David M. Rosen

With a critical eye to international law, Armies of the Young urges readers to reconsider the situation of child combatants in light of circumstance and history before adopting uninformed child protectionist views. In the process, Rosen paints a memorable and unsettling picture of the role of children in international conflicts.

In this daring new study, anthropologist David M. Rosen investigates how our perceptions of the child soldier have changed radically over the past two centuries. Examining everything from Andrew Jackson’s time as an adolescent prisoner of war to the shared etymology of the words “infantry” and “infant,” Child Soldiers in the Western Imagination offers a cure for our widespread historical amnesia.