Women and Warfare

Women and warfare is an emerging field in early modern history with a rapidly growing historiography. Art historians and cultural historians have been captivated by images of feminine martial power that deploy the figures of Athena, Minerva, Diana the Huntress, Judith, and Amazons. Much of the historical literature has focused on queens, regents, and female power in early modern royal states. Political and gender historians have examined powerful female rulers and regents such as Mary of Hungary, Margaret of Parma, and Infanta Isabella in the Habsburg Low Countries; Mary I Tudor and Elizabeth I Tudor in England; Marie de Guise and Mary Stuart in Scotland; Catherine de’ Medici, Maria de’ Medici, and Anne of Austria in France; and Amalia Elizabeth in Hesse—who all engaged in military planning and diplomacy. Historians and gender studies scholars are now setting these women warriors and powerful queens into a much broader context of women, gender, and war in early modern Europe. Noblewomen, city women, and peasant women were all swept up into the maelstrom of war in early modern Europe. This bibliographical essay brings together diverse historiographies of women’s history, gender history, history of sexuality, art history, literary history, history of violence, and war and society history. The essay includes sources on women, gender, and warfare in peasant revolts, urban revolts, noble revolts, civil wars, religious wars, and colonial wars, as well as in conventional interstate wars and coalition wars. An initial section discusses General Overviews and historical surveys of women, gender, and war in early modern Europe. A section on Theoretical and Comparative Studies of Gender and War outlines diverse methodological approaches to studying the subject. Brief sections on Reference Works, Textbooks and Pedagogical Sources, Anthologies, and Journals discuss research and teaching tools in the field. A thematic section on Women, Power, and War in Early Modern Europe goes beyond biographical studies to examine gendered dynamics of authority, agency, and power in the early modern period. Women rulers directed warfare and negotiated peace in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Artistic images and literary representations shaped notions of women and war that influenced contemporary political culture. Women and War in the Renaissance and Reformation (1450s-1550s) then considers women and gender in the Italian Wars and in religious and social conflicts during the Reformation era. Another section on Women and Gender in the European Wars of Religion (1550s-1650s) examines women’s experiences and gender dynamics in the French Wars of Religion, Dutch Revolt, Thirty Years’ War, and British Civil Wars. Gendered dynamics of violence in early modern maritime empires are considered in a section on Women, Gender, and Violence in Maritime Empires, focusing on the Portuguese, Spanish, British, and Dutch empires. Indigenous peoples’ experiences of slavery and colonial warfare are contemplated, along with maritime raiding, privateering, and piracy. Gender in Military Culture considers how gender and honor culture fueled familial and social conflict through dueling, feuds, and vendettas. Military organizations promoted specific forms of masculinity and notions of armed service. Women participated in the “campaign communities” that formed around field armies as soldiers’ wives, sutlers, peddlers, and prostitutes. Another section on Gender and Early Modern State Development (1640s-1700s) examines how the rise of permanent armies in the seventeenth century transformed military culture, gradually pushing women out of the military sphere. The section also surveys women and war in the Ottoman expansion, Russian imperial and Eastern European warfare, and French wars of expansion during the reign of Louis XIV. A final section on Women and Atrocities in Early Modern Warfare contemplates women’s suffering from rape, pillage, and massacre. Discussions of women’s status in warfare and attempts to restrain violence against non-combatants drove the development of laws of war in early modern Europe. Warfare was pervasive in early modern Europe, affecting entire states and societies in profound ways. This bibliographic essay provides an introduction to the myriad connections between war, gender, and society in early modern societies. I would like thank Alexander Sosenko, a Ph.D. candidate in history at Northern Illinois University who served as my graduate research assistant, for his assistance in identifying sources for this bibliographic essay.

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