3,257
edits
Changes
→Early Origins of Professional Armies
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.
In the Late Bronze Age, as empires became larger and increasingly encountered foreign populations, the use of vassal states and the troops they could raise to augment the main army became a new development. This type of development allowed foreigners now to be a part of the army, although their full integration was likely still sometime away, as these foreign units likely served under their own leaders and units.<ref>Drews, Robert. 1996. The End of the Bronze Age: Changes in Warfare and the Catastrophe Ca. 1200 BC. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, pg. 151.</ref>
==Key Reforms==
