Conscription in Finland is part of a general compulsion for national military service for all adult males defined in the section 127 of the Constitution of Finland.
Finnish conscripts swearing their military oath at the end of their basic training period.
Conscription is the state-mandated enlistment of people in a national service, mainly a military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and it continues in some countries to the present day under various names. The modern system of near-universal national conscription for young men dates to the French Revolution in the 1790s, where it became the basis of a very large and powerful military. Most European nations later copied the system in peacetime, so that men at a certain age would serve 1 to 8 years on active duty and then transfer to the reserve force.
Painting depicting a battle during the Ōnin War
Ottoman janissaries
Painting depicting the Departure of the Conscripts of 1807 by Louis-Léopold Boilly
Conscription of Poles to the Russian Army in 1863 (by Aleksander Sochaczewski)