Military Entrepreneurs Research Articles

Roger Knight et Martin Wilcox Sustaining the Fleet, 1793-1815: War, the British Navy and the Contractor State, Woodbridge, Boydell & Brewer, 2010, 262 p. - Rafael Torres Sánchez Military Entrepreneurs and the Spanish Contractor State in the Eighteenth Century, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2016, 320 p.

Roger Knight et Martin Wilcox Sustaining the Fleet, 1793-1815: War, the British Navy and the Contractor State, Woodbridge, Boydell & Brewer, 2010, 262 p. - Rafael Torres Sánchez Military Entrepreneurs and the Spanish Contractor State in the Eighteenth Century, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2016, 320 p.

Troops are Business Schools: Military Service and Entrepreneurial Behaviors in China

Although research has examined the benefits of military service and the impact of military executives on business operations, the relationship between military service and entrepreneurial behavior remains poorly understood. Using the instrumental variable approach and a nationally representative male sample from the China Labor-forces Dynamic Survey, we discovered that military service significantly increased the probability of entrepreneurship in China, even after a series of robustness checks. Mechanism tests indicated that this positive effect could be explained by human and political capital accumulation, military-related social capital formation, and risk appetite traits. Our supplemental analyses demonstrated that exogenous shocks from the special military-in-business policy strengthened the positive entrepreneurial effect, whereas the higher education expansion policy and China’s accession to the World Trade Organization weakened this effect. Additionally, military entrepreneurs had better business performance and more resilient, persistent, and confident traits. We found no evidence that Chinese veterans were forced to become entrepreneurs. This study enriches research on the styles and traits of military entrepreneurs and managers and provides important insights for assessing and improving veteran welfare policies in China and other developing countries.

Echoes of Central European Battlefields on the Eastern Adriatic Coast: The Thirty Years’ War Veterans Serving as capi da guerra under the Banner of St. Mark in Dalmatia during the War of Crete

ABSTRACT This article focuses on some questions concerning the complex phenomenon of the perpetuation of early modern military activities through a case study of the presence of the capi da guerra, foreign military commanders in the Venetian service during the War of Crete situated in its province of Dalmatia and Albania. The fact alone that more than half of the capi da guerra engaged in the War of Crete were actually veterans from the Thirty Years’ War, many of them situated in Dalmatia, shows the significance of their impact on the Venetian army. These military entrepreneurs, the main actors in the exchange of military knowledge, combined with the growing internationalization of European armies of the time, both reflect and produce the dynamic exchange and adaptations of military innovations that affected the whole continent, including such borderland areas as the coast of the eastern Adriatic.

Self-interest or altruism: Entrepreneurs' military experience and the motivation of corporate philanthropic donations.

This study aims to explore the motivation of corporate philanthropic donations through investigating the impact of entrepreneurs' military experience. Based on the data from the 12th Chinese privately owned enterprises survey, this study finds that entrepreneurs' military experience has a positive impact on corporate philanthropic donations and the result keeps consistent after a series of robustness tests. Further, corporate financing constraints do not significantly influence the relationship between entrepreneurs' military experience and corporate philanthropic donations, while return on equity (ROE) strengthens the relationship. Therefore, entrepreneurs with military experience still donate even if their firms suffer from financial constraints. When firms achieve higher ROE, they will donate more. The findings suggest that the donations of firms with military entrepreneurs are more likely to be altruistic, enriching the understanding of the motivation of corporate philanthropic donations.

Purchasing Slaves Overseas for the Business of War

Abstract Drawing on merchant letters and account books of military entrepreneurs, whose role in slave markets is still poorly understood, this article explores the Mediterranean activities of the Genoese contractors who emerged as major slave traffickers while operating galleys for the Spanish Monarchy. By examining their operations as slave buyers rather than as slave makers, this study analyzes how and why early modern military entrepreneurs mobilized forced labor beyond national borders. The article shows that in the specific context of the early 17th century, Genoese galley managers obtained most slaves by buying them in distant Mediterranean ports, and the reasons for this are explained. The study of how slaves were located, evaluated, negotiated over, paid for, and transported from a distance reveals that buying slaves internationally involved connecting the distant ports of a fragmented market characterized by a volatile local supply, localized information, unpredictable prices, and ubiquitous brokers. It is argued that, in such an imperfect market, the asentistas de galeras had no choice but to empower their galley captains and local agents. Purchasing slaves overseas increased market opportunities but involved high risks, unpredictable legal procedures, and myriad logistical issues.

Potential Negative Externalities of Private Military Entrepreneurs from an Economic Perspective

ABSTRACT Private military companies (PMC) can have considerable advantages for the customer on the one hand, but on the other hand can come with great dangers. Based on the theory of externalities, an attempt is made to illuminate this situation and to analyze the negative externalities associated with it. By using an instrumental case study method we can identify two potential negative technological externalities of hiring PMCs which should be internalized. These two are the violation of national law and international humanitarian law in the theater of operation, and the lack of control of the executive by the legislative branch in the exporting state. Based on this, we present and discuss options to eliminate these negative technological externalities. It can be shown that the preferable set of measures includes instruments to create transparency, and command-and-control regulations on the individual state’s level. While the second effect can easily be solved with domestic instruments, a supranational organization is needed to solve the first effect.

Class, cash and control in the South Sudan and Darfur borderlands

ABSTRACT This article argues for a better understanding of the market foundations of ‘elite’ autocracy, and for a re-centring of the construction and exploitation of labour markets, in histories of economic and political power in South Sudan. Based on conversations with residents and migrant workers on the borders between north-western South Sudan and southern Darfur in Sudan over 2017 to 2019, it explores how cycles of wars, displacement, resettlement and reconstruction since the 1980s have rapidly monetised and commodified working lives, land and relationships. This has precipitated rapid class stratification, cash debt and worker exploitation, and sharp controls on the emerging cheap cash labour pool via border violence, wage depression, land alienation and rents, and the construction of a private educational market, which have all undercut older forms of collective work and mutuality. These changes have been encouraged and exploited by growing classes of private landowners, commercial farmers and military entrepreneurs, and been supported by the development and humanitarian system’s investment in market forces and individual self-reliance.

A ‘Magnificent’ military entrepreneur? The involvement of the Medici Bank in the arms trade (1482-1494)

Sifting through business accounts and public records, this article demonstrates the involvement of Medici Bank in the military industry of the fifteenth century, shedding new light on the final years of one of the most important companies in Renaissance Italy. By restating the relation between the public role and the private business of Lorenzo the Magnificent, this article emphasises the exploitation of government operations for his economic gain as well as the use of the family business for his political purposes – in this case, the consolidation of the new, permanent military institutions of the Florentine Republic. Developing this point further, the entire military organisation of the Medicean regime, traditionally assessed as haphazard and inefficient, is re-evaluated. Finally, this article contributes to the current debate on the military entrepreneurship of the preindustrial world, focussing on the cooperation between state administration and capitalist elites in supplying the materiel indispensable to early modern armies.

On the road: The novice munshi’s view of inter-imperial North India

This article analyses the diary entries made by a Persographic secretary (munshī), Aḥmad ʿAlī, who was employed by a retiring East India Company official to write an account of the journey they made together in 1780 across North India from Lucknow to the Mughal imperial capital in Delhi and back. Much of the landscape that they traversed—including a cluster of qasbahs, river passes, forests and fields—was formerly governed by a confederacy of Rohilla Afghans from 1737 to 1774. By 1780, however, this region was marked by the absence of well-defined, enduring state structures and witnessed an abundance of overlapping political claims. Under such conditions, Aḥmad ʿAlī, a novice secretary from this region who lacked access to major scholarly networks or courtly circles, found himself uniquely placed to observe and document the micro-level political and historical changes that he had lived through. Unlike his courtly counterparts, he witnessed transformations at a remove from both imperial politics and the regional courts that had developed through the eighteenth century. Rather than to a state or a single political project, his locus of service was aligned with the world of independent military entrepreneurs and their households, which were strewn across a region that he knew well. Questioning the view that secretaries were primarily cyphers of courtly culture or bureaucratic imperatives, the following pages demonstrate that while Aḥmad ʿAlī served his individual employer, he could imagine politics and history outside the constraints that came with corporate political affiliations, as a figure who was new to the work of secretarial penmanship and a seasoned bearer of textured regional knowledge.

Military Entrepreneurs and the Spanish Contractor State in the Eighteenth Century. By Rafael TorresSánchez. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2016. xxii + 297 p. 42 b. and w. figs. £54.40 (hb). ISBN 978‐0‐19‐878411‐1.

Journal for Eighteenth-Century StudiesVolume 42, Issue 2 p. 254-255 Book Review Military Entrepreneurs and the Spanish Contractor State in the Eighteenth Century. By Rafael Torres Sánchez. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2016. xxii + 297 p. 42 b. and w. figs. £54.40 (hb). ISBN 978-0-19-878411-1. Francisco A. Eissa-Barroso, Francisco A. Eissa-Barroso University of ManchesterSearch for more papers by this author Francisco A. Eissa-Barroso, Francisco A. Eissa-Barroso University of ManchesterSearch for more papers by this author First published: 29 January 2019 https://doi.org/10.1111/1754-0208.12610Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume42, Issue2June 2019Pages 254-255 RelatedInformation

Military Entrepreneurs and the Spanish Contractor State in the Eighteenth Century. By Rafael Torres Sánchez. Oxford University Press. 2016. xxii + 297pp. £60.00.

HistoryVolume 103, Issue 358 p. 883-885 Reviews and Short Notices Military Entrepreneurs and the Spanish Contractor State in the Eighteenth Century. By Rafael Torres Sánchez. Oxford University Press. 2016. xxii + 297pp. £60.00. BRICE COSSART, BRICE COSSART European University Institute, FlorenceSearch for more papers by this author BRICE COSSART, BRICE COSSART European University Institute, FlorenceSearch for more papers by this author First published: 23 November 2018 https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-229X.12691Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume103, Issue358December 2018Pages 883-885 RelatedInformation

Warriors and States: Military labour in southern India, circa 1750–1800

AbstractThe consolidation of numerous regional polities in the aftermath of Mughal imperial decline presented favourable socioeconomic opportunities for South Asian service communities. Protracted armed conflicts in southern India allowed a variety of mercenaries, soldiers, and war bands to accumulate resources in exchange for mobilizing manpower on behalf of states with weak standing armies. This article focuses on British imperial efforts to obtain sufficient quantities of military labour during its struggle with the Mysore sultanate. As the sultanate assumed an increasingly hostile attitude towards independent warrior power, local strongmen sought more amenable arrangements with alternate entities. The British East India Company received crucial support from autonomous warrior groups during its southern wars of conquest. Warriors in turn utilized British resources to consolidate local sovereignties. Thus, the initial British intrusion into peninsular Indian society further fragmented the political landscape by patronizing petty military entrepreneurs.

The enemy votes: Weapons improvisation and bargaining failure

Belligerents could in principle avoid the ex post costs of conflict by revealing all private information about their violent capabilities and then calculating odds of success ex ante. Incentives to misrepresent private information for strategic gain, however, can cause miscalculations that lead to war. I argue some private information can lead to miscalculation not because it is purposefully misrepresented for strategic gain but because it is too decentralized to be easily revealed. The decentralized private information that produces improvised weapons requires a process of discovering suitable local resources and battlefield testing driven by local military entrepreneurs which frustrates information revelation. Decentralized private information used to improvise new weapons and capabilities like those which emerged in Afghanistan and Iraq show that it can take many years, decades, or even an indeterminate amount of time for fighting to reveal relevant information about violent capabilities.

Military Entrepreneurs and the Spanish Contractor State in the Eighteenth Century, by Rafael Torres Sánchez

Military Entrepreneurs and the Spanish Contractor State in the Eighteenth Century, by Rafael Torres Sánchez

The Enemy Votes: Weapons Improvisation and Bargaining Failure

Belligerents could in principle avoid the ex post costs of conflict by revealing all private information about their violent capabilities and then calculating odds of success ex ante. Incentives to misrepresent private information for strategic gain, however, can cause miscalculations that lead to war. I argue some private information can lead to miscalculation not because it is purposefully misrepresented for strategic gain but because it is too decentralized to be easily revealed. The decentralized private information that produces improvised weapons requires a process of discovering suitable local resources and battlefield testing driven by local military entrepreneurs which frustrates information revelation. Decentralized private information used to improvise new weapons and capabilities like those which emerged in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria show that it can take many years, decades, or even an indeterminate amount of time for fighting to reveal relevant information about violent capabilities.

War and economy. Rediscovering the eighteenth-century military entrepreneur

The detrimental effects traditionally assigned to warfare in the development of pre-industrial economies have obscured the prominent role that military entrepreneurs played in economic development in this period. Historiography minimises the extent to which war and the concomitant strengthening of the central state provided a whole new range of opportunities for capital investment, a tendency that has been strengthened by the paradigm of Redlich’s ‘decline of the soldier-entrepreneur’ and the technological determinism of the debate on the Military Revolution among others. The aim of this introduction is to look into the background of this relative lack of interest and to reaffirm the mutual dependence of eighteenth-century state-formation and the business of war.

Rafael Torres Sánchez. Military Entrepreneurs and the Spanish Contractor State in the Eighteenth Century.

Rafael Torres Sánchez. Military Entrepreneurs and the Spanish Contractor State in the Eighteenth Century.

Military entrepreneurs and the development of the French economy in the eighteenth century

In the eighteenth century, a few military entrepreneurs with connections to the secretary of state of the navy developed large companies in order to meet the needs of the French state, which included a naval fleet fit to compete with its enemies. One of these entrepreneurs was Babaud de la Chaussade. While initially specialising in timber supply, his enterprise came to monopolise anchor manufacturing and owned one of the largest iron foundries in France. For over 30 years, Babaud’s enterprise had a presence in all the naval and French East India Company markets for iron products. The enterprise was bought by the French state at the end of the eighteenth century and survived until the end of the twentieth century.

Book Review: Military Entrepreneurs and the Spanish Contractor State in the Eighteenth Century

Book Review: Military Entrepreneurs and the Spanish Contractor State in the Eighteenth Century

Rafael Torres Sánchez, Military Entrepreneurs and the Spanish Contractor State in the Eighteenth Century

Rafael Torres Sánchez, <i>Military Entrepreneurs and the Spanish Contractor State in the Eighteenth Century</i>