Mercenary soldiers are hardly a new phenomenon on the world stage, but in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries they’ve acquired a new notability, starting with the large operations in the Congo and today with the booming private military contractor industry. My paper aims to take a look at the driving forces behind this resurgence of mercenary work, analyzing the evolution of modern mercenary soldiering from large-scale warfighting to more technical, consulting and security work, along with the motives and politics behind mercenary work.

My work will include primary sources from the Congo, Biafra, Angola, the Sierra Leone Civil War, and several other coups and operations. These sources are all easily attainable, and this paper ought to prove quite fun to write.