In this work David Parrott is on a mission to debunk simplistic understandings of the evolution of the European nation-state variously captured by the aphorism that "war made the state and the state made war" on one hand and taking too seriously the self-serving propaganda put out by absolutist governments that really bore little resemblance realities on the ground on the other. What that means here is that for all the claims about "mercenaries" being an inefficient and dangerous solution to a given government's military issues, Parrott finds that the hiring of military entrepreneurs and contractors often made the most sense for a government that had chosen or had been forced to go to war because only the contractors had the connections to mobilize the financial sinews that made effective military action possible, and this was a reality until the rise of real mass armies after the French Revolution.

As a point of contrast Parrott often turns to his previous work on how the French attempted to make war without native-born officers who were personally invested in their units, and who could depend upon their investment being recognized by the state. This made for haphazard success until the regime of Louis XIV embraced full-scale venality of the operational command structure in his army. This both recognized the monetary costs imposed on the nobility (whose wealth could not otherwise be accessed) while paying back the nobility in the coin that really mattered to them; recognition and social influence. The last section of this study is largely dedicated to examining social contracts such as these, as though the contractor generals of the Thirty Years War who raised armies as a speculative profit-making venture were gone, it doesn't mean that the military entrepreneur had disappeared with the Peace of Westphalia; it just means that the cut of their coat had changed.

While this should probably not be the first book one reads on the subject I found it very illuminating, particularly since as it appears that the era of the mass army as the expression of a nation-in-arms has ended and the military contractor has again become a viable instrument of state. ( )