| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.1

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Comparative/World

George Q. Flynn. Conscription and Democracy: The Draft in France, Great Britain, and the United States. (Contributions in Military Studies, number 210.) Westport, Conn.: Greenwood. 2002. Pp. x, 303. $68.00.

Having looked at various aspects of the draft in the United States in three previous academic works, George Q. Flynn here widens his horizons in order to engage in a comparative examination encompassing conscription in Britain and France as well. The overall aim is to explain how these three democracies have dealt with "the dilemma of involuntary military service in a free society" (p. 1) in the twentieth century. 1

Conscription, of course, is not a uniquely twentieth-century phenomenon, and the first chapter provides a brief survey of various antecedents. There follow chapters dealing successively with compulsory service in World War I, the interwar decades, World War II, and the Cold War in the context of decolonization. The book then becomes thematic in nature, with chapters devoted to how systems operated, questions of deferment, physical and psychological testing, the economic effects of conscription, conscientious objection, and the politics of compulsory service. Each country is dealt with in turn within each chapter, the order of precedence varying and roughly equal space being devoted to all. Based on a solid array of published primary and secondary sources—although there are a few curious omissions—and unpublished documents drawn from relevant archives, this is a top-down policy study rather than an examination of the conscript experience. . . .

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