The business of war—meaning the commercial supply, financing, and organisation of soldiers and materiel for armies and navies—was one of the leading economic sectors in early modern Europe. During this turbulent period, civil unrest and wars were the norm rather than the exception. Changes in the practice of war brought along an increasing demand for manpower, expensive new technologies, and new forms of administrative competence. Many potentates turned to the private market for the necessary military resources. While some of these could be acquired locally, the bulk were obtained through transnational networks of merchants and military entrepreneurs, making this a pan-European and even global endeavour.
The Business of War in the Early Modern Baltic Sea Region, 1530–1765 explores the development of the fiscal-military networks and military markets over three centuries. Despite growing interest towards the early modern business of war, the research field remains scattered. Recent scholarship has highlighted the significance of this business and public-private cooperation in the Mediterranean and Central-Western Europe, yet the North has been largely overlooked. This volume offers a holistic overview of the business of war in Northern Europe and the Baltic Sea region.
The aims of this volume are threefold. Firstly, it explores the particular features and realities of the business of war in the Baltic Sea region, where fiscal-military operations were characterised by long distances, difficult terrain, lack of infrastructure, and a low degree of urbanisation. Secondly, the volume offers a broader view of resources provided by private military suppliers. Beyond manpower and materiel, it examines funding, financial services, and crucial intangible assets, such as knowledge, expertise, and social capital. Finally, the book analyses the agency of the private suppliers themselves. By focusing on individuals rather than institutions, this volume offers a fresh perspective highlighting the motivations and operational logic of the people and groups involved in a way that macro-level studies cannot do. Together, the chapters portray the complexity and diversity of the early modern business of war.
"The Business of War in the Early Modern Baltic Sea Region, 1530–1765 is positioned to make a distinctly new geopolitical contribution to existing scholarly debate about the fiscal-military state, about the role of the private sector in organizing warfare and enhancing military capabilities, and the developing notion of the “contractor state” – the basis on which the central state and its agents operated with networks of private suppliers, military enterprisers and mercantile interests. Especially striking is the extent that the volume engages with a more recent area of discussion – the detailed practicalities of financing war, and the range of mechanisms from state taxation, the ‘profits’ of war-waging, the contributions of the private sector, used in various combinations to sustain military costs. The research is groundbreaking, and although the book in general and the chapters individually engage with existing scholarship on early modern warfare, the perspectives and the detail that the volume provides are totally new. All early modern historians of war and the state will gain considerable new perspectives and much new information from the volume, which is genuinely innovatory."
- David Parrott, Professor of Early Modern History, New College, University of Oxford
“With their focus on different fiscal-military topics in the Baltic Sea region, the scholars in this book broaden our knowledge of Northern Europe during the early modern era. The different studies give us a far better understanding than before of the financial basis of military operations, on land and at sea. They reveal both the possibilities and the limits of the military and political activities of states and rulers, as well as military commanders. These studies of fiscal-military networks, military markets, and private-public cooperation in a region that, with its lack of infrastructure in combination with large distances, underline how the conditions in many ways differed from those in other parts of the Continent. In that way, the book adds new perspectives to previous studies in the field. The studies not only contribute to military history but are also of great value to scholars of economic and political history in the early modern period.”
Lars Ericson Wolke, Professor Emeritus in Military History, Swedish Defence University
