For most of the nineteenth and twentieth century, universal conscription has been by far the predominant system of military recruitment, but the phenomenon has received surprisingly little attention from social historians. This lack of attention is all the more surprising if one considers the interesting position occupied by conscription at the crossroads of wage and non-wage labour and free and unfree labour.

The following articles by Khaled Fahmy, Erik Jan Zürcher and Stephanie Cronin deal with the spread of the conscription system in one specific area (the Middle East) where it has been the most prominent feature of the establishment of increased and centralized state control over societies which, until relatively recent times, consisted of largely self-sufficient agrarian communities with very little contact with the outside world. The introduction of universal conscription confronted both states and populations with entirely new demands and problems.