Military

Militaries in Global History

As a specialized institution, a military can exist only in fairly complex societies able to produce enough surpluses to allow a significant number of men to concentrate on war making. (The male virtual monopoly is geographically and historically universal, and the roots may lie in pre-Neolithic sexual specialization.) We do not have many details, but it appears that the armies of second-millennia Mesopotamia and Egypt were already commanded and largely consisted of dedicated professionals. We may speculate regarding whether such specialization was functionally rooted in the complex skills required or had more to do with the [Page 1170]political imperative of creating a relatively privileged group with distinct loyalties.

Among ancient armies, we can distinguish different patterns of recruitment and status of soldiers. The first of what we might call citizenship armies were in ancient Greece and Rome. In the former, the property owners of each polis (usually small farmers) owed a certain amount of military service, where they served under elected leaders and provided their own equipment. The Roman Republic's military first consisted largely of a citizen levy but became more professionalized as the size of the territories involved grew. Equally old is the polar opposite: the creation of slave armies. Some militaries relied on these practically exclusively (the most famous of these might be the mamluk and the Janissaries of the Ottoman Empire). Navies and their galleys tended to depend on slaves much more than land armies. Somewhat in the middle, conscript forces appear along with the first state structures and were a feature of armies throughout the world, from China to southern Africa to the Inca Empire. They differed as to the percentage of the population involved, degree of separation from the rest of the society, and professionalization, length of service, and relative status of soldiers, but the concept of using significant numbers of subjects for obligatory military service appears to be universal.

One variant that had a subsequent critical historical consequence was the feudal levy. Most associated with medieval Europe, the feudal levy might be found in various forms in other parts of the world, particularly in Japan. This involved a hierarchy of reciprocal relationships, from the monarch down, that involved the exchange of fealty and military service for protection and the recognition of social status and property. This further consolidated the already strong association between military leadership and higher social status, a link that would remain unbroken well into the 20th century. The development of new technologies and broader economic and political shifts led to the replacement of these arrangements in early modern Europe. By the 18th century, the most militarily successful states had reestablished centralized control over violence through the creation of large armies directly commanded by the monarch. During this long process, those who made up militaries transformed from “warriors” (focused on individual prowess and bravery) to “soldiers” (trained to act collectively through enforced discipline).

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