Reply #10: Militia, Sir, Means Different Things In Different Contexts

[The Magistrate]

In the eighteenth century, the term meant simply a populace in arms, that could be levied into state or national service in emergencies of civil disorder or war.

In the context of a country with a weak state structure and a badly divided populace, the term means free-lance armed forces acting as governing bodies within particular areas, setting aside the authority of the government and arrogating to themselves the normal prerogatives of the state. It is a mark of war-lordism, and precursor to civil war, as well the sustaining mechanism of both these unsettled, and unsettling, conditions of national life.