Empire of Guns
The Violent Making of the Industrial Revolution
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- 8,49 €
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- 8,49 €
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The revolutionary new understanding of how the gun trade facilitated the expansion of the British Empire and changed the course of world history.
History teaches that from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century the industrial revolution transformed Britain from an agricultural and artisanal economy to one dominated by industry and machine, ushering in unprecedented growth in technology and trade and putting the country at the centre of the world.
In Empire of Guns, prize-winning historian Priya Satia argues that – far from the bucolic image of cotton mills that define popular perception – the true root of economic and imperial expansion was the lucrative military contracting that enabled the country’s near-constant state of war.
Through in-depth research, Satia elucidates this story through the life of prominent British gun-maker and Quaker, Samuel Galton. Reconciling the pacifist tenet of his faith with the pragmatism of the times, he argued that the inescapable profitability of conflict meant all members of an industrialised economy were irrefutably complicit in war. Through his story, and a detailed study of the British gun trade, Satia illuminates the nation’s emergence as a global superpower, the roots of the government’s role in economic development, and the origins of our era’s debates about gun control.
Empire of Guns expertly brings to life a bustling industrial society with a human story at its heart to offer a radically new understanding of a critical historical moment and all that followed from it.
Reviews of Empire of Guns:
‘Sweeping and stimulating… An extensively researched and carefully crafted narrative… This important book helps us to look at British and United States history in an unconventional way and makes for great reading.’ BookPage
‘A strong narrative bolstered by excellent archival research… Tremendous scholarship… Satia’s detailed and fresh look at the Industrial Revolution has appeal and relevance grounded in and reaching beyond history and social science to illuminate the complexity of present-day gun-control debates.’ Booklist
‘Empire of Guns boldly uncovers a history of modern violence and its central role in political, economic, and technological progress. As unsettling as it is bracing, it radically deepens our understanding of the ‘iron cage’ of modernity’. Pankaj Mishra, author of Age of Anger
‘A solid contribution to the history of technology and commerce, with broad implications for the present.’ Kirkus
‘How 18th-century British arms sales, the slave trade, and the Revolutionary War contributed to the mess we have today... Satia takes a historical look at the role of guns in Britain’s economic development, tracing how gunrunning became important to the British economy and how guns, in turn, ended up all around the world and played a crucial role in the perpetuation of slavery. Although this story is hundreds of years old, it has surprising and depressing relevance to [the] modern-day.’ Slate
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Stanford history professor Satia (Spies in Arabia) hastily probes the relationship between war and industrialization in 18th-century Britain using the story of Samuel Galton Jr., a prominent Birmingham gun manufacturer. In 1795, Galton was accused by his fellow Quakers of promoting an immoral trade in the manufacturing of guns. In response, Galton claimed that gun-making could not be isolated from the British industrial economy of the time which had grown out of Britain's nearly continuous state of war over the past century. Satia uses Galton's defense as a window into the central role of the arms industry in precipitating the Industrial Revolution. She goes on to argue that indeed it was changes in the nature of violence and the social role of guns in the age of British imperialism that provided the impetus for state-driven industrialization. Yet she provides little evidence for her sweeping claims, failing to address the fact that perpetual warfare was a reality for all European states during the era, not just Britain, and paying scant attention to shifts in agricultural production and demography that were critical to industrial takeoff. Nor does she engage with scholars who argue that the state served as a barrier, rather than an impetus, to industrialization. This book eschews the big picture for a series of stylized historical set pieces.
