A standing army is a professional permanent army. It is composed of full-time career soldiers and is not disbanded during times of peace. It differs from army reserves, who are activated only during wars or natural disasters. Standing armies tend to be better equipped, better trained, and better prepared for emergencies, defensive deterrence, and particularly wars.[1]
The army of ancient Rome is considered to have been a standing army during some of the republic period and especially towards the end of the republic following the Marian Reforms in 107BC. Here Gaius Marius abolished the old system of raising a citizen army based on property and replaced it with a professional army based on a period of service. This continued into the Roman Empire.
The first 'modern' standing armies in Europe were the Janissaries of the Ottoman Empire, formed in the fourteenth century AD.[2][3] In western Europe the first standing army was established by Charles VII of France in the year 1445.[4] The Hungarian king Matthias Corvinus had a standing army from the 1460's called the Fekete Sereg, which was an unusually big army in its age, accomplishing a series of victories and capturing parts of Austria, Vienna (1485) and parts of Bohemia. The establishment of a standing army in Britain in 1685 by King James II and the later assumption of control over the British colonies in America by the British Army were controversial, leading to distrust of peacetime armies too much under the power of the head of state, versus civilian control of the military, resulting in tyranny.
In his influential work The Wealth of Nations (1776), economist Adam Smith comments that standing armies are a sign of modernizing society as modern warfare requires increased skill and discipline of regularly trained standing armies.[5] Since the eighteenth century standing armies have been an integral part of the defense of the majority of more economically developed countries.
In Great Britain, and the British Colonies in America, there was a sentiment of distrust of a standing army not under civilian control.[6] In England, this led to the Bill of Rights 1689, which reserves authority over a standing army to Parliament, not the King, and more nuanced in the United States, led to the U.S. Constitution (Article 1, Section 8) which reserves by virtue of "power of the purse" similar authority to Congress, instead of to the President. The President, however, retains command of the armed forces when they are raised, as commander-in-chief.[1]
Countries with no standing army include Costa Rica and Iceland.