Customer Reviews

Mercenaries: The History of a Norm in International Relations

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As Sarah Percy states early in her book, other books about mercenaries fall into two categories: Paperback overviews for the popular audience and historical texts which explain mercenaries only in a specific historical context.
While also asserting that her work is not a historical overview of the subject, which is still needed, what Percy accomplishes here is the changing world view towards mercenaries over the course of time. This is where this book is brilliant.
While a slow start, as the reader has to slog through the required definition of a norm in order to be able to grasp Percy's thesis, this book quickly pick up and becomes an invaluable historical text for almost any era historian. Moving from early opponents of mercenaries like Machiavelli, Percy spends great and interesting indepth time on the impact of the Revolutionary era (1776-1853), and the death of mercenaries in that time period. She then spends a lot of time discussing the failed UN attempt at outlawing mercenaries and demonstrates clearly why it failed. Finally, we conclude in the present in the world of Private Military Companies and their successors, the Private Security Companies, including a brief overview of Blackwater, the PSC that gained so much notoriety in Iraq in recent years.
While I don't think this book is accessible or would be enjoyed by all, any fan of history or politics will find this book very insightful. Personally, this book gains a prize place in my military history collection.