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Definition: conscription from Merriam-Webster's Collegiate(R) Dictionary

(1800) : compulsory enrollment of persons esp. for military service :draft

conscription

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
compulsory enrollment of personnel for service in the armed forces. Obligatory service in the armed forces has existed since ancient times in many cultures, including the samurai in Japan, warriors in the Aztec Empire, citizen militiamen in ancient Greece and Rome, and aristocrats and their peasants or yeomen during the Middle Ages in Europe. In England, compulsory military service was employed on the local level in the Anglo-Saxon fyrd as early as the 9th cent. In the 16th cent. Machiavelli argued that every able-bodied man in a nation was a potential soldier and could by means of conscription be required to serve in the armed forces. Conscription in the modern sense of the term dates from 1793, when the Convention of the French Republic raised an army of 300,000 men from the provinces. A few years later, conscription enabled Napoleon I to build his tremendous fighting forces. Following Napoleon's example, Muhammad Ali of Egypt raised a powerful army in the 1830s. Compulsory peacetime…
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Full text Article conscription

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
compulsory enrollment of personnel for service in the armed forces. Obligatory service in the armed forces has existed since ancient times in many cultures, including the samurai in Japan, warriors in the Aztec Empire, citizen militiamen in ancient Greece and Rome, and aristocrats and their peasants…
| 357 words
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Full text Article CONSCRIPTION

From Historical Dictionary of Australia
The issue of conscription for military service in Australia has a long and controversial history with Australia unique among democracies in having a strong movement opposing conscription on the grounds that it is anti-democratic. Universal military training was provided for in the first Defense Act…
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Full text Article conscription

From Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Political Thought
Compulsory enlistment for military duties was a familiar feature of war in ancient times and responsible for many of the features of the Spartan constitution and the Jewish theocracy . The practice was revived in modern times by the French Revolution, with its levée en masse of August 1793. Most…
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Full text Article conscription

From The Macquarie Dictionary
compulsory enrolment in the armed forces. Plural: conscriptions compulsory employment of civilians to achieve a national or state goal, as a universal medical or dental service. Plural: conscriptions Conscription has been a recurrent issue in Australia since the first national compulsory training…
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Full text Article conscription.

From The Oxford Companion to British History
In 1914 Britain was the only great power which relied upon volunteers to man its army. This tradition was continued until January 1916, by when nearly 2.5 million men had volunteered to join *Kitchener's New Armies. But by the summer of 1915 the flow of volunteers was failing to keep pace with the…
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Full text Article CONSCRIPTION

From The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Military and Diplomatic History
Known in the United States as “the draft,” conscription constitutes the act of compelling citizens into military service. Long used in Europe as a means of raising armies quickly and cheaply, the United States avoided conscription until the Civil War, when both sides introduced conscription to fill…
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Full text Article conscription

From Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
Compulsory enrollment for service in a country’s armed forces. It has existed at least since the Egyptian Old Kingdom in the 27th century bc . It usually takes the form of selective service rather than universal conscription. (The latter generally refers to compulsory military service by all…
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Full text Article CONSCRIPTION

From The Reader's Companion to American History
The term conscription has an unpleasant connotation to Americans who prefer the word draft whenever they speak of compulsory military enrollment. Temporary, selective drafts have played a periodic and often substantial part in obtaining America's wartime armies. The draft has been characterized by…
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Full text Article conscription

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide
Legislation for all able-bodied male citizens (and female in some countries, such as Israel) to serve with the armed forces. It originated in France in 1792, and in the 19th and 20th centuries became the established practice in almost all European states. Modern conscription systems often permit…
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A diverse number of Canadians disagreed with Borden's government on a host of issues having to do with the war effort. Sparking some of the most contentious debates were the questions of loyalty and the need for conscription. Henri Bourassa, the politician and journalist who was considered by many…
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