Fighting fo r a Living investigates the circumstances that have produced starkly different systems of recruiting a nd employing soldiers in different parts of the globe over the last 500 years. It does so on the basis of a wide range of case studies taken fr om Europe, Africa, America, the Middle East a nd Asia. The novelty of ",Fighting fo r a Living", is that it is not military histo r y in the traditional sense (concentrating at wars a nd battles o r on military technology) but that it looks at military service a nd warfare as fo r ms of labour, a nd at the soldiers as wo r kers. Military employment offers excellent oppo r tunities fo r this kind of international comparison. wh ere many fo r ms of human activity are restricted by the conditions of nature o r the stage of development of a given society, o r ganized violence is ubiquitous. Soldiers, in one fo r m o r another, are always part of the picture, in any period a nd in every region. Nevertheless, Fighting fo r a Living is the first study to undertake a systematic comparative analysis of military labour. It therefo r e speaks to two distinct, a nd no r mally quite separate, communities: that of labour histo r ians a nd that of military histo r ians. This title was made Open Access by libraries fr om around the wo r ld through Knowledge Unlatched.
Includes bibliographical references
Description ba sed on online resource, title fr om PDF title page (ebrary, viewed May 23, 2014)
Electronic reproduction. Palo Alto, Calif. : ebrary, 2014. Available via Wo r ld Wide Web. Access may be limited to ebrary affiliated libraries أقرأ أقل