military labor, mercenaries, conflicts and religion

military labor, mercenaries, conflicts and religion

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Richard Bradshaw, “A Review of Mercenaries: The History of a Norm in International Relations, by Sarah Percy,” Mercenary Matters, February 2009 (continuing Mercenaries and Norms, January 2009)

Chapter 1 of Percy’s Mercenaries, entitled “Norms, Their Influence, and How They Can Be Studied,” provides a useful overview of how scholars supporting various theoretical positions have analyzed issues relating to mercenaries, but unfortunately it bases its own argument in favor of the constructivist viewpoint on inaccurate historical evidence. Percy explains that scholars generally agree about what a norm is but differ over whether and to what degree norms influence the behavior of states. She compares the “rationalist” views of structural realists, who argue that norms “have no independent effect on state behavior,” [1] with the also “rationalist” approach of neoliberals, who regard the role of norms as “limited or instrumental” but that might create a “cost” which a state needs to consider in making a decision.[2] Then she compares these views to those of constructivists who insist that norms “are crucial to explaining politics because they constitute state identity, and therefore interests.”[3] Since the interests of states regarding “the desirability of deploying private force have changed enormously, in ways that cannot be accounted for by material factors,” Percy argues, “norms against mercenary use can help explain how state interests on the question of private force have changed and if they are likely to remain the same.”[4]

According to constructivists, international law “actually reflects norms.” Norms often have an ethical component, and the anti-mercenary in particular “has a strong ethical component.” Norms also “shape what states define as their interests” and “set the rules of the game.”[5] Percy thus rejects the claim of structural realists who insist that states determine their interests by examining the distribution of power in an international system and act accordingly. But when she offers an example to illustrate how norms influence the behavior of states, Percy repeats conventional and inaccurate historical views which no well-read student of the American Revolution would credit. She states that during the American Revolution, the rebels defined their new state as a republic which was “doubly virtuous” because it depended upon a citizen army and it fought against mercenaries. To have used mercenaries “would have been difficult because it would have been deeply at odds with American identity.”[6] In fact, the American rebels began engaging Indian auxiliaries even before the clash at Lexington and Concord, the Continental army employed European soldiers of fortune and included several foreign legions, and citizen-soldier militiamen and provincial troops soon became less important than a standing army increasingly composed of foreigners, paid substitutes, slaves, and other poor and marginal members of colonial societies.[7]

In July 1775, Ethan Allen of Vermont sent a message to the Iroquois in which he promised that if their warriors would join with him “like Brothers and Ambush the Regulars,” he would “Give you Money Blankets Tomehawks Knives and Paint and the Like as much as you say…”[8] On 19 April 1776, George Washington wrote a letter to the president of the Continental Congress in which he asserted “it will be impossible to keep” the American Indians “in a state of neutrality” and so “I submit to congress, whether it will not be better immediately to engage them on our side.”[9] On 28 May 1776, the day after George Washington arrived in Philadelphia for consultation regarding military matters, Congress resolved “that it is highly expedient to engage the Indians in the service of the United Colonies.” On 3 June Washington was authorized to employ two thousand Canadian Indians, and on 14 June the Congress’s commissioners of the northern department were authorized “to engage the Six Nations in our interest on the best terms that can be procured.” In other words, the commissioners were to employ Indians at the best price possible. On 17 June Washington was authorized “to offer a reward of one hundred dollars for every commissioned officer, and thirty dollars for every private soldier of the King’s troops that they should take prisoners in the Indian country on in the frontier of these colonies.”[10]

Nevertheless, with a view of soliciting sympathy for their cause, the Americans decided to address an open letter to the people of Ireland in which they complained that “the wild and barbarous savages of the wilderness have been solicited by gifts to take up the hatchet against us, and instigated to deluge our settlements with the blood of defenseless women and children.”[11]

An early as the 1840s, historian Jared Sparks remarked that:

During the former wars in America between the English and the French, it has been customary on each side to solicit aid from Indians, and employ them as auxiliaries. Such had been uniform practice of the first settlement of the country, and it was to be presumed that the same system would be pursued in the Revolution…[12]

Then, alluding to the ferocity and savagery of the Indians, the Sparks added:

it is no wonder that the policy of seeking their alliance, or even permitting there any, should be regarded by every friend of humanity with unqualified reprobation. Writers of all parties have united in condemning the practice, so unjustifiable in itself, and so hostile to the principles of civilization, while at the same time belligerents of all parties have continued to follow it, even down to the late war [of 1812] between England and the United States….It has been usual in America to represent the English is much the more censurable on this score in the revolutionary war….But such is not the equitable mode of touching on the subject… historical justice must award to the Americans their due share of the blame. [13]

To paraphrase this passage in the language of contemporary international relations theory, despite the existence of a strong norm against employing mercenaries, the Americans used mercenaries from the moment they stepped ashore in Virginia, and continued to do so through the French and Indian Wars, the American Revolution, and the War of 1812. Clearly it was not “difficult” to employ mercenaries even if it was “deeply at odds with American identity.”[14]

Despite the fact that “writers of all parties” were “united in condemning the practice” of hiring mercenaries, which was “so hostile to the principles of civilization,” the establishment and expansion of British colonies in the Americas was assisted, at every stage, by the employment of mercenaries.[15] John Smith of Jamestown fame was “by trade a mercenary, a soldier of fortune,”[16] and even the Pilgrims who established a colony at Plymouth Rock took the precaution of hiring Miles Standish, “the Hero of New England,” as a military contractor before setting sail.[17] Lion Gardiner, an English soldier employed as mercenary by the Prince of Orange, was hired by the Connecticut Company as a military contractor in 1635, and became the first British settler of New York. Captain John Underhill worked as a military contractor for both Massachusetts Bay Colony and for New Amsterdam under the Dutch.[18]

Recently, again, historian Daniel Marston noted that:

The fact that German troops for you as part of the British Army in North America called great consternation amongst the American colonial population and like-minded people in Great Britain. Their presence has historically been given as a reason why the American people dislike and distrust mercenaries. This is a simplistic and somewhat critical argument, especially considering that the American commanders apparently had no qualms about accepting the services of various soldiers of fortune from Europe.[19]

Marston added that some of these European soldiers of fortune, “notably Frederick William Augustus, Baron von Steuben and Guilbert Mottier, Marquis de Layfayette, played instrumental roles in the development of the Continental Army and were accordingly awarded high-ranking positions.” He also noted the existence of several “foreign” legions fighting for the Americans, “including Pulaski’s Legion, Von Heer’s Provost Corps and Brigadier-General Charles Tuffin Armand’s Independent Chasseurs.”[20]

Additionally, once the French officially entered the war as allies of the Americans, the French forces employed considerable number of mercenary troops within their ranks. Nearly one-fifth of the French Army in France and overseas was made up of foreign [mercenary] troops; the famous Lauzon Legion, which served with distinction in the American colonies, was made up of foreigners whose word of command was German.[21]

As for the Revolutionary military officers, in 1777 John Adams complained to his wife Abigail that they were “Scrambling for Rank and Pay like Apes for Nuts.”[22]

[1] J.J. Mearsheimer, “The False Promise of International Institutions,” International Security 19, 3 (1994-5): 7, Percy, Mercenaries, 15.

[2] N. Tannenwald, The Nuclear Taboo: The United States and the Non-use of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009?), Percy, Mercenaries, 16.

[3] Percy, Mercenaries, 17, citing M. Finnemore, “Constructing Norms of Humanitarian Intervention,” in P.J. Katzenstein, ed., The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identities in World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), J.T. Checkel, “The Constructivist Turn in International Relations Theory,” World Politics 50, 2 (1998), 326, and A. Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 21.

[4] Percy, Mercenaries, 17-18.

[5] Percy, Mercenaries, 18-22.

[6] Percy, Mercenaries, 25.

[7] Jared Sparks, The Life of George Washington, 3 vols. (Boston: Tappan and Dennet, 1843), III, 141n; Andrew McFarland Davis, “The Employment of Indian Auxiliaries in the American War,” English Historical Review 2 (October 1887): 709-728; J.M. Sosin, “The use of Indians in the war of the American Revolution: a reassessment of responsibility,” Canadian Historical Review 46 (1965): 101-21; Richard S. Walling, “Nimham’s Indian Company of 1778: The Events Leading up to the Stockbridge Massacre of August 31, 1778,” AmericanRevolution.org, n.d., http://www.americanrevolution.org/ind2.html (accessed 26 January 2009); Wilcomb E. Washburn, “Indians and the American Revolution,” AmericanRevolution.org, http://www. American revolution.org/ind1.html; Charles Patrick Neimeyer, America Goes to War: A Social History of the Continental Army (New York: New York University Press, 1997), 21; John Resch, “Continental Army Veterans: From Outcasts to Icons,” Veterans of Foreign Wars Magazine, 1 June 2002; Justin Ewers, “The Real Revolution,” U.S. News & World Report, 7 July 2008, 40-42; Robert K. Wright, Jr. “‘Nor Is Their Standing Army To Be Despised’: The Emergence of the Continental Army as a Military Institution,” in Ronald Hoffman and Peter J. Albert, eds., Arms and Independence: The Military Character of the American Revolution (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, for the United States Capitol Historical Society, 1984), 69.

[8] Barbara Graymont, The Iroquois in the American Revolution” (Syracuse, NY: 1972), 68.

[9] Jared Sparks, The Life of George Washington, 3 vols. (Boston: Tappan and Dennet, 1843), III, 261-63; Andrew McFarland Davis, “The Employment of Indian Auxiliaries in the American War,” English Historical Review 2 (October 1887): 709-728, at 721.

[10] Quotes from Davis, “Indian Auxiliaries,” 721.

[11] Quoted in Davis, “Indian Auxiliaries,” 722.

[12] Jared Sparks, The Life of George Washington, 3 vols. (Boston: Tappan and Dennet, 1843), III, 141n.

[13] Jared Sparks, The Life of George Washington, 3 vols. (Boston: Tappan and Dennet, 1843), III, 141n.

[14] Percy, Mercenaries, 25.

[15] Regarding the motives of the colonists, see Susan Ronald, The Pirate Queen: Queen Elizabeth I, her Pirate Adventurers, and the Dawn of Empire (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2007).

[16] William L. Shea, The Virginia Militia in the Seventeenth Century (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1983), 10.

[17] Susan Martin Miller, Miles Standish: Plymouth Colony Leader (Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 2000), 8-11.

[18] Luke, “Captain John Underhill,” 3.

[19] Daniel Marston, The American Revolution, 1774-1783 (London: Taylor & Francis, 2003), 20.

[20] Daniel Marston, The American Revolution, 1774-1783 (London: Taylor & Francis, 2003), 20.

[21] Daniel Marston, The American Revolution, 1774-1783 (London: Taylor & Francis, 2003), 20-21.

[22] Joseph J. Ellis, Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2001), 45. Also see Historical Papers and Addresses of the Lancaster County Historical Society (Lancaster, PA: Lancaster County Historical Society, 1918), 115; John K. Robertson and Bob McDonald, “A Brief Profile of the Continental Army,” The Revolutionary War, 1999-2008, http://www.revwar75.com/ob/army1781.htm
Posted by ndzesop ibrahim at 6:42 AM
Labels: Mercenaries in the American Revolution