Livonian Mercenary Warfare and Fiscal Responses to the Military Crisis of 1558–1561

Ivan the Terrible's 1558 invasion of Livonia plunged the eastern Baltic into military crisis. The ensuing conflict has most often been examined in terms of competition between the burgeoning powers that, by 1561, had occupied and partitioned the territories of the Livonian Confederation. The present study instead explores the fiscal and military responses of the Livonians themselves. An institutional approach to the dissolution of Old Livonia is eschewed in favor of one that foregrounds shifting networks of regional power holders endeavoring to defend their interests against a messy backdrop of mercenary warfare, military enterprise, factional rivalry, personal ambition, ad hoc negotiation, and desperate expediency. The Livonian experience reveals much about the struggles of small European polities and regional elites faced with the escalating financial demands of warfare in an age of emerging states.

Transformation of Russian Military Enterprise in the Geopolitical During the Putin Era

Vladimir Putin's annual address as president in 2006 neatly summaries the reason why Russia had to press forward with long-overdue reforms of its armed forces. Two decades after the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia was still left with an oversized military organization built for large-scale mobilization and the demands of the Cold War, but highly ineffective for the type of conventional military conflicts that Russia was most likely to become involved in. The rationale behind Russia's reforms of the armed forces were thus clear long before the war in Georgia, which has often been pointed to as the reason why the reforms were launched in October 2008. President Vladimir Putin's current period runs out in 2024, when he is due to step down, according to the constitution. Given the fact that the current political system has been carefully crafted for almost 20 years, it is evident that there is uncertainty about its future. First, it no longer produces wealth for the population. For five years in a row, the real disposable income has been decreasing.

Military Enterprise and Entrepreneurship

The chapter investigates military enterprise and entrepreneurship through the prism of the Nigerian Armed Forces Resettlement Centre, Lagos. Through a mixed methodology, the chapter unveils innovative schemes and entrepreneurship culture in the centre. However, some tension exists between the military culture and entrepreneurship culture at the centre. Suggestions are offered to improve on the centre's service delivery. Generally, there is a need for NAFRC to further enhance its dynamic collaborative efforts, involve more in skills mapping of both its trainers and trainees, boost its mentoring capacity, and provide employment support through rigorous articulation of the value of retired military personnel to potential employers or funders. It is also suggested that NAFRC should liaise with other relevant stakeholders to support projects that deliver long-term solutions to the challenges faced by the retired military personnel community. The combination of all these activities will enable NAFRC to realise its vision and mission.

Conversion of Dual-Use Technology: A Differential Game Analysis under the Civil-Military Integration

Civil-military integration enables the symmetry development of dual-use technologies in the defense and civilian areas. In this paper, we used stochastic differential game theory to build theoretical models of the dual-use technology conversion between a military firm and a civilian firm. The models include three directions of dual-use technology conversion, namely, spin-off, spin-in, and mix. In particular, we incorporate the dynamic development of dual-use technology into the research framework. Our results show that the order of the Pareto optimality results is mix, spin-in, spin-out, including the best effort, the highest revenue, and the most technology value-added. The results also indicate that: (1) Some random interference factors can affect the transfer efforts, such as the coefficient of technological innovation capability and cost coefficients. (2) The military subsidies factor is an inventive mechanism that can promote dual-use transfer from the civilian firm to the military. (3) The military enterprise only earns more than the civilian firm in spin-in. (4) The growth of models in the dual-use technology conversion process faces increased technology uncertainty.

The Relations between the Texas Republic and Mexico

The Texan Santa Fe Expedition was a commercial and military enterprise. It was unofficially initiated by Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, second President of the Republic of Texas, in the summer of 1841. His aim was to gain control over the lucrative Santa Fe Trail and to establish Texas jurisdiction over the area. The expedition included twenty-one wagons carrying merchandise and was accompanied by businessmen, Lamar’s commissioners, and a military escort of some three hundred volunteers. The members of the expedition expected a warm welcome by the citizens of New Mexico, but instead, were “welcomed” by a detachment of the Mexican Army. The Texans, reduced in number and broken in health and spirit, were forced to surrender, and then to march 1,600 miles from Santa Fe to Mexico City. They were held prisoners for almost a year and released only in the spring of 1842. In my paper I propose to discuss the organization, course, and consequences of the ill-fated expedition. My most important primary sources will be the official documents and the diplomatic correspondence of the Republic of Texas, the correspondence and addresses of President Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, and the accounts of the participants of the Santa Fe expedition.

The Life and Decline of a Planned Industrial Town

This paper discusses the emergence, existence, and fate of a planned, systematic town in a passive region of the then Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia – later renamed to Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia – in the period after World War II. The author critically assesses the reasons for the creation and construction of a modern town at the locality of ​​Lički Osik in central Lika. The town was entirely dependent on and shared the same fate with the military industrial facility “Marko Orešković”, as it was built to support its production. Economic, social, and cultural ups and downs marked the half-century existence of this town, defining both its uncertain present and its promising future. Based on unpublished archival documents from that period, the author has reconstructed the reasons and modes of existence of the planned military enterprise as well as the associated town, which remains emblematic as an unrealistic and misunderstood economic development project in this part of Croatia.

STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT OF INFORMATION, DEFENSE AND SUSTAINABILITY POLICIES IN THE CONTEXT OF LEGAL AMAZONIA

The object of this paper is to study the correlations existent between the strategic use of information and the articulation and implementation of defense policies, national security and sustainable development in Legal Amazonia. For such, it presents the Amazonia Protection System (SIPAM in the Portuguese acronym), verifying how these systems have contributed to the definition and implantation of those policies. For Amazonia, with its natural resources, threats and vulnerabilities, the perspectives of integration, security and national defense and sustainable development present huge challenges to be surmounted. For such, the efficient use of technology is a basic reference that should be included in public strategies and policies in those areas, which increasingly reflect the ways of life in the region's cities. In that context, SIPAM sits in a line of approach in which the guarantee of national sovereignty in Amazonia, besides the strategic-military enterprise, also includes the attention to local people's development, within an educational and integrating proposition. As a way of conclusion, we have found that SIPAM creates a paradigmatic model for local public management, in which organizations work with a shared set of information, as well as in an integrated way.

Vijayanagara in modern historiography: A survey

What Sewell called the ‘Forgotten Empire’ once unified the larger part of South India, governing it from Vijayanagara for over 200 years. Once modern methods of research took root, the effort began to reconstruct its history. British historians saw in it a predecessor—an imperfect, but predecessor all the same. Indian historians tended to see in it good evidence of Indian capacity for military enterprise and efficient administration. Since Independence, the trend has continued, with Burton Stein on one side and T.V. Mahanlingam, on the other side. But a more objective trend is also noticeable now, in the work of Y. Subbarayalu and N. Karashima.