Military Diasporas

Military Diasporas proposes a new research approach to analyse the role of foreign military personnel as composite and partly imagined para-ethnic groups.

These groups not only buttressed a state or empire’s military might but crucially connected, policed, and administered (parts of) realms as a transcultural and transimperial class while representing the polity’s universal or at least cosmopolitan aspirations at court or on diplomatic and military missions. Case studies of foreign militaries with a focus on their diasporic elements include the Achaemenid Empire, Ptolemaic Egypt, and the Roman Empire in the ancient world. These are followed by chapters on the Sassanid and Islamic occupation of Egypt, Byzantium, the Latin Aegean (Catalan Company) to Iberian Christian noblemen serving North African Islamic rulers, Mamluks and Italian Stradiots, followed by chapters on military diasporas in Hungary, the Teutonic Order including the Sword Brethren, and the Swiss military. The volume thus covers a broad band of military diasporic experiences and highlights aspects of their role in the building of state and empire from Antiquity to the late Middle Ages and from Persia via Egypt to the Baltic.

With a broad chronological and geographic range, this volume is the ideal resource for upper-level undergraduates, postgraduates, and scholars interested in the history of war and warfare from Antiquity to the sixteenth century.

Georg Christ is a senior lecturer in medieval and early modern history at the University of Manchester, UK, and a general staff officer in the Swiss Army. His work focuses on relations between Venice and the Mamluk Empire including the role of diasporas in transmediterranean connectivity.

Patrick Sänger is professor of ancient history at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Germany. His research focuses on the administrative, legal, and social history of the Hellenistic and Roman world with a specific interest in Egypt and in migration and integration issues.

Mike Carr is a lecturer in late medieval history at the University of Edinburgh, UK, and a leading specialist on the history of papal trade policies and crusading in the late medieval Mediterranean.