The practice of armed volunteering runs through modern European history. It is located in the 19th century, in full bloom, with the volunteers of the Cretan uprisings and those of the Franco-Prussian and Greco-Ottoman wars.

It continues to thrive in the following century, with the Garibaldi red shirts and the volunteers of the war conflicts of the 1910s, up to those conscripted into the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War.

In the long tradition of armed voluntary enlistment on the European continent, the 1910s, which are the focus of the studies in this volume, hold a special position. During this period, armed volunteering reached its peak while also showing the first signs of decline, as the practice of armed enlistment, along with the unarmed mobilization that often accompanied it, transformed with the emergence, initially in the Balkans and later across the rest of Europe, of new, "industrial" type armed conflicts.

The mass slaughter using mechanical means weakened the romantic and heroic nature of armed participation that nourished the volunteer movements of the 19th century. Moreover, aside from the very nature of war, the terms and ways of participating in military conflicts changed at that time.

The 1910s represent, from this perspective, a profound turning point in the long history of armed volunteering, both in Greece and more broadly in Europe. For this reason, it has been chosen as the focus period of the present book, in order to highlight the radical transformations and particular characteristics of the voluntary practice through a comprehensive approach and multifaceted perspective.