Welfare for War Veterans: How the Dutch Empire Provided for European Mercenary Families, c. 1850 to 1914

Abstract The largest “multinational” employers ( avant la letter ) were European India companies and colonial armies. Between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries, they recruited millions of mercenaries and soldiers from all over Europe, mostly from lower social classes. Beginning in the nineteenth century, they offered certain welfare-state services to these men and their legitimate and illegitimate families in Europe and the colonies. To maintain these systems, colonial states depended on cooperation with local, regional, and national administrations throughout Europe. However, the econom... Mehr ...