Negotiating State Responsibility for Military Welfare in Early Modern Europe, 1550-1750 (External organisation)

Description

This is a project to compare dialogues surrounding the emergence of state-sponsored military welfare during 1550 to 1750. At this time, governments across Europe began to recognise their duty of care towards veterans and their families and pay pensions to the wounded and bereaved. Conversely, veterans and their families began to petition government for what they perceived as just compensation for the sincere patriotism they had demonstrated. The ideological notions and legal principles underlying government policy and veterans’ claims were contextualised by internal conflicts and international warfare. Domestic strife resulted in contested ideological and legal discourses between groups across the social and political spectrums, whilst foreign wars placed extra pressure on these interactions. Furthermore, migration and direct cultural exchange/interaction between countries ensured that political philosophies were not confined within national boundaries. This project will investigate how these competing dialogues shaped negotiations over the mutual responsibilities between state and subject, and thus the emergence of military welfare across Europe in the early modern period. Current scholarship on early modern state-sponsored military welfare has focused on individual countries and there has been little transnational analysis. This project will be the first Europe-wide comparative study, and is organised around a network of international scholars from across Europe.

Period	5 Jun 2019 → …
Held at	Negotiating State Responsibility for Military Welfare in Early Modern Europe, 1550-1750, United Kingdom
Degree of Recognition	International