Dr Sarah Percy is University Lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of Merton College. Previously she was a Research Associate in the Oxford Leverhulme Programme on the Changing Character of War. She is the author of several articles about mercenaries and the privatization of force. Before coming to Oxford she taught senior military officers at the Joint Services Staff and Command College as part of King's College London's Defence Studies Department, where she still lectures about private force.

• Introduction


• 1: Norms, their influence, and how they can be studied


• 2: The Definition of a Mercenary and the Definition of the Proscriptive Norm


• 3: The Origins of the Norm against Mercenary Use, 1100-1600.


• 4: Competing Explanations for the Nineteenth Century Shift Away from Mercenary Use


• 5: How citizens became the standard: a normative explanation of the shift away from mercenary use


• 6: The norm against mercenary use and international law


• 7: The disappearance of combat and today's private security industry


• Conclusion

With unprecedented historical range, this book examines the use of mercenaries from the courts of medieval Europe through to private security companies in modern-day Iraq, and explores the key ethical questions surrounding the mechanics of private military action.