Shadow Agents of Renaissance War: Suffering, Supporting, and Supplying Conflict in Italy and Beyond

Who were the shadow agents of Renaissance war? In this pioneering collection of essays scholars use new archival evidence and other sources, including literature, artworks, and other non-textual material, to uncover those men, women, children and other animals who sustained war by means of their preparatory, auxiliary, infrastructural, or supplementary labour. These shadow agents worked in the zone between visibility and invisibility, often moving between civilians and soldiers, and their labour was frequently forced. This volume engages with a range of important debates including: the relationship between war and state formation; the ’military revolution’ or transformation of early modern military force; the nature of human and non-human agency; gender and war; civilian protection and expulsion; and espionage and diplomacy. The focus of the volume is on Italy, but it includes studies of France and England, and the editors place these themes in a broader European context with the aim of supporting and stimulating research in this field.

Stephen Bowd is Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Edinburgh and the author of studies of the Bresciano, among other works on Renaissance Italy. He has recently published Renaissance Mass Murder: Civilians and Soldiers during the Italian Wars (2018). Sarah Cockram is Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Glasgow. Sarah specializes in gender history and historical animal studies, and her recent publications include work on animal emotion, companion animal health, and care of exotics. John Gagné is Senior Lecturer in History and Director of the Medieval and Early Modern Centre at the University of Sydney. Much of his research focuses on cultural problems in the history of premodern war, especially the Italian Wars of the early sixteenth century. He is the author most recently of Milan Undone (2021).