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Officers, Entrepreneurs, Career Migrants, and Diplomats
Military Entrepreneurs in the Early Modern World
Series: - History of Warfare, Volume: 145
âMoney, money, and more money.â 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 â its actors, structures and economic logic â 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.
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.
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).
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).
""Officers, Entrepreneurs, Career Migrants, and Diplomatsâ offers a compelling framework for rethinking the relationships between war, state formation, and society in the early modern world. By foregrounding the military entrepreneur as a central actor, the volume illuminates an underexplored field of inquiry and provides conceptual and empirical tools for further research. The history of warfare should no longer be confined to sovereign decisions or institutional reforms; it must include those who mobilized resources, negotiated risks, and made war a viable (and often profitable) enterprise. On this front, the volume achieves a significant historiographical advance.â
Rafael Torres-Sanchez,Universidad de Navarra, in H-Soz-Kult, 10.09.2025, https://www.hsozkult.de/publicationreview/id/reb-151082.
Rafael Torres-Sanchez,Universidad de Navarra, in H-Soz-Kult, 10.09.2025, https://www.hsozkult.de/publicationreview/id/reb-151082.
Acknowledgements
Figures and Tables
Notes on Contributors
Introduction: Mobilising Resources for War: Early Modern Military Entrepreneurs and Their Transnational Fields of Action
âPhilippe Rogger, André Holenstein
1 Logistics, Politics, and War: The Military Entrepreneur Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar and Supplying the Army from the Swiss Confederation in the Thirty Yearsâ War
âAstrid Ackermann
2 Feeding Breisach: Hans Ludwig von Erlachâs Fortress Management and Military Enterprise in the Thirty Yearsâ War
âPhilippe Rogger
3 âQuelques malhonêtes particuliersâ? Army Suppliers and War Commissaries as Profiteers of the Seven Yearsâ War
âMarian Füssel
4 Intergenerationality as a Challenge: The Swiss Guard Company of the Erlach Family, 1639â1770
âBenjamin Ryser
5 Beyond Gender Boundaries: Womenâs Involvement in Military Careers in the Swiss Foreign Service (18thâ19th Centuries)
âJasmina Cornut
6 Military Enterprise and Civil War: Private Armies and Warfare in France around the Fronde, 1641â52
âDavid Parrott
7 Merchant of Death: Maximilien Titon (1632â1711) and the Supply of Arms in Louis XIVâs France
âGuy Rowlands
8 The Officer as Military Entrepreneur in Miles Perpetuus: Examples from the Armies of the Empire 1650â1800
âAlexander Querengässer
9 A Polity Full of Contractors: The Swiss Cantons and Their Business of War (15th to 19th Centuries)
âAndré Holenstein and Philippe Rogger
10 The Republic of Geneva as a Fiscal-Military Hub, 1685â1709: Finance, Information, and Espionage
âJohn Condren
11 At the Crossroads of Population and Capital: Recruiting in Geneva for the French Service under the Ancien Régime
âSébastien Dupuis
12 Foreign Military Labour in Early Modern Europe
âPeter H. Wilson
13 Civilian Trade and War Business in the Early Modern Mediterranean
âThe Case of Genoese Military Transporters in the War of Spanish Succession
âMichael Paul Martoccio
14 Military Money Men: The Toils of Entanglement and the Business Model of Harley & Drummond, Remittance Contractors
âTim Neu
15 From Private Entrepreneurship to State Monopoly
âContracting Swiss Soldiers for Dutch Service under Ancien Régime Fiscal-Military Practices (1693â1829)
âMichael Depreter
16 A Career Before the Career? On the Emergence of the âCréatureâ Peter Stuppa
âKatrin Keller
17 The Besenval Family: Constants and Changes in Its Military Entrepreneurial Activities (1650â1800)
âJulien Grand
Comment: The Sinew of War
âRegula Schmid
Index
Figures and Tables
Notes on Contributors
Introduction: Mobilising Resources for War: Early Modern Military Entrepreneurs and Their Transnational Fields of Action
âPhilippe 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 Yearsâ War
âAstrid Ackermann
2 Feeding Breisach: Hans Ludwig von Erlachâs Fortress Management and Military Enterprise in the Thirty Yearsâ War
âPhilippe Rogger
3 âQuelques malhonêtes particuliersâ? Army Suppliers and War Commissaries as Profiteers of the Seven Yearsâ War
âMarian Füssel
4 Intergenerationality as a Challenge: The Swiss Guard Company of the Erlach Family, 1639â1770
âBenjamin Ryser
5 Beyond Gender Boundaries: Womenâs Involvement in Military Careers in the Swiss Foreign Service (18thâ19th Centuries)
âJasmina Cornut
SECTION: Public-Private Partnership, Feudal Patterns, and the Relativity of âStateâ and âPrivateâ
6 Military Enterprise and Civil War: Private Armies and Warfare in France around the Fronde, 1641â52
âDavid Parrott
7 Merchant of Death: Maximilien Titon (1632â1711) and the Supply of Arms in Louis XIVâs France
âGuy Rowlands
8 The Officer as Military Entrepreneur in Miles Perpetuus: Examples from the Armies of the Empire 1650â1800
âAlexander 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)
âAndré Holenstein and Philippe Rogger
10 The Republic of Geneva as a Fiscal-Military Hub, 1685â1709: Finance, Information, and Espionage
âJohn Condren
11 At the Crossroads of Population and Capital: Recruiting in Geneva for the French Service under the Ancien Régime
âSébastien Dupuis
12 Foreign Military Labour in Early Modern Europe
âPeter H. Wilson
13 Civilian Trade and War Business in the Early Modern Mediterranean
âThe Case of Genoese Military Transporters in the War of Spanish Succession
âMichael Paul Martoccio
14 Military Money Men: The Toils of Entanglement and the Business Model of Harley & Drummond, Remittance Contractors
âTim Neu
SECTION: Diplomacy and Patronage
15 From Private Entrepreneurship to State Monopoly
âContracting Swiss Soldiers for Dutch Service under Ancien Régime Fiscal-Military Practices (1693â1829)
âMichael Depreter
16 A Career Before the Career? On the Emergence of the âCréatureâ Peter Stuppa
âKatrin Keller
17 The Besenval Family: Constants and Changes in Its Military Entrepreneurial Activities (1650â1800)
âJulien Grand
Comment: The Sinew of War
âRegula Schmid
Index
The book is of interest to historical institutes, university libraries, military research and teaching institutions and is primarily aimed at students and researchers in the field of military history with an epochal focus on the pre-modern period. However, the book also addresses a broader audience interested in economic history, diplomatic history, migration history, transnational history and social history (history of the elites).