By the 1600s, the Spanish, British, Portuguese, French, Russians and sundry other European powers had empires to run, and empires were costly baubles. The way to keep the home economy healthy was to establish a system known as mercantilism; in effect, the colonies were the “cash cow” for the mother country. It was, for obvious reasons, extremely popular with absolutist monarchs and their subjects – at least those in the homeland – and the dominant economic practice from the 16th through the 18th centuries. Simply put, the Crown put limits on what finished goods the colonies could produce, whose ships they could use, with whom they could trade … and then taxed everything.

Since the dawn of civilization, men have killed and died for money (more sensible than for honor, faith, love, or other nonsense). No one is quite sure the first time a tribal chieftain hired mercenaries to augment his ill-trained (and likely reluctant) militia or guard his person, but after the Qin conquest of the other warring states, the Qin and Han dynasties employed nomadic horse archers from the steppes to ensure security. Xenophon recounts that Cyrus the younger hired “Ten Thousand” Greek mercenaries in 401 BC to seize the throne of Persia, and Macedonia, Carthage and Rome employed “barbarian” mercenaries in their wars.