Forgotten Warriors

October 16, 2023
Percy (Mercenaries), a professor of international relations at the University of Queensland, surveys in this colorful account women who served on the battlefield. Among her subjects are all-female armies such as the Dahomey Mino of West Africa, who lived in present-day Benin from the 17th to the 19th century; women who fought disguised as men, among them Christian Davies, an Irishwoman who fought for the British at the turn of the 18th century in several conflicts, including the War of Spanish Succession; women who mobilized in times of national crisis, such as the Soviet WWII flying aces known as the Night Witches; as well as women who have served essential noncombat functions on the front lines. Percy examines how the exclusion of women from active combat only began a few hundred years ago, and demonstrates it was only in the late 19th century—as warfare became increasingly professionalized and nation-states began to formalize rules around combat—that women were imagined to belong firmly on the home front. The outbreak of WWI changed this attitude, as countries found their resources pushed to the limit by the emergence of global, industrial warfare. By the end of the 20th century, women were once again on battlefields around the world. Percy profiles her subjects against a vivid backdrop of sieges, rebellions, and civil wars. Women’s history buffs will be thrilled.