Citizen Army Research Articles

Operational Codes and the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland: A Test of the Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis

The frustration–aggression hypothesis has largely been ignored in scholarly literature regarding the examination of political elites. We investigate this hypothesis through a quantitative operational code and historical analysis of the Irish 1916 Easter Rising against the United Kingdom. The article looks at the effect of frustration levels of rebel leaders James Connolly, head of the Irish Citizen Army, and Patrick Pearse, leader of the Irish volunteers. Findings show that both leaders were frustrated, particularly Pearse, whose policies changed from peace to violence over a four-year period that coincided with a rise in his level of frustration. The findings in this paper support the frustration–aggression hypothesis, and may provide insights into aggressive actions by state actors, malcontents, and leaders of the oppressed.

European Security and Private Military Companies: The Prospects for Privatized ‘Battlegroups’

“Mercenary” remains a pejorative term. It is associated with the hired killers implicated in coup attempts in Africa in the 1960s and 1970s, and more recently associated with human rights abuses in post-Cold War conflicts in Eurasia and the Balkans. However, until the nineteenth century a large part of the armed forces of most European nations was supplied by the private sector. It was normal for professional soldiers—especially those with technical expertise, such as artillerymen or siege engineers—to offer their services on the open market. Often contractors organized soldiers into formed units on behalf of paying clients, notably the condottieri that held a monopoly on providing military services to the city-states of fifteenth-century Italy. Later, formed bodies of mercenaries were hired by the emerging nation-states of Western Europe and integrated into their armies. Units of Swiss, Scots, and Irish soldiers served in the armies of France. Great Britain hired nearly 30,000 German mercenaries to help fight the rebellious American colonists. Commercial contractors were also required to equip, feed, and sustain troops in the field, carrying out many tasks that would later be performed by uniformed logisticians in the large standing armies of the twentieth century. But, just as mercenaries supplanted unreliable feudal levees towards the end of the Middle Ages, they began to fall from favor as the scale of warfare increased and mass citizen armies emerged during the French revolutionary wars. For the last two centuries, a state monopoly on armed violence has been an accepted feature of national sovereignty. In the early twenty-first century, political, technological, and societal developments have again combined to change the predominant character of armed conflict. A complex and unpredictable security environment has replaced the threat of large-scale interstate war. Compulsory military service and large standing armies have become anachronisms, while the bonds of national sentiment and identification that helped to sustain these forces are in decline. To the extent that emerging security threats require a military response, the need is for rapidly deployable, expeditionary forces capable of conducting operations in a wide variety of environments. However, most member states of the European Union (EU) appear reluctant to reform and resource their armed forces to provide these capabilities. Given these conditions, this exploratory paper examines whether the states of Europe could once again turn to the modern-day equivalent of the condottieri, private military companies (PMCs), to supplement or even substitute for their national military forces in an expeditionary role. A PMC is defined as an enterprise organized on corporate lines, which is formally contracted to provide

Rebel City: Larkin, Connolly and the Dublin Labour Movement

REBEL CITY is a study of the great labour revolt in Ireland and of the development of Irish trade unionism and syndicalism. It focuses on the relationship between Larkin and the Dublin labour movement, and considers the influence of syndicalism and Marxism in the theory and activity of James Connolly. Newsinger studies the condition of the Irish Labour in the years running up to the start of World War One: social, economic and cultural conditions, the influence of the Church, gender relations and the campaign for women's suffrage, the ideology of the republican movement, and developing traditions of labour solidarity and militancy. He chronicles the organisation of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union, [ITGWU] and the impact of the IRISH WORKER newspaper. 1913 and 1914 were crucial years in Irish history: Newsinger considers the Dublin lockouts, [also studied by Yeates]. He puts these events in context looking at the relationship between the ITGWU and the Irish Volunteers, the impact of WW1, the formation of the Citizen Army, relations with the British Labour Movement, and Connolly's links with to the Irish Republican Brotherhood. He discusses Sean O'Casey's views of this period and offers new perspectives on the Lock-outs defeat of 1913-14, on the political trajectory of James Connolly, and on the role of the working class in the Easter uprising of 1916.

The Gender Perspective of Civil-Military Relations in Israeli Society

The exceptional centrality of security to the national existence of Israel has led scholars to investigate the impact of the military on the political and civil system. Nevertheless, this research had been limited in scope. It has been claimed that the army is a `citizen army', that Israel is a `nation in arms', and that therefore the army does not reflect a specific group in society. The newer `generation' of scholars emphasizes the effect of armed conflict on the larger society, on its attitudes and values. One subject, however, which has been neglected so far is the gender perspective. This is astonishing because Israel is unique in the sense that Jewish Israeli women have been conscripted since the foundation of the state of Israel. In China women are also conscripted, but as not even 10 percent of each age group are called up this is negligible. Thus - from the perspective of sheer numbers - Israel serves as a very interesting case study of the impact of an advanced integration of female citizens in the defence forces on society and on the defence forces themselves. The article examines whether, although (Jewish) women are conscripted, the military in Israel is the main force in shaping male identity and whether military service can be understood as a rite of passage to male adulthood. It also analyses whether the dominance of security and of the military discourse leads to gender inequality in society at large.

Going off Half-Cocked: A Review Essay of "Arming America"

THE PROFESSION OF AMERICAN HISTORIANS IS NO MORE IMMUNE FROM THE toils of notoriety than the business world with its corporate meltdowns. One popular historian seems to have borrowed lengthy passages from compatriots as coolly as some Houston executives cooked their financial books. Likewise, another, often seen on television, admits paying off an author whose work was exploited without attribution. Amid such sensational breaches in public trust, assaults on Michael A. Bellesiles's book Arming America (1) have become almost a cottage industry, with articles appearing in the Chronicle of Higher Education, national journals of opinion, academic newsletters, and elsewhere. (2) In this case the author's problem is neither greed nor the convenience of plagiarism. Instead, Bellesiles stands accused of allowing political aims to override scruples of historical accuracy. Michael Bellesiles claims that myth alone has deposited firearms in the hands of most Americans from earliest settlement. His interpretation postpones the rise of a genuine culture, as he calls it (p. 15), to the mobilizations of the Civil War. Arming America proposes that, thereafter, munitions makers tempted civilian buyers with cheap weapons. Such marketing led to increased homicides, gun accidents, and other misadventures. Bellesiles's thesis does not arouse firearms zealots alone. Leaders of the generally liberal and anti-gun academic community have also complained, though for different reasons. In fact, Bellesiles has garnered more faultfinders than any historian in recent memory. For instance, in four pieces published in the January 2002 issue of the William and Mary Quarterly, Gloria L. Main, Ira D. Gruber, Jack N. Rakove, and Randolph A. Roth--though no friends of the National Rifle Association--almost unanimously refute his findings. (3) Gloria Main, an expert on wills, rejects Bellesiles's assertion that if an inventory failed to mention weapons, the household had none. Main states bluntly, This is nonsense. She points out that wills rarely included all property. Anything from cows to children's toys might be omitted because these paraphernalia had already been distributed. Worse, Main finds his methods inexact and his claims to extensive research inflated. Her own work revealed a 76 percent ownership of weapons (chiefly guns) in six Maryland counties between 1650 and 1720, whereas Bellesiles comes up with a mere 7 percent for Maryland (p. 109). Such a wide discrepancy boggles the mind, she concludes. (4) No less dismayed than Main, Ira Gruber criticizes Bellesiles for failing to acknowledge studies that long ago exploded myths of a venerable, sturdy citizen army. Instead, Bellesiles mentions predecessors but infers that his own views are almost sui generis. Like Main, Gruber also disputes Bellesiles's argument that muskets were impractical in colonial times. If that were the case, Gruber asks, why did Indians, not to mention colonists, generate such a lust for them? (5) In perhaps the most devastating essay, Randolph Roth convincingly repudiates Bellesiles's statement that Hamilton, Washington, and every member of Congress ... knew that most Americans did not own guns and had no interest in buying them (p. 229). Roth summarizes the recent findings of James Lindgren and Justin Lee Heather and other scholars, many of whom have used the colonial probate inventories painstakingly compiled decades ago by the prominent economic historian Alice Hanson Jones. Across the board, the results appear to undermine Bellesiles's thesis of low gun ownership rates. For example, whereas Bellesiles claims that only 18.3 percent of the late-eighteenth-century southern probate inventories that he examined listed firearms (p. 445, table 1), Lindgren's analysis of Jones's inventories indicates that 69 percent of colonial-era southern households owned guns--the highest ratio among all early American regions. And the other scholars whose work Roth describes (who, unlike Bellesiles, have been forthcoming about both their sources and the sophisticated quantitative and statistical methods they employed) reach similar conclusions, with estimated gun ownership rates all in the range of over 50 percent of American households during this period. …

Israel's National Security Doctrine under Strain: The Crisis of the Reserve Army

Israel's national security doctrine necessitates a citizen's army ("nation-in-arms") based on universal conscription, requiring citizens to serve in the military reserves for many years. This reserve army is the mainstay of Israel's military. The willingness of citizens to serve in the army is analyzed here, using four approaches: the individual level, the institutional or organizational levels, competing commitments, and social conditions. This is the first empirical study to be published on this topic based on a representative sample of the relevant Israeli population.

The Northern Wars: War, State and Society in Northeastern Europe, 1558-1721 by Robert I. s> Frost (review)

REVIEWS 747 very first, treated as hereditary, were ceded in the expectation that the beneficiarieswould be absentees, and were even, indeed, awardedin the first instance to women. As Ostrowskisuggests, the distinction maintained in the historicalliteraturebetween pomest'e and votchina estates was blurredfrom the very start of the pomest'e's institutional inception in the second half of the fifteenthcentury. There is, however, much which Ostrowski'ssynopsis of individual grants does not elucidate. If these grants of estate were, indeed, ceded in exchange for service, then why were the termsof serviceso seldom laid?If the nature of service was by the late fifteenth century customary and so not needing any detailed elaboration, then this surely presupposes that notions of obligation and of reciprocity of rights were already comprehended in social practice. Likewise,none of the thirty-sixgrantsgiven here clarifyissuesof inheritance. Individual estates might thus (and repeatedly) be ceded to a father and his sons without any furtherdiscussion of the terms of its descent. Others might specify that the lands involved be retained within the family, or, should the beneficiary be a widow, that her lands would devolve to her son in the event of her remarriage. Escheat to the ruler likewise mainly occurred when the originalbeneficiaryhad no male descendantsto whom the propertymight be passed. All this suggests that notions of collective ownership by the clan, kindred or male line attended grants of pomest'eholdings, and that the beneficiaryof such service-holdings(ifsuch they reallywere)was not so much the individualpomeshchik as the largerfamily-groupin which he had his place. Ostrowskidoes not confront these issues.Instead, he appeals to the idea of the state as the principalactor and conceives of thepomest'e as the productof a 'shiftingof responsibility'on the part of a centralizedregime. In one place, he even converts the Muscovite administrationinto some sort of collective farm or MTS. As he remarks, 'Pomeshchiki. . . would pass the potyagloon to local officialsand have theirlivelihood, arms,etc suppliedby the local oklad' (p. 6o). This surely requires a degree of organization, social discipline and recordkeeping beyond most early sixteenth-century kingdoms, let alone what we know of contemporaryMuscovy. In short, in order to understandthepomest'e we should probably abandon the vocabulary of the state and look instead at kindreds,at custom, and at the formsof organizationwhich may prevailin the absence of a modern administration. School ofSlavonic andEastEuropean Studies MARTYNRADY University College London Frost,Robert I. TheNorthern Wars.War,StateandSociety inNortheastern Europe, i558-I721. Longman, Harlow, 2000. Xiii + 401 pp. Maps. Plans.Tables. Appendices. Bibliography.Index. Cig.99. THEnorthernwarsof Dr Frost'ssplendidnew book range acrossa vast swathe of territorybetween the White and the BlackSeas, with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as the epicentre. Previous histories in English of the period, most notably those of Michael Roberts, have focused theirattention upon the rise (and decline) of Sweden under the Vasas. Dr Frost'sbook offers a fresh 748 SEER, 79, 4, 2001 new perspective for those of us more used to viewing the battlefieldfrom the Swedishlines, and it mounts a vigorous challenge to a number of deep-rooted attitudesabout Poland-Lithuania.It is 'the traditionwhich presents the Poles as militaryDon Quixotes, and reduces Polish militaryhistory to the hopeless attack on Wellington's guns at Somosierra in I8o8 and legends about Polish cavalry charging German tanksin I939' (p. 17) that the author is concerned to rebut. He argues that, far from being a ramshackle,ungovernable land of factious magnates, the Polish-LithuanianCommonwealth was able to sustain a tremendous militaryburden and to devise flexible and imaginative ways of dealing with this. The belief that backwardnessand an inability to adapt to new developments in warfareled to Poland'smilitarydecline is belied by the plentifulevidence of active Polishinvolvement in the studyof militarytheory, and of the adaption of new methods and technology under John Sobieski. Nevertheless,the armycommand remainedfirmlyin the handsof those whose experience was limited to the cavalry, and in spite of reforms, the core of professionalswithin thearmyremainedsmall.In an age ofprofessionalization, the cherished ideal of the noble-dominated citizen army was no longer adequate, leading Frost to conclude that the explanation of the military decline of the Commonwealth lies more in itspolitical and culturallife than in an inabilityto keep up with the developments...

Partisan politics and the public sphere: The civil war north

The Civil War North presents an interesting case study of the relationship between a highly politicized public sphere and partisan electoral politics. Although the two‐party system remained intact throughout the war, the concept and practice of partisanship was challenged by the social experience of Northerners who ‘acted politically’ when they took part in the war effort. The creation of a mass citizen army and the mobilization of women and men on the home front meant that parties lost their function as the crucial mediating channel between citizen and government. The more that politics mattered, the less partisanship seemed to be relevant. The war exposed the latent non‐partisan political energies of Northern society. These conclusions bolster the arguments of those scholars who, questioning whether partisanship was as deep or as widespread as previously supposed, have begun to suggest that the ‘party period paradigm’ does not capture the entirety of the nineteenth‐century political experience.

From Mercenary to Citizen Armies: Explaining Change in the Practice of War

Mercenary armies went out of style in the nineteenth century; it became common sense that armies should be staffed with citizens. I argue that even though realist explanations focusing on the fighting prowess of citizen armies and sociological explanations focusing on the fit between citizen armies and prevailing ideas can rationalize this change, they cannot explain it. I examine, instead, the politics behind the new reliance on citizen armies and argue that material and ideational turmoil provided important antecedent conditions for change. Beyond this, individual states were more likely to move toward citizen armies when they had been defeated militarily and when the ruling coalition was split or indifferent about the reforms tied to citizen armies. Finally, the apparent success of citizen armies in France and then Prussia made do mestic conditions for reform easier to obtain in other countries, reinforcing the likelihood that the solution would be replicated. I conclude that the interaction between domestic politics and path dependency provides a promising source of hypotheses for explaining the conditions under which new ways of war emerge and spread.

The Rise of the National Guard: The Evolution of the America Militia, 1865-1920 (review)

BOOK REVIEWS67 cal issues suffused nearly all aspects of the war experience. No one has sharpened our awareness of the soldier's political life as Frank has done in this book. The heart of Frank's study is his work in the papers of ? ,01 3 soldiers, North and South. He ranks their political awareness in three areas: political acuity, scope of interest in political affairs, and sense of political effectiveness, concluding that more than a third of the soldiers "exhibited a higher level of political sophistication in their correspondence" (34). The differences within that group are interesting; Federals were slightly more sophisticated than Confederates , Midwesterners were slightly more sophisticated than New Englanders, and officers were a lot more sophisticated than enlisted men. Generally, the strength of politic interest increased over the course of the war, although the sense of political effectiveness declined for some men. Two thirds of the sample believed that high principles and ideals were at stake in the war; nearly twice as many Federals as Confederates believed this. More than 70 percent of the politically motivated Union soldiers favored arming former slaves. Surprisingly, nearly halfofthe Confederate soldiers also favored putting guns in black hands. And, when the war ended, more than 60 percent of the Rebel soldiers totally accepted defeat, while twice as many officers as enlisted men vowed never to accept it. These are enlightening statistics, although Frank is careful to point out that his sampling is too small to be taken as typical of all Civil War soldiers. The results tend to reinforce many of the arguments made by recent historians of the soldier experience and open up some new lines of inquiry to further flesh out that subject. Frank has a particularly good sense of the internal dynamics of the war effort over time, and he is very concerned with dwelling on the concept of a people's war and a citizen army. Students ofall these topics will greatly enjoy this book. His discussion of the South's debate over arming slaves is one of the best I have read. And no one can fault Frank for his grasp of political theory and the scholarship surrounding it (he is a political science professor), or for his wide understanding ofother conflicts in theWestern world that involved mass armies. In short, Frank's book is a major contribution to a small but steadily growing body of work on Civil War soldiers, adding another important step to a lengthening ladder. Earl J. Hess Lincoln Memorial University The Rise ofthe National Guard: The Evolution ofthe America Militia, 18651920 . By Jerry Cooper. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997. Pp. xviii, 246. $45.00.) In democratic countries, the raising of troops in time of war is almost always controversial. This was particularly true in the nineteenth-century United States 68CIVIL WAR HISTORY where the Jeffersonian/Jacksonian ethos of the volunteer soldier prevailed. If war came, Americans believed, a citizen should be able to choose if he would serve or not, and his decision should take into account his business and family obligations and whether or not the political ends of the conflict met with his approval (158). Most states had statutes requiring universal and compulsory militia service for limited terms, but resistance insured that elected officials rarely enforced the laws effectively. Despite cherished myths of the "minutemen ," American militias usually proved ineffective in the wars of the nineteenth century, and politicians wasted much energy squabbling over their employment . But military service was a valuable source of patronage, and after 1868, state politicians began groping for useful employment for their troops. Jerry Cooper, professor of history at the University of Missouri, St. Louis, and authority on American citizen-soldiers, has produced a detailed account of how political, fiscal, and social forces led to the transformation of state militia organizations into a national guard that today serves as the nation's military reserve. Change came gradually. In the last half of the nineteenth century, with a general conflict only a remote possibility, state guard troops were routinely used for constabulary functions: aiding civil authorities after natural disasters, quelling civil disorders, and intervening in labor-related disturbances. But for many guard members...

The progressive army: US Army command and administration, 1870-1914

Dedication - Contents Page - List of Maps and Tables - Preface - Acknowledgements - The American Army in the Late Nineteenth Century - 'No End of a Lesson': America and the Spanish-American War - Early Army Reform and the Election of 1900 - The Emergence of a New International Order - Root's Army Reforms - America and the Continued Extension of the White Man's Burden - International Suspicion and Fear of Japan:1905-1908 - Military Preparedness and the Emergence of the New Citizen Army: 1909-1920 - Appendices - Notes - Bibliography - Index

The transformation of France's armed forces

National service and the idea of a conscript army has been a key‐stone of French national identity and a firmly political issue since the Revolution of 1789. Even then, the advantages and disad‐vantages of mass conscription were recognised, with the debated of conscript vs. professional forces couched in terms of the domestic political agenda. Presi‐dent Chirac has now taken a fundamental step away from the citizen army in announcing the end_of compulsory military service by 2002 as part of the overall restructuring of France's defence planning. Beatrice Heuser presents a discussion of this transformation of France's armed forces within its historical context, discussing the impact of this dramatic change, including the reduction of bases both at home and abroad, the issue of overseas commitments, and the power levels will fluctuate, they, overall quality of a full time pro‐grammes to introduce new forms of national service ensure the maintenance of the idea of civic involvement and the political function played by the concept of military services.

The Kwangsi Way in Kuomintang China, 1931-1939.

This work offers a detailed study of Kwangsi, the model province of Nationalist China, as it prepared for war with Japan in the 1930s. The author examines the theoretical and pragmatic origins of the Kwangsi Clique's ideology and describes the action taken by its citizen army against Japanese in the second Sino-Japanese War, incorporating an account of the reform programme instituted in Kwangsi during the preceding years.

To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right.

Joyce Malcolm illuminates the historical facts underlying the current passionate debate about gun-related violence, the Brady Bill, and the NRA, revealing the original meaning and intentions behind the individual right to bear arms. Few on either side of the Atlantic realize that this extraordinary, controversial and least understood liberty was a direct legacy of English law. This book explains how the Englishmen's hazardous duty evolved into a right and how it was transferred to America and transformed into the Second Amendment. Malcolm's story begins in turbulent 17th-century England. She shows why English subjects, led by the governing classes, decided that such a dangerous public freedom as bearing arms was necessary. Entangled in the narrative are shifting notions of the connections between individual ownership, private weapons and social status, the citizen army and the professional army, and obedience and resistance, as well as ideas about civilian control of the sword and self-defence. The results add to knowledge of English life, politics and constitutional development, and present an historical analysis of a controversial Anglo-American legacy, a legacy that resonates loudly in America today.

The Great Reforms: Autocracy, Bureaucracy, and the Politics of Change in Imperial Russia.

Great of the 1860s marked the broadest attempt at social and economic renovation to occur in Russia between the death of Peter the Great in 1725 and the Revolution of 1905. In just more than a decade, imperial reform acts freed Russia's serfs, restructured her courts, established institutions of local self-government in parts of the empire, altered the constraints that censorship imposed on the press, and transformed Russia's vast serf armed forces into a citizen army in which men from all classes bore equal responsibility for military service. This invaluable study explains why the legislation assumed the shape that it did and estimates what the Great ultimately accomplished. The Great Reforms offered readers a vital starting point from which to evaluate the prospects for glasnost', perestroika, and reform in the Gorbachev era.

Profile of a Citizen Army: Shiloh's Soldiers

Based on an analysis of the letters, diaries, and reminiscences of approximately 450 raw recruits at the Battle of Shiloh in the American Civil War, the study elaborates a comparative profile of the Civil War volunteers in contrast to professional armies. The analysis assesses sources of combat motivation such as political articulateness, nationalism, attitudes toward officers, relations with the home front, and how these affected fighting style and the citizen-soldier ethos.

The Folk Music of Costa Rica: A Teaching Perspective

In a previous article (1977) this writer sought to delineate the rationale for including folk music as a viable component in an overall strategy for teaching culture. point was made that teachers long have been aware of music's inherent appeal, its Quien canta sus males espanta aspect, and frequently include it in special events such as a Pifiata Party or La fiesta anual that provide a welcome break from classroom routine. However, due to the fact that (a) few foreign language teachers have had formal training in music, and (b) few materials suited to classroom use are now available, the dynamic benefits of teaching culture through music are rarely realized. Genelle Morain has indicted the profession itself for failure in this regard. The pressuring of teachers to 'Teach culture!' without providing them with the knowledge and materials to do so amounts to a professional disgrace (91). Our purpose here is to respond to that professional admonition and provide a very specific, practical example of music used as an integral component in a teaching unit, in this case on Both general background and specific strategies are described in order to provide the Spanish teacher with both matter and means for a successful culture-through-music dimension in his/her teaching. In the troubled world of Central America diminutive Rica appears as an oasis of political stability and democracy. Its national anthem ends with a refrain that reflects a national perspective: iVivan siempre el trabajo y la paz! When early explorers saw Indians wearing golden trinkets they assumedincorrectly that there were vast riches to be found in the interior and named the place Costa Rica. But it was Fray Bartolom6 de las Casas, the great apostle to the Indians, who identified the true wealth of the country as early as 1502 when he wrote: En Cariari (an Indian village on the Caribbean Coast) hallamos la mejor gente y tierra y estancia que habiamos hasta alli hallado, por la hermosura de los cerros y sierra, y frescura de los rios y arboledas que se iban al cielo de altas. Since the real gold of Rica proved to be vegetable rather than mineral it lured not the conquistador who would exploit the land but the colonizador who would cultivate it. result was a nation of small farms rather than vast haciendas; a populace composed of pobladores rather than patrones y peon s. Rica is the only country in Latin America that has abolished its army. In 1948 Jos6 Figueras led the country's last revolution in which a citizen army of 600 toppled a communist-backed government that refused to step aside for its democratically elected successor. As leader of the revolutionary junta Don Pepe had the constitution revised to outlaw a standing army-including his ownand then returned the reins of power to the actual winner of the '48 election. National priorities are neatly reflected in the annual budget with 32% allocated to education, 33% to health and about 3% to the guardia civil for internal security. Truly this is a country that abides by the motto: Mis maestros que soldados, and a 92% literacy rate is final testimony to the success of its educational commitment. Rica emerges as the very antithesis of the current stereotype of an area ridden with militarism, communist insurgency, poverty and ignorance; it provides the Spanish teacher with a welcome antidote to the generally negative impression that most American students have of Central America. Our purpose here is to provide a balanced and accurate view of this part of the Spanish speaking world based on a musical perspective. That music is, in fact, a key to understanding his native culture has been affirmed by the Rican musicologist Rodrigo Salazar (1978): Creemos ... que el estudio de la muisica no debe ser un 'aparte' de la vida de los pueblos, porque las expresiones ritmicas y mel6dicas, asi como su letra, se nutren de la veta de los

Small but not Beautiful

Alternative military defence can be regarded both as a concept for a general change in military structures and as a possible strategy for small and medium-size countries. The general concept is vague and far away from any political implementation. Several models of alternative military defence have been discussed for small and medium-size countries, mainly in Europe. Of these, a high technology territorial defence appears to offer an optimal compromise between a defensive deterrence and the abandonment of elements that could be regarded as provocative. The article investigates the possibilities to implement a high-technology defence, with the operational task to absorb an attack by offensive forces of a super-power. The basic principles for such a defence must be to avoid the main capacity of these forces, their weapon systems, intelligence systems and electronic warfare systems. PGM technology has created some opportunities for this model, but also for new offensive systems. A continuous development of systems adapted to territorial defence is therefore a necessity. The idea of small independent units is hardly feasible in this context. The organization of defence must be dispersed and decentralized but still coordinated in very deep defensive zones. The model therefore can only be employed by a well-trained and professionally led citizen army.

The Easter Rebellion: Defeat or Victory?

The participation of the working-class Irish Citizen Army in the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin was criticized at the time by many socialists, who saw the insurrection as a foredoomed adventure, inspired by petty bourgeois nationalist aims and having nothing to do with the struggle for socialism. A few months after the event, Lenin wrote a sharp reply to one of these critics, Karl Radek, and forcefully defended James Connolly and his comrades against accusations of putschism.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

The Decline of Military Values: The Theme of the Deserter in Eighteenth-Century French Literature

The Decline of Military Values: The Theme of the Deserter in Eighteenth-Century French Literature ADRIENNE D. HYTIER The Prince de Ligne once said, "Il y a bien peu de soldats qui dans le cours de leur terme n'aient pas eu envie de deserter. Ils me l'avouent tres souvent,"1 and he adds that it is "une chose impossible" not to have desert­ ers in ones army. The fact is that desertion has always been an important military problem. It was prevalent in the French Revolution and under Napoleon; it was rampant in the American Revolution and during the Civil War, and, as is well known, it was considerable in all the armies of the eighteenth century. "La vraie plaie des armees d autrefois c est la deser­ tion,"2 wrote Leon Mention in LArmee de I'Ancien Regime. Colonel Reboul , in his volume on the French army in the eighteenth century, called it "la principale plaie de ce temps."3 Ludovic Jablonski, in LArmee frangaise a travers les ages, declared, "L'armee etait . . . rongee par un mal terrible: la desertion . . . etait un mal endemique dans les armees du 18e siecle."4 Capitaine Bacquet, in L'Infanterie au XVIIIe siecle, deplored the "deser­ tion chronique, mal incurable qui mine l'armee."5 Contemporaries were fully conscious of the problem, as is well shown by Eleazar de Mauvillon, who discussed repeatedly the "frequente desertion"6 of French soldiers in his Lettres frangoises et germaniques. Exactly how extensive a problem is, however, hard to tell. Statistics are usually lacking and those which are available are often unreliable. Keep­ ing this in mind, a few specific examples are revealing. In the milice de­ 147 148 / H Y T I E R tachment going to Italy in 1705, it is known that, between March 17 and May 19, out of 13,929 men 3,071 deserted.7 A memorandum sent to Choiseul estimated that, between 1748 and 1757, the French army lost 90,000 men through desertion. Deserters constituted "l'elite des corps etrangers des armees espagnoles, italiennes, piemontaises, allemandes et hollandaises ."8 Andre Corvisier, in his monumental study of the French army during the first two-thirds of the eighteenth century, estimated that "un homme sur quatre ou cinq aurait deserte pendant la periode 1716-1763 et au moins un homme sur quatre pendant la guerre de succession d'Espagne ."9 This is a conservative estimate, which, for all practical purposes, can be adopted. In order to understand the problem of desertion in the eighteenth cen­ tury, it might be well to remember the system of recruitment.10 In the first place, there was no real conscription anywhere. The closest to a citizen army was the French milice, but only peasants served in it and they were selected by drawing lots. If they got the "mauvais numero" and they had a little money, they could always buy a replacement. Service in the milice was dreaded and abominated. The Cahiers de doleances in 1789 are full of complaints about it. The regular army was theoretically made of volun­ teers. In peacetime, particularly during economic crises, most were prob­ ably really volunteers, often from the dregs of society, and, in any case, without family or social ties. During prosperous years and in wartime, volunteers were scarce, so trickery and even violence were used to per­ suade the men to join. The "fours" in which they were locked up have re­ mained famous. The officer corps was an entirely separate class. Its members were all volunteers, most of them noble or bourgeois "vivant noblement" and most of them had bought their commissions. Rising through the ranks was extremely rare. Officers, like their men, changed camp, although the word desertion was hardly ever applied to them. There were a few spec­ tacular cases like the Comte de Bonneval, who first served France, quar­ relled with the War Minister, joined the Austrian forces in wartime, served with Prince Eugene, quarrelled with the Austrians, fled, became a Moslem, reorganized the Turkish army and became a three-tail Pasha. The numbers of such cases, however, are even harder to estimate than those of the soldiers. Peasants impressed into...