and financing.

Book Synopsis

"Money, money, and more money." In the eyes of early modern warlords, these were the three essential prerequisites for waging war. The transnational studies presented here describe and explain how belligerent powers did indeed rely on thriving markets where military entrepreneurs provided mercenaries, weapons, money, credit, food, expertise, and other services. In a fresh and comprehensive examination of pre-national military entrepreneurship - its actors, structures and economic logic - this volume shows how readily business relationships for supplying armies in the 17th and 18th centuries crossed territorial and confessional boundaries.
By outlining and explicating early modern military entrepreneurial fields of action, this new transnational perspective transcends the limits of national historical approaches to the business of war.
Contributors are Astrid Ackermann, John Condren, Jasmina Cornut, Michael Depreter, Sébastien Dupuis, Marian Füssel, Julien Grand, André Holenstein, Katrin Keller, Michael Paul Martoccio, Tim Neu, David Parrott, Alexander Querengässer, Philippe Rogger, Guy Rowlands, Benjamin Ryser, Regula Schmid, and Peter H. Wilson.