Conscription
Compulsory enlistment in national service, enforced by law.
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Conscription is the compulsory enlistment of individuals into national service, typically military, enforced by law.[1] As of 2025, many states rely on professional volunteer militaries instead of conscription.[2]
Quick Facts
- Field
- Military and social policy
- Known for
- Compulsory military or national service enforced by law
- Origin period
- Antiquity (e.g., Babylonian Ilkum system around 1791–1750 BC)
- Modern origin
- French Revolution, 1790s
- Controversies
- Conscientious objection
- political objection
- sexism
- ideological objection
Facts from the source article.
Key facts and history
Under Ilkum, eligible people served in the royal army during war or provided labor for the state during peace.[3] In medieval Scandinavia, the leiðangr was a levy of free farmers conscripted into coastal fleets.[4] In feudal Japan, a 1393 shogun decree exempted money lenders from military levies in return for a yearly tax.[5] Part-time soldiers recruited from the freemen of each county made up the majority of the Anglo-Saxon English army, which was called the fyrd.[6]
In 1914, the armies of Britain and the United States were the only major forces that still relied entirely on voluntary enlistment.[7] Nearly 30 million men were conscripted into the Red Army during the Great Patriotic War.[8]
References
- Wikipedia, "Conscription" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Conscription", 13 September 2023 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Conscription" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "World War II", Historica Canada, 15 July 2015; Asal, "I Want You! The Determinants of Military Conscription", Journal of Conflict Resolution, 2017-08-01, p. 1456–1481; Asal, "I Want You! The Determinants of Military Conscription", Journal of Conflict Resolution, 2017-08-01, p. 1456–1481 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Conscription" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Postgate, "Early Mesopotamia Society and Economy at the Dawn of History", Routledge, 1992, p. 242 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Conscription" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Williams, "The Dating of the Norwegian leiðangr System: A Philological Approach", NOWELE. North-Western European Language Evolution, 1997-01-01, p. 21–25 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Conscription" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Gay, "The Moneylenders of Late Medieval Kyoto", University of Hawaii Press, 2001, p. 111 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Conscription" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Attenborough, "Laws of the Earliest English Kings", Cambridge University Press, 1974 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Conscription" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Slavin, "Colonial Cinema and Imperial France, 1919–1939: White Blind Spots, Male Fantasies, Settler Myths", JHU Press, 2001, p. 140 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Conscription" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Krivosheev, "Россия и СССР в войнах XX века: потери вооруженных сил. Статистическое исследование" (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Conscription (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.
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Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Conscription (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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