Part-time soldiers: reserve readiness challenges in modern military history / Andrew Lewis Chadwick

Includes bibliographical references and index.

In Part-Time Soldiers, Andrew Lewis Chadwick offers the first in-depth historical study of the development and evolution of modern army reserve forces. In doing so, he explores how a confluence of military, political, and socio-economic developments since the First World War has forced armies preparing for major war to increase their dependence on reservists (part-time soldiers who reinforce or augment professionals or conscripts in wartime) for critical and routine military tasks. At the same time, he shows how these developments placed tremendous stress on the industrial-era reserve policies and structures that armies continue to use today. For example, reservists training for less than thirty days a year have struggled to keep up with the increasingly high-skilled character of modern warfare, as evidenced by the poor performance of reservists in the world wars and, most recently, the ongoing Russia-Ukraine War.