“Money, money, and more money.” In the eyes of early modern warlords, these were the three essential prerequisites for waging war. The transnational studies presented here describe and explain how belligerent powers did indeed rely on thriving markets where military entrepreneurs provided mercenaries, weapons, money, credit, food, expertise, and other services. In a fresh and comprehensive examination of pre-national military entrepreneurship – its actors, structures and economic logic – this volume shows how readily business relationships for supplying armies in the 17th and 18th centuries crossed territorial and confessional boundaries.
By outlining and explicating early modern military entrepreneurial fields of action, this new transnational perspective transcends the limits of national historical approaches to the business of war.
Contributors are Astrid Ackermann, John Condren, Jasmina Cornut, Michael Depreter, Sébastien Dupuis, Marian Füssel, Julien Grand, André Holenstein, Katrin Keller, Michael Paul Martoccio, Tim Neu, David Parrott, Alexander Querengässer, Philippe Rogger, Guy Rowlands, Benjamin Ryser, Regula Schmid, and Peter H. Wilson.

Table des matières :

Acknowledgements
Figures and Tables
Notes on Contributors

Introduction: Mobilising Resources for War: Early Modern Military Entrepreneurs and Their Transnational Fields of Action
 Philippe Rogger, André Holenstein

PART 1: Chances and Challenges: Actors and Forms of the Enterprise

SECTION: Military and Non-Military Entrepreneurs

1 Logistics, Politics, and War: The Military Entrepreneur Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar and Supplying the Army from the Swiss Confederation in the Thirty Years’ War
 Astrid Ackermann
2 Feeding Breisach: Hans Ludwig von Erlach’s Fortress Management and Military Enterprise in the Thirty Years’ War
 Philippe Rogger
3 “Quelques malhonêtes particuliers”? Army Suppliers and War Commissaries as Profiteers of the Seven Years’ War
 Marian Füssel
4 Intergenerationality as a Challenge: The Swiss Guard Company of the Erlach Family, 1639–1770
 Benjamin Ryser
5 Beyond Gender Boundaries: Women’s Involvement in Military Careers in the Swiss Foreign Service (18th–19th Centuries)
 Jasmina Cornut

SECTION: Public-Private Partnership, Feudal Patterns, and the Relativity of ‘State’ and ‘Private’

6 Military Enterprise and Civil War: Private Armies and Warfare in France around the Fronde, 1641–52
 David Parrott
7 Merchant of Death: Maximilien Titon (1632–1711) and the Supply of Arms in Louis XIV’s France
 Guy Rowlands
8 The Officer as Military Entrepreneur in Miles Perpetuus: Examples from the Armies of the Empire 1650–1800
 Alexander Querengässer

PART 2: Transnational Fields of Action

SECTION: Networks, Hubs, Markets

9 A Polity Full of Contractors: The Swiss Cantons and Their Business of War (15th to 19th Centuries)
 André Holenstein and Philippe Rogger
10 The Republic of Geneva as a Fiscal-Military Hub, 1685–1709: Finance, Information, and Espionage
 John Condren
11 At the Crossroads of Population and Capital: Recruiting in Geneva for the French Service under the Ancien Régime
 Sébastien Dupuis
12 Foreign Military Labour in Early Modern Europe
 Peter H. Wilson
13 Civilian Trade and War Business in the Early Modern Mediterranean
 The Case of Genoese Military Transporters in the War of Spanish Succession
 Michael Paul Martoccio
14 Military Money Men: The Toils of Entanglement and the Business Model of Harley & Drummond, Remittance Contractors
 Tim Neu

SECTION: Diplomacy and Patronage

15 From Private Entrepreneurship to State Monopoly
 Contracting Swiss Soldiers for Dutch Service under Ancien Régime Fiscal-Military Practices (1693–1829)
 Michael Depreter
16 A Career Before the Career? On the Emergence of the ‘Créature’ Peter Stuppa
 Katrin Keller
17 The Besenval Family: Constants and Changes in Its Military Entrepreneurial Activities (1650–1800)
 Julien Grand

Comment: The Sinew of War
 Regula Schmid

Index

Philippe Rogger, Dr (2011), is Senior Scientist at the University of Bern. He has published on mercenary trade, elite formation, diplomacy and political unrest in early modern Switzerland, including Geld, Krieg und Macht: Pensionsherren, Söldner und eidgenössische Politik in den Mailänderkriegen, 1494-1516 (2015).
André Holenstein, Dr (1989), was Professor of Older Swiss History and Comparative Regional History at the University of Bern. His research interests include collective memory and historical thinking, the cultural history of economic knowledge, administrative history, constitutional history, social history, and transnationality in Swiss history. He is the author of Mitten in Europa: Verflechtung und Abgrenzung in der Schweizer Geschichte (2014).