November 21, 2008

John Lynn (University of Illinois)

Gauging Women's Participation in Early Modern European Armies:
Demonstrable Certainties, Reasonable Inferences, and Sheer Speculations

Large numbers of women accompanied early modern European armies on campaign, particularly before 1650. That is a fact; it is also true that their presence helped to set the logistical parameters of armies and that they partnered with men in pillage. Equally demonstrable are the useful gendered functions they performed in camp. However, if we are to explain why so many women ventured on campaigns, the thin character of the evidence requires that we go beyond what can be conclusively documented. How great are these interpretive leaps, and how justified are they?

John Lynn is Professor of History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The volumes he has written include: The Bayonets of the Republic: Motivation and Tactics in the Army of Revolutionary France, 1791-94 (1984 and 1996); Giant of the Grand Siècle: The French Army, 1610-1715 (1997); The Wars of Louis XIV, 1667-1714 (1999), and Battle: A History of Combat and Culture (2003 and 2004). His most recent book, Women, Armies, and Warfare in Early Modern Europe, will appear with Cambridge University Press in 2008. He also has edited three works and published about eighty articles, chapters, and papers.