"About Mercenaries." Topic

"Unlike the case of privateering, there is no consensus on how a mercenary should be defined. 54 We generally think of a mercenary as one who fights for an employer other than his home state and whose motivation is economic. The soldier of fortune is the ideal type of a mercenary.

However, there are mixed forms of military service that meet one but not both of the aforementioned criteria. For example, British officers who are "seconded" to Middle East armed forces serve a foreign army but do so at the behest of their home state. And the volunteers of the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War fought for a foreign military force and were paid but, it is generally agreed, were motivated by political ideals rather than monetary gain. On the other hand, members of an all-volunteer citizen army are paid to fight but hardly warrant the label of mercenaries. Here it is interesting to note that "etymologically . . . `soldier' carries the meaning `he who fights for pay.'" Mockler may be correct in saying that "the real mark of the mercenary [is] a devotion to war for its own sake," but since individual motivations are impossible to determine, this is not helpful for analysis. For purposes of this study, I will use the term mercenarism to refer to the practices of enlisting in and recruiting for a foreign army…."
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