Böcker av David (University of Oxford) Parrott

An important re-evaluation of early modern warfare and its relationship to the power of the state. David Parrott reveals how far states devolved to private contractors the raising and equipping of troops, the construction and management of navies, the manufacture and distribution of weapons and even the conduct of war.

It is assumed widely that 'war made the state' in seventeenth-century France. Yet this study challenges the traditional interpretations of the role of the army as an instrument of the emerging absolutist state, and shows how the expansion of the French war effort contributed to weakening Richelieu's hold upon France. Runner up in the History Today Awards 2002.