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

Introduction

While the mercenary figure has traditionally been described as an individual marked by foreignness and a selfish monetary motive, this article argues that the mercenary is not a transhistorical, static figure to whom universal characteristics can be ascribed. Rather, the mercenary is a social construction, entirely dependent on the historical and socio-political context within which this figure is found. This argument will be exemplified by Britain’s use of German soldiers in 1776. When German soldiers were hired to fight against the rebelling American colonists, they were constructed as mercenaries by contemporaries. However, 20 years prior, in 1756, when the same type of German soldiers (Hessians), had been brought over to the British Iles to fight off an impending French invasion, they were not regarded as mercenaries. How can that be? If the mercenary is a transhistorical figure with universal characteristics, the German soldiers should have been regarded as mercenaries in both 1756 and 1776. In this article, it will be argued that the differing historical and socio-political context in each of those instances, 1756 and 1776, explains the vastly different attitudes towards the German soldiers. More specifically, in 1776, the specific socio-political context enabled the construction of the German soldiers as mercenaries.

In 1756, Hessians were hired to fight off an impending French invasion. While this move was seen as embarrassing by many contemporaries, it was recognised in Britain that help was needed to defend the country from an external enemy. However, in 1776, the German soldiers were employed to fight in the North American colonies against colonists who were still British subjects. As such, what angered prominent individuals such as the Earl of Chatham (William Pitt the Elder, a former prime minister), the Duke of Richmond, and Edmund Burke, was the administration’s America policy in general, but especially the recourse to using German soldiers in what Lord Camden called ‘our domestic quarrels’.¹ The socio-political context of the two situations was therefore vastly different and explains why the German soldiers were constructed as mercenaries in one context and not in another.

In order to advance this argument, this article will first question the transhistorical mercenary figure and conclude that, even in legal discourses, the mercenary is a social construction. Secondly, speech act theory will be used to analyse how the German soldiers were constructed as mercenaries in 1776. Two parliamentary debates, in the House of Commons on 29 February 1776 and in the House of Lords on 5 March 1776, will be examined, and the specific speech acts used to construct the German soldiers as mercenaries will be highlighted. Lastly, it will be argued that the difference between how the German soldiers were perceived and constructed in 1756 and 1776 lies with whom they were hired to fight.

The parliamentary debates have been analysed using discourse analysis and speech act theory and have been chosen for two specific reasons. Firstly, the speakers in the debates all, to a varying degree, had symbolic power. Therefore, the British parliamentarians embodied the legitimacy, authority, and symbolic power needed to construct social reality, utter successful speech acts, and ultimately construct the German soldiers as mercenaries.² Secondly, the two debates illustrate a pivotal moment in British history, when the socio-political context enabled the construction of the German soldiers as mercenaries. This article therefore provides a novel methodological approach to analysing mercenaries and other forms of privatised violence by stressing the power relations inherent in the social construction of these individuals, and by insisting on the normative and context-dependent aspects of this process.

Deconstructing the transhistorical mercenary

Hailed as the ‘second oldest trade’, it has repeatedly been claimed that mercenaries have existed since the earliest civilisations.³ Often a topic of military history, the use of mercenaries has been traced back to Xenophon in Classical Greece, their increased importance in medieval and Renaissance warfare has been highlighted, and their critical influence on military success in pre-nineteenth century is a reoccurring trope – in short, the mercenary ‘is as old as war itself’.⁴

Traditionally, the mercenary has been defined as a foreign fighter with a selfish monetary motive. For example, F.J. Hampson has described the mercenary as someone who is ‘foreign, motivated principally by financial gain and use[s] force, but not as regular members of the armed forces of a State’; a definition supported by many.⁵ These features of the mercenary are claimed to be transhistoric and universal, spanning the history of warfare since at least the Middle Ages, when the ‘gradual emergence of a concept of “foreignness”, which distinguish the true mercenary … from the ordinary paid soldier’, was established.⁶

However, the notion of the transhistorical mercenary has been questioned by several scholars. David Trim argues that ‘mercenary’ as a term has been applied to many different kinds of figures at various points in history – figures who have had diverse motivations for participating in warfare and who have offered different kinds of services.⁷ Malte Riemann likewise critiques the idea of viewing the mercenary as a ‘transhistorical phenomenon’, demonstrating this by arguing that the early-modern Landsknecht, often used as an example of the transhistorical mercenary figure marked by foreignness and self-interest, is ultimately a unique product of its historical and socio-political context.⁸ This means that it is impossible to even ‘think’ of Landsknechts outside of their own particular historical and socio-political context because they are ‘dependent on the body of knowledge available at a specific time’.⁹ Therefore, Riemann argues, neither the Landsknecht nor any other figure evoked as a mercenary can be understood outside of their own historical and socio-political context, and the mercenary, in this way, ‘is not a universality that stands outside of time but becomes (onto)logically possible under’ specific conditions, in specific historical and socio-political contexts.¹⁰

Taking the critique of the universality of the mercenary figure further, Aaron Ettinger questions ‘whether it is worth retaining the term as an analytical category at all’, because the term ‘mercenary’ is inherently linked to a Westphalian understanding of statehood which is not only limited but conceptualised within its own historical and socio-political context.¹¹ Furthermore, because ‘mercenary’ is ‘a term that is intended both to describe and to condemn’, Ettinger highlights how the use of the ‘mercenary moniker’ is ‘a political judgment that carries with it normative assumptions about a hierarchy of “rightful” combatants’.¹² In this way, Ettinger shows that ‘mercenary’ as a term has also been used to ‘disqualify’ certain soldiers – those who were not considered ‘“rightful” combatants’ – and that the use of the term ‘mercenary’ is therefore a normative assessment that is entirely dependent upon the historical and socio-political context in which it originates.¹³ As such, the mercenary must be ‘understood in relation to how they correspond with the religious, local or kinship-based moralities of their own time’.¹⁴ Mercenaries as figures of war can therefore not be fully understood outside their historical and socio-political context, and the designation of the term ‘mercenary’ to a specific soldier, or group of soldiers, is therefore a wholly normative and subjective activity.

This assertion is also true within the seemingly rigid legal definition of the mercenary. In the main international legal documents defining mercenaries and their activities – Article 47 of the 1977 Additional Protocol to the Geneva Convention, the 1977 Organization for African Unity Convention for the Elimination of Mercenarism in Africa, and the 1989 UN Convention on Mercenaries – the ‘mercenary’ is defined based on foreignness and a monetary motive, following the traditional view.¹⁵ However, as Elke Krahmann observes, even legal definitions of the mercenary have very little meaning outside their ‘historical, social and ideological contexts’.¹⁶ Essentially, in order to attribute ‘particular meanings to legal texts’, the entire historical and socio-political context must be taken into account.¹⁷ For example, in order to fully assess the legal definition of the mercenary in Article 47, a consideration of the heavy involvement of freelance fighters in the 1960s and 1970s post-colonial wars in Africa must be taken into account.¹⁸ In this way, the legal construction of the mercenary is impossible without considering the historical and socio-political context surrounding the ‘mercenary’ figure, and the mercenary is therefore, even in legal discourses, socially constructed.¹⁹

Therefore, this article contributes to the on-going debate about the nature of the mercenary figure, and the role of privatised violence in general. Sarah Percy has claimed that ‘for as long as there have been mercenaries, there has been a norm against their use’, with the mercenary being defined as someone who lacks an appropriate cause for fighting and who exists outside legitimate control.²⁰ A negative, normative association has therefore followed ‘mercenaries’, and Percy argues that this has ultimately ‘influenced states in their decisions about which type of force to employ’.²¹

However, if the mercenary is socially constructed and has not ‘remained constant throughout history’, as Percy argues, the object of research should not be on the individual who is constructed as a mercenary, but rather on the circumstances under which the construction happens, who is doing the construction, and for what reasons.²² ‘Mercenaries’ share only one thing – that someone (under certain conditions, as will be highlighted below) has constructed them as mercenaries. This means that making broad generalisation about mercenaries’ impact on states’ monopoly on violence, for example, says very little about the individuals who are constructed as mercenaries, but a great deal about those who have constructed these individuals as mercenaries.

The social construction of mercenaries

Having established that the mercenary is socially constructed and not a transhistorical figure, the next step in our inquiry is to determine how the mercenary is socially constructed. Adopting a social constructivist ontology inspired by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, and their seminal book The Social Construction of Reality, this article argues that ‘social order exists only as a product of human activity’.²³ The constitution of social reality, and thereby social order, is therefore an intersubjective activity. In the construction of social order and society – which is inherently ‘a human product’ – language plays an essential role, as the medium through which social reality is constructed.²⁴ Thus, the social construction of the mercenary happens through language, and in order to discover how the mercenary is socially constructed we must therefore investigate the process through which language constructs social reality. To this end, speech act theory is a helpful tool.

Speech act theory

J.L. Austin, one of the ‘most prominent figures in developing the [theory of the] performativity of language’, has argued that language is a medium that does more than just describe – it can also ‘do’.²⁵ Language is performative where speakers create action by uttering speech acts.²⁶ Speech acts are therefore acts where words are not just ‘saying something’, but also ‘doing something’.²⁷ According to Pierre Bourdieu, this means that speech acts not only describe the world around us, but they also ‘modify’ and construct social reality.²⁸ This notion was taken further by the Copenhagen School, whose members argued that speech acts have the power to move objects, population groups, issues, etc. into the ‘specific area’ of security via the process of securitization and thereby establish ‘something’ as a security problem simply by naming it ‘security’.²⁹ This is akin to the process described below, where speakers designate certain individuals as ‘mercenaries’ simply by labelling them as such.

John R. Searle has made an important distinction between the type of facts that speech acts can create and influence and the type of facts that are independent of human impact. The first type of facts – ‘institutional facts’ – are entirely ‘dependent on human agreement’ and interaction.³⁰ ‘Brute facts’, on the other hand, are independent of human involvement and therefore exist outside human interaction.³¹ This distinction is significant in relation to the arguments made in this article. It is not disputed that individuals who have been called mercenaries by their contemporaries have existed – this is a brute fact. Rather, what is argued is that the identification of these individuals as mercenaries is an institutional fact, meaning that these individuals have been socially constructed as mercenaries via speech acts uttered by their contemporaries.

The success of the speech act rests on several pillars, with the context of the speech act being the first. Austin has highlighted that ‘the particular persons and circumstances in a given case must be appropriate for the invocation of the particular procedure’ and he has further noted that the success of a given speech act is conditioned upon both the speaker and the circumstances under which the speech act is uttered.³² In this way, in order to fully grasp what is being ‘done’ by the speech act, the total ‘speech situation’ must be taken into consideration.³³

Secondly, arguing that ‘the use of language … depends on the social position of the speaker’, Bourdieu has asserted that the effectiveness of the speech acts is ‘directly proportional to the authority’ of the speaker.³⁴ The construction of social reality via speech acts can thus only happen if the speaker has a certain amount of legitimacy and authority in the given situation – symbolic power – which ultimately enables the speaker to constitute social reality.³⁵ Therefore, ‘the ability to perform speech acts of certain kinds can be a mark of political power’, and the assessment of the speech acts in the analysis below must necessarily include an examination of the symbolic power of the speaker.³⁶

Thirdly, to fully assess the success of the speech act, an analysis of the audience must be included. By introducing the concept of mutual contextual beliefs, Kent Bach and Robert M. Harnish have highlighted how ‘salient contextual information’ and beliefs allow the audience of the speech act to understand and accept the intentions of the speaker – a crucial component for the speech act to be successful.³⁷ As such, the speaker and the hearer need to share an understanding of the context, the mutual contextual beliefs, ‘for communication to succeed’.³⁸ Consequently, in order to evaluate the success of the entire speech situation – the spoken, the speaker, the context, and the audience – must be included in the analysis.

German soldiers in America

To demonstrate the argument presented in the previous sections, two speech act situations have been chosen – the debate in the House of Commons on 29 February 1776 and the debate in the House of Lords on 5 March 1776. The two debates followed the signing of three treaties for German soldiers between King George III and the Duke of Brunswick, the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, and the Count of Hanau. After the conclusion of the treaties with the German princes, Lord North, the prime minister, moved on 29 February 1776 in the Commons that the three treaties should be referred to the Committee of Supply.³⁹ In the analysis below, the speech acts themselves will first be analysed, followed by an analysis of the socio-political context of 1776 and the speakers and their symbolic power, as well as the composition of the audience. These were all vital for success of the speech acts and the construction of the German soldiers as mercenaries.

The speech acts

During the debate in the Commons, two prominent speakers constructed the German soldiers as mercenaries. David Hartley, MP for Kingston-Upon-Hull, passionately declared, with reference to the North administration, that, ‘this year again, your pretext is a pretended commission to offer peace [to the American colonists], at the same time tying up the hands of the commissioners from making any offer but of unconditional submission, with an army of foreign mercenaries sent close upon their heels, to lay waste the whole country with fire and sword’.⁴⁰ Hartley was frustrated with the North administration’s overall America policies and the British treatment of the American colonists, and he highlighted the ‘disgrace and barbarity’ in ‘introducing foreign troops’ into the conflict.⁴¹ This ultimately led Hartley to call the measure ‘the most disgraceful, the most unjust and unnatural, and big with the most fatal consequences, of any measure that has been, or could possibly be adopted’.⁴² With these speech acts, Hartley constructed the German soldiers as mercenaries.

Likewise, Edmund Burke lamented that ‘at the beginning of this [Parliamentary] session not a single foreigner was intended to be employed; now, nothing was to be effected without the aid of foreign mercenaries’.⁴³ The fundamental problem for both Burke and Hartley was that the North administration intended to use foreigners in a conflict that many viewed as a civil war.⁴⁴ Angry with the recourse to employing the German soldiers to fight British subjects, Hartley and Burke constructed the German soldiers as mercenaries.

Continuing this line of criticism, the Duke of Richmond, in the Lords, also constructed the German soldiers as mercenaries. Richmond was clear that the problem was that Britain was willing to ‘subjugate her colonies, to hire an army of foreign mercenaries, acknowledging to all of Europe that these kingdoms are unable, either from want of men, or from disinclination of this service, to furnish a competent number of natural-born subjects to make the first campaign’.⁴⁵ If the North administration honestly saw the conflict with the American colonists as a civil war, they should have used ‘natural-born subjects’ to fight in America, rather than German soldiers. Richmond further declared that the treaties with the German princes were ‘a downright mercenary bargain, for the taking into pay a certain number of hirelings, who were bought and sold like so many beasts for slaughter’.⁴⁶ In this way, Richmond also constructed the German soldiers as mercenaries, due to the use of these soldiers against British subjects.

The Duke of Manchester also constructed the German soldiers as mercenaries, declaring that ‘the mercenaries … may be justly called so, since that man must be deemed a mercenary soldier who fights for pay in the cause in which he has no concern’, mirroring his colleagues’ worry and disgust at Britain’s use of these soldiers against British subjects.⁴⁷ Manchester even argued that the British armed forces shared these sentiments, highlighting that ‘the British troops, we find, fail not, my lords, in point of courage, but they shew an honest backwardness to engage against their fellow-citizens’.⁴⁸ In this way, Manchester also strongly asserted that using the German soldiers against disobedient subjects was wholly inappropriate. By using the German soldiers against her own subjects, Britain would send the signal that the war with the American colonists was a foreign war.⁴⁹ By emphasising that the German soldiers had no direct stake in the conflict, Manchester further cemented this line of argument.

Evoking historical precedent, Lord Camden also eluded to the dangers of employing outside actors to fight in a civil war, and ended the debate in the Lords by declaring that ‘the history of all ages and nations prove the fatal effects of calling in foreign auxiliaries, but more particularly mere mercenaries, to fight their battles’.⁵⁰ For Camden it was clear that ‘the whole is a mere mercenary bargain for the hire of troops on one side, and the sale of human blood on the other; and that the devoted wretches thus purchased for slaughter, are mere mercenaries, in the worst sense of the word’.⁵¹ The problem with employing the German soldiers, and the reason they were constructed as mercenaries by the speakers in both the Commons and Lords, rested on both practical and moral worries.

Success of the speech acts

It takes more than statements to be uttered for speech acts to be successful and create social reality. The speech acts analysed above were, however, successful due to three essential components: the socio-political context, the speakers and their symbolic power, and the audience. All components were appropriate for the speech act situation and they thereby enabled the construction of the German soldiers as mercenaries. Each component will be analysed in turn below.

The socio-political context of 1776

From at least the end of the Seven Years’ War, in 1763, a conflict between Britain and her North American colonies had been brewing. Originating in questions over the British parliament’s authority in the colonies, a dispute over who would pay for the almost 10,000 British troops remaining in North American after the war escalated the conflict into a wider constitutional crisis over taxation and representation.⁵² For British administrators, it was logical that the colonists should pay for their own protection because London, and the British taxpayers, had borne the brunt of the burden in terms of costs during the war.⁵³ Likewise, the British insisted on parliamentary supremacy over the North American colonists – which included Britain’s right to directly tax the colonies – and were intent on tightening imperial control after the Seven Years’ War.⁵⁴ However, the American colonists saw the situation quite differently, and they were not convinced that they should pay for a peacetime army of 10,000 men nor that the British had a right to directly tax the colonies, especially when it would ‘increase centralised authority’ without direct representation.⁵⁵ There was, therefore, a ‘clash of expectations’ regarding the North American colonists’ ‘role in the empire’, and questions over which rights and responsibilities should be afforded to the colonists were central to the conflict.⁵⁶

Various British policies towards the North American colonies did not help the situation, and the enactment of the Stamp Act in 1765, for the explicit purpose of raising revenue to support the increase of the army in North America and thereby assert direct authority over the American colonies, only intensified the dispute over the status of the American colonists.⁵⁷ When the North administration continued their hard-line approach towards the American colonists, it received much criticism for its treatment of the American colonists as foreign enemies rather than as British subjects.⁵⁸ The grievances against the North administration’s America policy was, in part, centred around how the conflict with the American colonies was viewed – as a civil war, a foreign war, or a rebellion – and therefore what would be an appropriate response from Britain, and ultimately how, and with whom, the conflict should be fought.⁵⁹

After the first military confrontation between Britain and her American colonies on 19 April 1775, it quickly became apparent that the British forces in North America needed to be supplemented with additional soldiers due to a shortage of available men.⁶⁰ To this end, as in previous conflicts during the eighteenth century, Britain turned to the German principalities of Brunswick, Hesse-Cassel, and Hanau for help. After a British pleas for troops was rejected by Russia, negations with Hesse-Cassel began during the summer of 1775.⁶¹ When the treaties with all three German princes were eventually concluded in early 1776, Hesse-Cassel had committed to sending the vast majority – 12,000 men – of the total amount that the German princes agreed to send to the American colonies.⁶² The result of these three treaties, along with later treaties with Waldeck (signed 20 April 1776),⁶³ Brandenburg-Ansbach (signed 1 February 1777),⁶⁴ and Anhalt-Zerbst (signed 3 April 1778),⁶⁵ meant that German princes sent a total of 29,875 soldiers to North America. This number accounted for nearly 45% of the total number of forces sent by the British during the war, with more than 18,000 German soldiers arriving in America during 1776.⁶⁶

However, 1776 was not the first time that the British had purchased help from the German princes. In March 1756, the fear of an impending French invasion, in the face of inadequate home defences, led George II to address the Lords, informing them that he had ‘made a requisition of a body of Hessian troops’ to remedy the dire situation.⁶⁷ The hiring of the Hessian troops was met with general approval in the Lords as well as in the Commons, and, in April 1756, 6,500 Hessians, as well as 8,600 of the King’s electoral troops from Hanover, arrived in Britain.⁶⁸

While the recourse to these soldiers was essential for the protection of Britain, the move was nonetheless seen by many as an embarrassment and something of an afront to British masculinity because Britain was unable to defend itself against foreign invasion without outside support.⁶⁹ A poorly structured home militia had left Britain exposed and reliant on help from German soldiers.⁷⁰ However, while the anti-Hanoverian writer John Shebbeare and an anonymous pamphleteer called the Hanoverians and Hessians mercenaries, the British parliamentarians did not construct the electoral force or the Hessian soldiers as mercenaries.⁷¹ As such, while German soldiers were used in both 1756 and 1776, the context of the two situations was vastly different. In 1756, the German soldiers were to be used against a foreign, French adversary, and were subsequently not constructed as mercenaries. In early 1776, before the American colonists had declared their independence, the German soldiers were used against British subjects and were consequently constructed as mercenaries. The speech acts analysed above were successful exactly because they appealed to the problematique surrounding the American colonists’ status as British subjects, and the speakers spoke into the critique of the North administration’s treatment of the American colonists as a foreign enemy.⁷² In this way, the particular socio-political contexts of 1776 made it possible for the speakers to construct the German soldiers as mercenaries, whereas the context of 1756, or earlier, did not enable the same construction.

The speakers and their symbolic power

However, the socio-political context of the speech acts alone could not ensure the success of the speech acts. All the speakers possessed a certain amount of symbolic power, which gave them legitimacy and authority to construct the German soldiers as mercenaries. David Hartley was a very active speaker in the Commons, where he frequently spoke on issues of public finance and the American crisis.⁷³ While Hartley never took public office, he was offered a position as Secretary of the Treasury in 1765.⁷⁴ Along with Edmund Burke and the Duke of Richmond, Hartley was part of what Emma Macleod has termed the ‘leading liberal commentators’ on the subject of America and part of the group who were in favour of reconciliation with the American colonists.⁷⁵ Since entering parliament in 1766, Burke had been against the British governments’ America policies.⁷⁶ Burke argued fervently for the repeal of the Stamp Act and published several pamphlets on the conflict with the American colonies.⁷⁷ Considered a ‘formidable opposition speaker’ with a magnetic ‘parliamentary presence’, he often spoke at the end of debates to fully address his opponents’ arguments.⁷⁸ While Burke did not rise to any significant public office, he had by 1776 established himself as a strong and respected presence in Commons, known for his oratory abilities and his ‘wisdom in Opposition’.⁷⁹

In the Lords, Lord Camden was a well-known face in various administrations, serving, for example, as Lord Chancellor from 1766–1770.⁸⁰ During the escalating crisis with the American colonies, Camden took an active part in the debates, siding with the American colonists’ claim to liberty using his legal skills to speak against the North administration’s America policies.⁸¹ The Duke of Manchester was also a noteworthy member of the Opposition who came into prominence in 1762 when he inherited his dukedom and became a Lord of the Bedchamber.⁸² Known as one of the ‘mainstays of the opposition’, he was considered a ‘ready and effective speaker’ in the Lords where he frequently voiced his disdain for the different bills against the American colonies.⁸³

Similarly to Manchester, the Duke of Richmond had a reputation as a formidable speaker in the Lords where he was considered an ‘independent-minded’ opposition figure.⁸⁴ Known for his ‘oratorical ability’ and ‘intelligence’, Richmond was a frequent speaker in the Lords.⁸⁵ Thus, all the speakers possessed the symbolic power, legitimacy, and authority necessary for constructing the German soldiers as mercenaries. They were all prominent members of Parliament, many with direct ties to various governments, and they all had great oratory abilities. Their symbolic power ultimately meant that they were able to create social reality with their utterances.

The audience

The last component essential for the success of a speech act is the audience. Without a receiver, the speaker will fail to create social reality. However, the audience and the speaker must share mutual contextual beliefs and expectations about the speech act situation for the speech act to be successful. The ‘salient contextual information’ crucial for success of the speech acts is, firstly, that the audience concurs with the speaker that the forum for the speech act is appropriate.⁸⁶ While foreign policy was traditionally the ‘concern of the Crown’, the need to pay for the German soldiers required the sanction of the Commons.⁸⁷ Since the late seventeenth century, ‘the exclusive power of granting finance to the sovereign’ had rested with the Commons, with the Committee of Supply scrutinising any ‘intended expenditure’, including army expenses.⁸⁸ In this way, the Commons was an appropriate forum to raise grievances about the German soldiers and their use against the American colonists.

In contrast to the Commons, the role of the Lords was that of ‘a revising chamber’, with a right to ‘exercise veto over legislation to which they objected’, making the Commons ‘increasingly the more influential house of parliament’.⁸⁹ Nevertheless, the power of the Lords was still substantial. Members of the Lords occupied several seats in the cabinet, and several members had ‘used their wealth and increasing involvement in elections, to acquire a considerable hold over a large proportion of the membership of the Commons’.⁹⁰ This largely created a ‘symbiotic relationship’ between the two houses, with several of the ‘leading figures’ of the Lords having started their political career in the Commons while waiting to take over the family position in the Lords.⁹¹ The debate in the Lords was also of significance because the Lords had the power to veto any financial decision made in the Commons.

Secondly, for the audience to decode and understand the intention of the speakers, and ensure the success of the speech acts, a resemblance in social background between the audience and speakers is important, as it aids the establishment of mutual contextual beliefs.⁹² In the later part of the eighteenth century, about one-fifth of the members of the Commons were either ‘sons of peers or were themselves Irish peers’, and every member had to swear to ‘the possession of landed property before they could take their seats’ in the Commons.⁹³ The social standing of the members of the Lords were naturally different to that of the Commons. The members of the Lords were either the male heads of families granted a peerage in England (or, after 1707, Great Britain), one of the 16 elected Scottish peers, or one of the 26 Church of England Bishops.⁹⁴ While some women held peerages, they were excluded from the Lords, while all English (from 1707, British) title-holding men were automatically granted a seat.⁹⁵ As such, the audience were all of a certain social standing and background, enabling the success of the speech acts. The speakers and the audience shared mutual contextual beliefs about the speech act situation, including the intention of the speakers and the appropriateness of the context within which the speech acts were uttered. This ultimately, along with the other two components, led to the success of the speech acts, and the German soldiers were constructed as mercenaries.

Conclusion

During the debate in the Commons, on 29 February 1776, on the recourse to send German soldiers to the American colonies, Frederick Bull, MP from the City of London, declared that he abhorred ‘all the measures which have been adopted against America; measures equally inimical to the principles of commerce, the spirit of the constitution, and to the honor, faith, and true dignity of the British nation’.⁹⁶ What disturbed Bull, as well as Hartley, Richmond, Manchester, Burke, and Camden, was the willingness by the North administration to send German soldiers to participate in a conflict that many, in early 1776, still saw as an internal conflict. By introducing soldiers into the conflict who had no personal stake in the outcome, and who were to fight against British subjects, the North administration had crossed a line. Not only was the measure ‘inimical to the principles of commerce, the spirit of the constitution, and to the honor, faith, and true dignity of the British nation’, the recourse to employing the German soldiers against British subjects in the American colonies led to the construction of these soldiers as mercenaries.

It has been claimed that the mercenary is a transhistorical figure that transcends time and space. However, as has been argued in this article, the perception of who is a mercenary is not static. Instead, it is dependent on the historical and socio-political context within which a particular soldier can be found. In 1756, the use of German soldiers (from Hesse-Cassel and Hanover) was seen as an embarrassment – even if measure was necessary in order to protect the British Iles from a French invasion. When similar soldiers, from Brunswick, Hesse-Cassel, and Hanau, were employed in early 1776, however, the perception of these soldiers was dramatically different. Even though the decision to use these soldiers followed a common eighteenth-century practice, in 1776 the North administration was intending to employ the German soldiers against British subjects in a conflict over representation, parliamentary supremacy, and imperial control. This was unacceptable for the speakers in the debates in Parliament. As a result, they constructed the German soldiers as mercenaries. This action was only possible, however, because of the socio-political context of 1776. Along with the speakers’ symbolic power and the mutual contextual beliefs shared by the speakers and the audience, as well as the appropriateness of the both the speakers and the medium of the speech acts, the speech acts were successful, and the German soldiers were constructed as mercenaries.

This example of the British use of mercenaries in 1776 serves as a prism through which we can assess the normative and subjective use of the term ‘mercenary’ and engage with the circumstances under which speakers construct individuals as mercenaries. Mercenaries are not objective facts. We cannot observe ‘mercenaries’ nor identify individuals that possess the same ‘mercenary characteristics’ across time and space, or subsequently, say anything meaningfully about ‘mercenaries’ that is true regardless of historical and socio-political context. If the mercenary was indeed a transhistorical figure, the reaction to the German soldiers would have been the same in 1756 and in 1776. Ultimately, the mercenary is not a transhistorical figure. Rather, mercenaries are socially constructed.

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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.

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.