Abstract
In 1776, British parliamentarians in the Houses of Parliament were discussing sending German soldiers to North America to fight against the rebelling colonists. This chapter explores how British parliamentarians constructed the German soldiers as mercenaries. Using speech act theory as a lens, it argues that in 1776 the German soldiers were constructed as mercenaries because they were being employed to fight against British subjects - the North American colonists. On the contrary, when similar German soldiers were employed to fight against a French adversary 20 years earlier, in 1756, they were not constructed as mercenaries. As a result, it will be argued that the mercenary is not a static or transhistorical figure of war marked by universal characteristics. Rather, the mercenary is socially constructed, and, as such, is only made possible in specific historical and socio-political contexts.