 Standing Armies In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson condemned King George for keeping standing armies in the colonies in peacetime. Writing during the Revolutionary War, Jefferson understood that militaries were sometimes necessary to defend against foreign invasions, but Britain's crime was in maintaining a standing army. A standing army is a perpetual military force consisting of professional, salaried soldiers. For most of history, standing armies were unique to empires. After the fall of Rome, Western Europe went centuries without standing armies. In 1776, the British army was less than a century old. After the Seven Years' War ended in 1763, Britain had decided to maintain a military presence in North America, and since the army protected the colonists, Britain thought colonists should pay for it. To Americans, this was essentially a protection racket. Boston, Britain as the mafia, and the colonies as neighborhood businesses. In protection rackets, mobsters promised protection against robbery and vandalism for a fee, but if anybody refuses to pay, the mobsters ransacked a store to extort payment from the owner. This is how colonists saw the British military. Boston was like the business owner who refused to be extorted, so Britain used its military to make an example of the city. Occupying soldiers killed civilians, forced their way into private homes, and blocked commerce. This is the context for James Madison's statement that the means of defense against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Costa Ricans learned this lesson in the 20th century. Upon ousting their military-backed communist regime in 1948, they constitutionally abolished standing armies and have since enjoyed the safest and most politically stable country in Central America. That the United States controls the world's most powerful military, so what changed? In 1786, Revolutionary War veteran Daniel Shays led an armed protest against oppressive taxes. The Articles of Confederation left the federal government powerless against the rebellion, which was suppressed by state militias. Shays' rebellion provided the impetus for the constitutional convention. Madison warned that armies maintained under the pretext of defending, invariably, enslaved the people. But Alexander Hamilton's federalists were more afraid of insurrection. The new constitution struck a compromise. Congress could raise and fund an army for two years. Hamilton defended the compromise by pointing to the West. He endorsed keeping a permanent core in the pay of the government, garrisoned on the Western frontier. A standing army was the tool that made imperialism possible, but it was in the West that the American Empire was born.