Pre-Modern Armies for Worldbuilders, Part I: Why They Fight

This essay introduces a multi-part series examining how pre-modern societies structured their armies based on underlying social and economic conditions. The author argues that understanding recruitment, funding, leadership, and cohesion in pre-industrial armies provides useful frameworks for both historical analysis and worldbuilding, and that examining the large sample of pre-industrial examples reveals recurring organizational patterns that differ significantly from modern industrial military models.