The Social Construction of Mercenaries: German Soldiers in British Service during the Eighteenth Century

ABSTRACT

This article will explore the differing attitudes among British parliamentarians towards the use of German soldiers in 1756 and 1776. Utilising speech act theory, it will be shown that German soldiers were constructed as mercenaries in 1776 because they were being employed to fight against British subjects – the North American colonists. However, when nearly identical German soldiers were employed to fight against a French adversary in 1756, they were not constructed as mercenaries. It will be concluded that the mercenary as a figure of war is not a static, transhistorical concept with universal characteristics. Rather, the mercenary is socially constructed, and, as such, is only made possible in specific historical and socio-political contexts.

KEYWORDS:

• Mercenaries
• Hessians
• American revolutionary war
• speech acts
• parliamentary debates

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The Parliamentary History of England, 151, 966, 1224; and The Parliamentary History of England, 399–400.

2. Putnam, “Studying Elite Political Culture,” 651.

3. Finer, “The Second Oldest Trade,” 129–30; and Mockler, Mercenaries.

4. Mallet, Mercenaries and Their Masters; Schlight, Monarchs and Mercenaries; Parrott, The Business of War; Thomson, Mercenaries, Pirates, and Sovereigns; Singer, Corporate Warriors, 19; and Fowler, Medieval Mercenaries.

5. Including Zarate, “The Emergence of a New Dog of War,” 121; Burmester, “The Recruitment and Use of Mercenaries in Armed Conflicts,” 37; and Hampson, “Mercenaries,” 5.

6. Mallet, “Mercenaries,” 209.

7. Trim, “Fighting ‘Jacob’s Wars’,” 62.

8. Riemann, “As Old as War Itself?” 1.

9. Ibid., 3.

10. Ibid., 2.

11. Ettinger, “The Mercenary Moniker,” 175, 179.

12. Ibid., 187, 175, emphasis original.

13. Ibid., 175.

14. Malešević, Grounded Nationalisms, 261.

15. International Committee of the Red Cross, “Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and Relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I)”; Organization of African Unity, “OAU Convention for the Elimination of Mercenarism in Africa”; and United Nations, “International Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing, and Training of Mercenaries, A/RES/44/34.”

16. Krahmann, “From “Mercenaries” to “Private Security Contractors”,” 346.

17. Ibid.

18. Taulbee, “Myths, Mercenaries and Contemporary International Law,” 347.

19. Ettinger, “The Mercenary Moniker,” 180.

20. Percy, Mercenaries, 1, 54–58.

21. Ibid., 2.

22. Ibid., 34–35, 63.

23. Berger and Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality, 70 Emphasis original.

24. Ibid., 79, 55.

25. Balzacq, “A Theory of Securitization,” 4; and Austin, How to Do Things with Words, 6.

26. Austin, How to Do Things with Words, 6, 12; and Searle, Speech Acts, 16.

27. Searle, Speech Acts, 22; and Austin, How to Do Things with Words, 14–15, 25.

28. Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 128.

29. Wæver, “Securitization and Desecuritization,” 54–55; and Balzacq, “A Theory of Securitization,” 1.

30. Searle, The Construction of Social Reality, 2.

31. Ibid.

32. Austin, How to Do Things with Words, 34.

33. Ibid., 139.

34. Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 109, 223.

35. Ibid., 170.

36. Langton, “Speech Acts and Unspeakable Acts,” 298.

37. Bach and Harnish, Linguistic Communication and Speech Acts, 5.

38. Ibid.

39. The Parliamentary History of England, 1813, vol. 18, col. 1167.

40. Ibid., vol. 18, col. 1174.

41. Ibid., vol. 18, cols 1171, 1174.

42. Ibid., vol. 18, col. 1175.

43. Ibid., vol. 18, col. 1183.

44. Macleod, British Visions of America, 1775–1820, 51.

45. The Parliamentary History of England, 1813, vol. 18, col. 1189.

46. Ibid., vol. 18, col. 1193.

47. Ibid., vol. 18, col. 1203.

48. Ibid.

49. Mackesy, The War for America, 1775–1783, 72.

50. The Parliamentary History of England, 1813, vol. 18, col. 1224.

51. Ibid., vol. 18, col. 1223.

52. Duffy, “Contested Empire, 1756–1815,” 230; and Ferling, A Leap in the Dark, 30.

53. Colley, Britons, 135–36; and Scott, “The Seven Years War and Europe’s Ancien Régime,” 442.

54. Ferling, Almost a Miracle, 22.

55. Scott, “The Seven Years War and Europe’s Ancien Régime,” 443; Colley, Britons, 136; and Gould, The Persistence of Empire, 109.

56. Conway, War, State, and Society in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Britain and Ireland, 240.

57. Gould, The Persistence of Empire, 109.

58. Macleod, British Visions of America, 1775–1820, 34,36.

59. Wahrman, “The English Problem of Identity in the American Revolution,” 1239.

60. Barnett, Britain and Her Army, 215; Thomas, Lord North, 87; and Mockler, Mercenaries, 107.

61. O’Shaughnessy, The Men Who Lost America, 25.

62. The Parliamentary History of England, 1813, vol. 18, col. 1160; Ingrao, The Hessian Mercenary State, 136; and Atwood, The Hessians, 24.

63. The Parliamentary History of England, 1813, vol. 18, col. 1341.

64. The Parliamentary Register : Or, History of the Proceedings and Debates of the House of Commons, 44.

65. Davenport and Paullin, eds., European Treaties, 142–44.

66. Lowell, The Hessians and the Other German Auxiliaries of Great Britain in the Revolutionary War, 18; French, The British Way in Warfare, 1688–2000, 68; and Conway, Britannia’s Auxiliaries, 50.

67. The Parliamentary History of England, from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, col. 700.

68. Ibid., vol. 15, cols 700–3; Raynor, “Ferguson’s Reflections Previous to the Establishment of a Militia,” 65.

69. Raynor, “Ferguson’s Reflections Previous to the Establishment of a Militia,” 65; McCormack, “The New Militia,” 487.

70. Gould, The Persistence of Empire, 76; Bowen, War and British Society, 1688–1815, 13; and Brewer, The Sinews of Power, 26.

71. [Anon.], Gentle Reflections Upon the Serious, 6; Shebbeare, A Second Letter, 31.

72. Conway, Britannia’s Auxiliaries, 141.

73. Macleod, British Visions of America, 1775–1820, 30; Thomas, The House of Commons in the Eighteenth Century, 221; Namier and Brooke, eds., The History of Parliament; and Hartley, (c.1730–1813). Electronic version.

74. Namier and Brooke, eds., The History of Parliament; Hartley, (c.1730–1813). Electronic version.

75. Macleod, British Visions of America, 1775–1820, 29.

76. Ibid., 30.

77. Ibid., 30–32.

78. Langford, “Burke, Edmund (1729/30–1797).”

79. Namier and Brooke, The History of Parliament. Electronic version.

80. Thomas, George III, 149.

81. Thomas, “Pratt, Charles, First Earl Camden, (1714–1794).”

82. Cannon, “Montagu, George, Fourth Duke of Manchester, (1737–1788).”

83. Ibid.

84. Ditchfield, “The House of Lords in the Age of the American Revolution,” 204, 208.

85. Lowe, “Lennox, Charles, Third Duke of Richmond, Third Duke of Lennox, and Duke of Aubigny in the French Nobility (1735–1806)”; and Macleod, British Visions of America, 1775–1820, 29–30.

86. Bach and Harnish, Linguistic Communication and Speech Acts, 5.

87. Thomas, The House of Commons in the Eighteenth Century, 13.

88. Ibid., 65, 73, 76.

89. Lee, “Parliament, Parties and Elections (1760–1815),” 69.

90. Beckett and Jones, “Introduction,” 2, 18–19.

91. Ibid., 19; Ditchfield, “The House of Lords in the Age of the American Revolution,” 204.

92. Bach and Harnish, Linguistic Communication and Speech Acts, 104–5.

93. Namier and Brooke, The History of Parliament, III. The Members. Electronic version.

94. Beckett and Jones, “Introduction: The Peerage and the House of Lords in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” 2.

95. Ibid., 3.

96. The Parliamentary History of England, 1813, vol. 18, col. 1185.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Helene Olsen

Helene Olsen is a doctoral candidate in the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. Her research focuses broadly on the historical usages of mercenaries and other forms of privatised violence.