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→Early Origins of Professional Armies
==Early Origins of Professional Armies==
In early warfare, from what we can tell when textual sources first become available to us at around the 3rd millennium BC, men would be conscripted for specific campaigns or years when kings were fighting neighboring kingdoms, where the conscripted soldiers would not be required to serve for very long periods and would simply return to their previous employment/professions after the campaign would finish.<ref>For information about early conscription in warfare in city-states, see: Trigger, Bruce G. 2007. ''Understanding Early Civilizations: A Comparative Study''. 1. paperback ed. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.</ref> By the mid 3rd millennium BC, there were attempts to create standing armies of professional soldiers.<ref>For information on early professional armies in Mesopotamia, see Bauer, S. Wise. 2007. ''The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome''. 1st ed. New York: W.W. Norton, pg. 167.</ref>Nevertheless, the presence of war helped to solidify the importance of kingship, while also giving kings greater authority in governing and at time economic affairs. The Akkadian army was one of the first empires and its constant state of warfare in the early period of its first king, Sargon, required soldiers to be constantly campaigning rather than fighting on only a temporary basis (Figure 1).<ref> For information about the Akkadian Empire, starting from Sargon and his likely military developments, see: Spielvogel, Jackson J. 2015. ''Western Civilization''. Ninth edition. Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning, pg. 13.</ref> This demonstrated the need to create a system of soldiers who could at least be contracted or employed for a period of time longer than the typical agricultural cycle, or rather when their farm labor was not required.
[[File:600px-Victory_stele_of_Naram_Sin_9066.jpg|thumbnail|Figure 1. Stele of Naram-Sin (2254–2218 BC), an Akkadian king, standing over his enemies and who likely employed professional soldiers in his empire as he created a larger empire|200px]]
Another early king we know who attempted to make a professional army was Shulgi (c. 2094-2047 BC), a king who ruled the empire of Ur (the so-called Ur III Empire). <ref> For information on Shulgi and his reforms, including related to the military, see: Foster, Benjamin R. 2015. ''The Age of Agade: Inventing Empire in Ancient Mesopotamia''. New York, NY: Routledge.</ref> While it is not clear what he did exactly, he did make the army more professional, full-time, permanent, and was a force that could easily called upon as needed. This suggests that the army now consisted of soldiers who were strictly employed as professional soldiers rather than having other occupations, although the details of how this was done and the extent of this are not very clear.
