Constructing the Early Modern Soldier: Military Masculinity and Violence in the British Imagination, 1560-1660

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This multidisciplinary study examines the interaction between military masculinities andviolence in the British imagination and the shaping of the early modern soldier between 1560and 1660.The early modern period has received an exceptional amount of attention from militaryhistorians examining whether and how military and naval developments between 1560 and1660 led to the creation of the modern nation-state international system, responding to MichaelRoberts's 'Military Revolution' thesis (Roberts, 1956; Parker, 1976; Glete, 1999; Parrott,2011). As standing armies emerged as continuous military forces on land and at sea, numerousrecent works examine how European states attempted to monopolise violence (Tilly, 1985;Thomson, 1995). However, despite the current focus of new military history on the experiencesof the ordinary soldier, little has been written about early modern military identities (Woodcockand O'Mahony, 2019). The links between these identities and understandings of violence,though often implicitly recognised, have not yet been directly examined in previoushistoriography (Capp, 2012; Blakemore, 2013). Moreover, despite the wide array of work ongender and violence in modern feminist thought (bell hooks, 1984; Shepherd, 2019), onlyrecently have gender historians begun to explore masculinities and violence in the early modernworld, with little focus on military identities (Thomas and Feather, 2013; McCormack, 2015).Instead, most gendered approaches to early modern war to date focus on political approaches(Purkiss, 2009; Hughes, 2012) and women's studies (Hacker, 1981; Lynn, 2012).