Your Country Needs You? Advertising and Recruitment Campaigns of the British Army

How do you persuade people to join the army? This has been a perennial problem through history. It’s a hard job, even in peacetime - generally the pay isn’t good, especially when compared to civilian careers. Also of course, there is the danger that you’ll be killed or maimed. You can use force to compel people, but those soldiers are less motivated and more prone to desertion or mutiny. This is as contemporary an issue for Ukraine and Russia as it was for the US in Vietnam 50 years ago. Hundreds of thousands of eligible young men have made themselves absent in both cases. Do you blame them?

So if compulsion isn’t going to be an effective solution, people have to be persuaded or incentivised. The Romans offered recruits citizenship and farmland – the US, UK and France are amongst the countries that still offer citizenship to recruits who serve for a certain period of time. The Napoleonic Wars saw bounties being offered – one poster used in Glasgow and Edinburgh offered 16 Guineas to join the ‘Third or Royal Scotch Regiment of Bodyguards for Unlimited Service… Bringers of Good Recruits will receive Three Guineas Reward. GOD SAVE THE KING’. That joining bounty would be equivalent to about £800 in 2024 terms, but at the time was about 4 months wages for a skilled worker. The poster was intended for the unskilled worker though, living precariously and quite likely needing to have the text on the poster read for them.