Mercenaries are more powerful than experts realize, a grave oversight. Those who assume they are cheap imitations of national armed forces invite disaster because for-profit warriors are a wholly different genus and species of fighter. Private military companies such as the Wagner Group are more like heavily armed multinational corporations than the Marine Corps. Their employees are recruited from different countries, and profitability is everything. Patriotism is unimportant, and sometimes a liability. Unsurprisingly, mercenaries do not fight conventionally, and traditional war strategies used against them may backfire.

This book revisits some of the most significant guerrilla struggles of the late 19th century, all set in Africa, and remind readers, in light of current events, the difficulties involved in engaging in this type of conflict.

Explaining and illustrating the immediate background to the current Russian invasion of Ukraine, this book investigates the Ukrainian and Russian regular and irregular forces which have been fighting in the Donbas region since 2014. In February 2014, street protests in Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities led to the ousting of the Russian-backed President Yanukovych. Simultaneously, Russia carried out an almost-bloodless seizure of Ukraine's Crimean peninsula. Ukraine's 'Euromaidan Revolution' would see many changes to the country's constitution, and a turn towards the West for civic assistance and military training. Meanwhile, a violent reaction in the mainly Russian-speaking south-eastern industrial Donbas region led to a local armed counter-revolution, backed by Russia from April 2014. This conflict became an essential example of Russia's policy of so-called 'hybrid warfare', which pursues its strategic aims by a blend of propaganda and misinformation with the clandestine deployment of Special Forces and regular troops, alongside 'deniable' proxies and mercenaries. Meanwhile, Ukraine's efforts to reform its government culminated in the landslide election of President Zelensky in April 2019. Using his extensive contacts in both Russia and Ukraine, Prof Mark Galeotti presents a thorough and intriguing primer on all the forces involved in the conflict up to 2018. Supported by orders-of-battle, colour photos and specially commissioned artwork, his book also analyses the background and the stuttering progress of the war, and addresses the Russian military capabilities which are today being tested in all-out battle.

The Brigade of Guards was the elite force of the British Army in the Crimea. William Scarlett, a captain in the Scots Fusilier Guard and one of the most active junior officers in the regiment, fought throughout the entire campaign. After the Allied landing at Kalamita Bay, Scarlett rallied his regiment at a critical moment during the battle of the Alma, supported by his company sergeant, who was awarded the VC. William Scarlett’s life may well have been saved after the battle of Balaklava by becoming an aide de camp to his uncle, General James Scarlett, the commander of the Heavy Brigade. This meant that he did not fight at Inkerman, which took a heavy toll on the officers of the Guards Brigade. Returning to the trenches early in 1855, William Scarlett was involved in all the phases of the siege of Sebastopol until its fall in September 1855. The survival of 139 previously unpublished letters record Scarlett’s deeds and thoughts. Written to nineteen different correspondents, and deliberately intended by him to form a personal account of his rôle in the war, his letters provide a forceful commentary on the successes and failures of the British army in the East. His life before and after the war is well recorded. Becoming the third Lord Abinger in 1861, Scarlett was the second English peer to marry an American. He built a castle in Scotland, where Queen Victoria stayed in 1873, and two of his daughters became notable suffragettes.

Winfried Baumgart's masterful history of the Crimean War has been expanded and fully updated to reflect advances made in the field since the book's first publication. It convincingly argues that if the war had continued after 1856, the First World War would have taken place 60 years earlier, but that fighting ultimately ceased because diplomacy never lost its control over the use of war as an instrument in power politics. With 19 images, 13 maps and additional tables as well as a brand new chapters on 'the medical services', this expanded and fully-updated 2nd edition explores * The origins and diplomacy of the Crimean War * The war aims and general attitudes of the belligerent powers (Russia, France, and Britain), non-belligerent German powers (Austria and Prussia) and a selected number of neutral powers, including the United States * The characteristics and capabilities of the armies involved * The nature of the fighting itself The Crimean War: 1853-1856 examines the conflict in both its Europe-wide and global contexts, moving beyond the five great European powers to consider the role and importance of smaller states and theatres of war that have otherwise been under-served. To this end, it looks at fighting on the Danube front, the Black Sea, the Baltic Sea, the Caucasian battlefield, as well as the White Sea and the Pacific, with final chapters devoted to the Paris peace congress of 1856, the end of the war and its legacy. This book remains the definitive study of one of the most important wars in modern history.

The Crimean War is full of resonance - not least, the Charge of the Light Brigade, the Siege of Sevastopol and Florence Nightingale at Scutari with her lamp. In this fascinating book, Clive Ponting separates the myths from the reality, and tells the true story of the heroism of the ordinary soldiers, often through eye-witness accounts of the men who fought and those who survived the terrible winter of 1854-55. To contemporaries, it was 'The Great War with Russia' - fought not only in the Black Sea and the Crimea but in the Baltic, the Arctic, the Pacific and the Caucasus. Ironically, Britain's allies were France, her traditional enemy, ably commanded (from home) by Napoleon III himself, and the Muslim Ottoman Empire, widely seen as an infidel corrupt power. It was the first of the 'modern' wars, using rifles, artillery, trench systems, steam battleships, telegraph and railways; yet the British soldiers wore their old highly coloured uniforms and took part in their last cavalry charge in Europe. There were over 650,000 casualties. Britain was unable fully to deploy her greatest strength, her Navy, while her Army was led by incompetent aristocrats. The views of ordinary soldiers about Raglan, Cardigan and Lucan make painful reading.

This history of the Crimea is essential reading for all those who have been perplexed by what lies behind Russia's recent annexation of the Black Sea peninsula.

Frequently characterized as either mercenaries in modern guise or the market's response to a security vaccuum, private military companies are commercial firms offering military services ranging from combat and military training and advice to logistical support, and which play an increasingly important role in armed conflicts, UN peace operations, and providing security in unstable states. Executive Outcomes turned around an orphaned conflict in Sierra Leone in the mid-1990s; Military Professional Resources Incorporated (MPRI) was instrumental in shifting the balance of power in the Balkans, enabling the Croatian military to defeat Serb forces and clear the way for the Dayton negotiations; in Iraq, estimates of the number of private contractors on the ground are in the tens of thousands. As they assume more responsibilities in conflict and post-conflict settings, their growing significance raises fundamental questions about their nature, their role in different regions and contexts, and their regulation. This volume examines these issues with a focus on governance, in particular the interaction between regulation and market forces. It analyzes the current legal framework and the needs and possibilities for regulation in the years ahead. The book as a whole is organized around four sets of questions, which are reflected in the four parts of the book. First, why and how is regulation of PMCs now a challenging issue? Secondly, how have problems leading to a call for regulation manifested in different regions and contexts? Third, what regulatory norms and institutions currently exist and how effective are they? And, fourth, what role has the market to play in regulation?

The main aim of this book is to argue that the use of private force by states has been restricted by a norm against mercenary use. The book traces the evolution of this norm, from mercenaries in medieval Europe through to private security companies in modern day Iraq, telling a story about how the mercenaries of yesterday have evolved into those of today in the process. The norm against mercenaries has two components. First, mercenaries are considered to be immoral because they use force outside legitimate, authoritative control. Second, mercenaries are considered to be morally problematic because they fight wars for selfish, financial reasons as opposed to fighting for some kind of larger conception of the common good. The book examines four puzzles about mercenary use, and argues that they can only be explained by understanding the norm against mercenaries. First, the book argues that moral disapproval of mercenaries led to the disappearance of independent mercenaries from medieval Europe. Second, the transition from armies composed of mercenaries to citizen armies in the nineteenth century can only be understood with attention to the norm against mercenaries. Third, it is impossible to understand why international law regarding mercenaries, created in the 1970s and 1980s, is so ineffective without understanding the norm. Finally, the disappearance of companies like Executive Outcomes and Sandline and the development of today's private security industry cannot be understood without the norm. This book is a project of the Oxford Leverhulme Programme on the Changing Character of War.

The Crimean War was the first major European war since the end of the Napoleonic Wars and Britain’s only war on that continent in the century between Waterloo and WW1. When Russia invaded provinces of the Ottoman Empire, the British and French, later joined by the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, intervened to limit Russian expansion towards the Black Sea. Each of the armies contained an eclectic mix of units. The regular European regiments still displayed much of the bright color and finery associated with the Napoleonic era (the British infantry in their scarlet tunics forming the famous ‘thin red line’ at Balaklava for instance), while each also contained a mix of exotic units drawn from across their respective empires. The French fielded Zouaves and Spahis from North and West Africa, not to mention the legendary Foreign Legion; the Ottomans had Tunisians and Egyptians alongside Balkan mountaineers and the infamous Bashi-bazouks; the Russians of course had their Cossacks and the British fielded little-known German, Swiss and Italian mercenaries. Gabriele Esposito details the composition, organization, uniforms and weaponry of each force and illustrates many of them with early black and white photos (this being the first major war for which photography was available), as well as numerous color artworks.