A private army (or private military) is a
military or
paramilitary
A paramilitary is an organization whose structure, tactics, training, subculture, and (often) function are similar to those of a professional military, but is not part of a country's official or legitimate armed forces. Paramilitary units carr ...
force consisting of
armed combatants who owe their allegiance to a private person, group, or organization, rather than a nation or state.
History
Private armies may form when land owners arm household retainers for the protection of self and property in times of strife and where and when central government is weak.
Such private armies existed for example in the Roman Empire following the collapse of central authority. The dynamics at play in such circumstances can be observed in modern-day Colombia: on the one hand there are those forces affiliated with the
drug cartels, existing to protect their criminality, and on the other those of the landlords created to resist kidnappings and
extortion, i.e. the
Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia
The United Self-Defences of Colombia (''Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia'', or AUC, in Spanish) was a Colombian far-right paramilitary and drug trafficking group which was an active belligerent in the Colombian armed conflict during the period ...
.
In many places these private household retainers evolved into
feudal
Feudalism, also known as the feudal system, was the combination of the legal, economic, military, cultural and political customs that flourished in Middle Ages, medieval Europe between the 9th and 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a wa ...
like structures, formalising obligations and allegiances and becoming
household troops
Household Division is a term used principally in the Commonwealth of Nations to describe a country's most elite or historically senior military units, or those military units that provide ceremonial or protective functions associated directly with ...
, and in some cases gaining the strength to allow them to usurp power from their nominal
suzerain
Suzerainty () is the rights and obligations of a person, state or other polity who controls the foreign policy and relations of a tributary state, while allowing the tributary state to have internal autonomy. While the subordinate party is calle ...
or create new sovereign states.
Private armies may also form when co-religionists band together to defend themselves from real and perceived persecution and to further their creed, for example the
Hussites, Mormon
Nauvoo Legion and the
Mahdi Army
The Peace Companies ( ar, سرايا السلام, or Saraya al Salam) are an Iraqi armed group linked to Iraq's Shia community. They are a 2014 revival of the Mahdi Army ( ''Jaysh al-Mahdī'') that was created by the Iraqi Shia cleric Muqtada a ...
in Iraq; because of their nature such
militias are formed by or fall under the influence of charismatic leaders and can become instruments of personal ambition.
Examples
*
Sōhei: the warrior monks of Japan owed their loyalty not to the state or even the Emperor but to their monasteries.
*
Victual Brothers, a pirate brotherhood that for a time became a power in the Baltic.
*The
Presidency armies of the
British East India Company, and the armed forces of the
Dutch East India Company. Both possessed powerful armies and navies, administrating areas many times the size of their homelands.
*The
militaries of the Indian
Princely state
A princely state (also called native state or Indian state) was a nominally sovereign entity of the British Raj, British Indian Empire that was not directly governed by the British, but rather by an Indian ruler under a form of indirect rule, ...
s, during the
British Raj, which were mainly for ceremonial duties, protection of their princes, and internal security within their states.
*
Atholl Highlanders, modern Europe's only legal private army, now purely ceremonial.
*German ''
Freikorps'' after the
First World War were usually only loyal to their commanders, and not to the
Weimar Republic.
*The
Mongoose Gang was a private army or militia which operated from 1967 to 1979 under the control of Sir
Eric Gairy, the Premier and later Prime Minister of
Grenada
Grenada ( ; Grenadian Creole French: ) is an island country in the West Indies in the Caribbean Sea at the southern end of the Grenadines island chain. Grenada consists of the island of Grenada itself, two smaller islands, Carriacou and Pe ...
.
*The
Kadyrovtsy in Chechnya under President
Ramzan Kadyrov
* The
Royal Johor Military Force of the state of
Johor and the private
royal guard of
Sultan of Johor
The Sultan of Johor is a hereditary seat and the sovereign ruler of the Malaysian state of Johor. In the past, the sultan held absolute power over the state and was advised by a ''bendahara''. Currently, the role of ''bendahara'' has been take ...
in
Malaysia.
See also
*
Mercenary
**
Condottieri
**
Private military company
***
Academi, also known as Blackwater
* Regular military forces whose allegiance is to one person or group.
**
Iraqi Republican Guard
**
Waffen SS
* the armed branch of a political party within a nation
**
Iraqi People's Army of the Iraqi Ba'ath Party
**
Brownshirts of the German NSDAP
**
Blackshirts of the Italian
National Fascist Party
**
Blueshirts of the Chinese
Kuomintang
** National Liberation Army of the
People's Mujahedin of Iran
**
Phalangist militia of the
Kataeb Party
** Turkish
Grey Wolves
* a
paramilitary
A paramilitary is an organization whose structure, tactics, training, subculture, and (often) function are similar to those of a professional military, but is not part of a country's official or legitimate armed forces. Paramilitary units carr ...
force
* a
parapolice
*
Irregular military forces: such as
**
militias,
**
guerrillas,
**
partisan
Partisan may refer to:
Military
* Partisan (weapon), a pole weapon
* Partisan (military), paramilitary forces engaged behind the front line
Films
* ''Partisan'' (film), a 2015 Australian film
* ''Hell River'', a 1974 Yugoslavian film also know ...
s,
**
insurgent
An insurgency is a violent, armed rebellion against authority waged by small, lightly armed bands who practice guerrilla warfare from primarily rural base areas. The key descriptive feature of insurgency is its asymmetric warfare, asymmetric na ...
s,
*
Range war
**
Johnson County War
*
Violent non-state actor
References
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