Pre-Modern Armies for Worldbuilders, Part III: Paying for It

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Pre-modern armies incur ongoing financial costs for pay, food, equipment replacements, and capital expenses like ships, fortifications, and artillery.
Economic challenges involve moving subsistence goods (e.g., food) from agricultural sectors to support non-subsistence military labor, regardless of monetization.
Redistribution economies, common in non-monetized societies like Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean, centralize resources (via kings/temples) to support military needs through in-kind rents and forced labor (corvée).
Monetized payment systems require coinage penetration into peasant economies, which can be administratively intensive; states like Hellenistic successors intentionally monetized economies for military funding.
Tax revenues are often limited by traditional constraints (e.g., tax exemptions for elites) and administrative burdens, leading to complex systems like tax farming.
Cost devolution shifts military expenses onto individuals, elites (Big Men), or communities (e.g., Roman citizen-soldiers buying own equipment, Athenian trierarchs funding warships, town militias).
Loot and foraging are supplementary but insufficient for long-term army sustenance; they rely on winning and often damage local economies.
Political and social structures dictate military funding methods: centralized states may pay in cash, while non-state societies rely on devolution or redistribution.

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