ABSTRACT
Nations seeking to develop and improve their military forces have often sought the advice of foreigners. Before 1815 military advice from abroad generally took the form of mercenaries, slaves, and former enemy troops pressed into service. General George Washington famously employed Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben to instill some traditional military discipline into the ranks of the fledgling American fighting force. But with the rise of the modern nation state, the advent of the industrial revolution, and the accompanying professionalization of armies and governments, nations desiring military modernization and improvement began seeking more formal, professional advice to develop their military forces. This has usually meant receiving a foreign mission to directly instruct or advise in the development of domestic forces. Sometimes the nations dispatching the advisors do so for magnanimous reasons, but these states usually have policy goals beyond what the receiving nation is told or expects. But the states receiving the missions also have their own agendas (sometimes hidden ones), a point often ignored.1 For example, in the mid-1920s the Finns employed a British military mission, and it appears that their primary objective in receiving it was not to ask for British military advice, but to strengthen their political relationship with London.2
