Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction: Understanding Changes in Military Recruitment and Employment Worldwide
- Military Labor in China, c. 1500
- From the Mamluks to the Mansabdars: A Social History of Military Service in South Asia, c. 1500 to c. 1650
- On the Ottoman Janissaries (Fourteenth-nineteenth Centuries)
- Soldiers in Western Europe, c. 1500-17901
- The Scottish Mercenary as a Migrant Labourer in Europe, 1550-1650
- Change and Continuity in Mercenary Armies: Central Europe, 1650-1750
- Peasants Fighting for a Living in Early Modern North India
- “True to Their Salt”: Mechanisms for Recruiting and Managing Military Labour in the Army of the East India Company During the Carnatic Wars in India
- “The Scum of Every County, the Refuse of Mankind”: Recruiting the British Army in the Eighteenth Century
- Mobilization of Warrior Populations in the Ottoman Context, 1750-1850
- Military Employment in Qing Dynasty China
- Military Service and the Russian Social Order, 1649-1861
- The French army, 1789-1914: Volunteers, Pressed Soldiers, and Conscripts
- The Dutch Army in Transition: From All-volunteer Force to Cadre-militia Army, 1795-1830
- The Draft and Draftees in Italy, 1861-1914
- Nation-building, War Experiences, and European Models: The Rejection of Conscription in Britain
- Mobilizing Military Labor in the Age of Total War: Ottoman Conscription Before and During the Great War
- Soldiering as Work: The All-volunteer Force in the United States
- Private Contractors in War From the 1990s to the Present: A Review Essay
- Collective Bibliography
- Notes on Contributors
Soldiering as Work: The All-volunteer Force in the United States
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 December 2020
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction: Understanding Changes in Military Recruitment and Employment Worldwide
- Military Labor in China, c. 1500
- From the Mamluks to the Mansabdars: A Social History of Military Service in South Asia, c. 1500 to c. 1650
- On the Ottoman Janissaries (Fourteenth-nineteenth Centuries)
- Soldiers in Western Europe, c. 1500-17901
- The Scottish Mercenary as a Migrant Labourer in Europe, 1550-1650
- Change and Continuity in Mercenary Armies: Central Europe, 1650-1750
- Peasants Fighting for a Living in Early Modern North India
- “True to Their Salt”: Mechanisms for Recruiting and Managing Military Labour in the Army of the East India Company During the Carnatic Wars in India
- “The Scum of Every County, the Refuse of Mankind”: Recruiting the British Army in the Eighteenth Century
- Mobilization of Warrior Populations in the Ottoman Context, 1750-1850
- Military Employment in Qing Dynasty China
- Military Service and the Russian Social Order, 1649-1861
- The French army, 1789-1914: Volunteers, Pressed Soldiers, and Conscripts
- The Dutch Army in Transition: From All-volunteer Force to Cadre-militia Army, 1795-1830
- The Draft and Draftees in Italy, 1861-1914
- Nation-building, War Experiences, and European Models: The Rejection of Conscription in Britain
- Mobilizing Military Labor in the Age of Total War: Ottoman Conscription Before and During the Great War
- Soldiering as Work: The All-volunteer Force in the United States
- Private Contractors in War From the 1990s to the Present: A Review Essay
- Collective Bibliography
- Notes on Contributors
Summary
On 30 June 1973 Dwight Elliot Stone, the last man to be conscripted into the US military, reported for basic training. The following day the United States began its experiment with an all-volunteer force.
Most Americans understood this move as a major and unprecedented transformation – even as a radical experiment – even though the longstanding draft was, in fact, the aberration. Until Cold War pressures convinced Americans that a large standing army was justified, the nation had relied on a volunteer force, turning to conscription only in time of war. But memories were short. Even though the draft had been in effect for only thirty-three years, from 1940 through slightly more than three decades of war and tense peace, conscription had come to seem normal, an expected part of young men's lives.
Short memories aside, however, those who saw the all-volunteer force (AVF) as a radical experiment had a point. It was clear in 1973 that the nation would need to recruit 20,000 to 30,000 nonprior service (NPS) accessions a month – vastly more than in the all-volunteer past. And they would have to do so from a population of youth that could generously be characterized as antimilitary, persuading them to join a troubled institution at the end of a difficult and unpopular war. The chair of the House Armed Services Committee was widely quoted as he quipped – repeatedly – that the only way the United States could get a volunteer force was to draft one.
The American move from one military form to another was not messy and gradual, as are many of the transitions discussed in this volume. Instead it was clear and absolute, from one day to the next, and both the end of conscription and the structure of the new system were argued over, legislated, planned, observed, analyzed, and evaluated. Thus it is possible to discuss not only the key social, economic, demographic, and technological variables that produced the United States’ modern volunteer force, but also the struggles to shape that force and to give meaning to the experience of military service in the post-Vietnam War United States. Significantly, many of those at the forefront of the move to an AVF consciously and purposely attempted to redefine military service as labor.
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- Fighting for a LivingA Comparative Study of Military Labour 1500–2000, pp. 581 - 612Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2013
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