Introduction: Transnational Military Service since the Eighteenth Century

Abstract

The nature and implications of military service have been extensively debated in recent years. While since the end of the Cold War non-state conflicts have become more prominent, the period from the French revolutionary levée en masse in 1793 to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 has often been depicted as one in which the mass, largely conscripted and nationally defined army provided the model for military mobilization. Indeed, until the 1990s, the history of military mobilization was traditionally treated in a fairly linear fashion. Professional and limited in size, the armies of the ancien régime were essentially drawn from the two opposite ends of the social scale and often incorporated mercenaries from foreign lands or relied on additional battalions hired from other states. Conversely, twentieth-century armies were large, mostly based on systematic conscription, and rooted in ideas of the national state, in whose service citizens were obliged, or at least encouraged, to fight. The exact starting point of the transition from the former to the latter is disputed. Let us first of all examine the evolution of mass recruitment from within the territories of states. Peter the Great introduced an early form of conscription in Russia in 1705.¹ There were also eighteenth-century attempts to widen military service in Prussia. These arose from a particular conjunction of factors. A small population and a financially poor state created difficulties for an ambitious monarchy, trying to expand its territories in a region without natural frontiers and exposed to greater powers. The only way for Prussia — and for other German states that followed suit — to compete militarily was to compel military service.