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Rulers, Guns, and Money: The Global Arms Trade in the Age of Imperialism

Rulers, Guns, and Money: The Global Arms Trade in the Age of Imperialism

by Jonathan A. Grant
Rulers, Guns, and Money: The Global Arms Trade in the Age of Imperialism
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ISBN-10:
0674024427
ISBN-13:
9780674024427
Pub. Date:
03/15/2007
Publisher:
Harvard University Press
ISBN-10:
0674024427
ISBN-13:
9780674024427
Pub. Date:
03/15/2007
Publisher:
Harvard University Press
Rulers, Guns, and Money: The Global Arms Trade in the Age of Imperialism

Rulers, Guns, and Money: The Global Arms Trade in the Age of Imperialism

by Jonathan A. Grant

Overview

The explosion of the industrial revolution and the rise of imperialism in the second half of the nineteenth century served to dramatically increase the supply and demand for weapons on a global scale. No longer could arms manufacturers in industrialized nations subsist by supplying their own states' arsenals, causing them to seek markets beyond their own borders.

Challenging the traditional view of arms dealers as agents of their own countries, Jonathan Grant asserts that these firms pursued their own economic interests while convincing their homeland governments that weapons sales delivered national prestige and could influence foreign countries. Industrial and banking interests often worked counter to diplomatic interests as arms sales could potentially provide nonindustrial states with the means to resist imperialism or pursue their own imperial ambitions. It was not mere coincidence that the only African country not conquered by Europeans, Ethiopia, purchased weapons from Italy prior to an attempted Italian invasion.

From the rise of Remington and Winchester during the American Civil War, to the German firm Krupp's negotiations with the Russian government, to an intense military modernization contest between Chile and Argentina, Grant vividly chronicles how an arms trade led to an all-out arms race, and ultimately to war.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780674024427
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Publication date: 03/15/2007
Edition description: New Edition
Pages: 304
Product dimensions: 6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Jonathan A. Grant is Associate Professor of History, Florida State University.

Table of Contents

List of Tables

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Aresenals of Autocracy

2. Hand-Me-Down Guns: The Balkans and Ethiopia

3. Arms Trade Colonialism: Ethiopia and Djibouti

4. Austro-German Hegemony in Eastern Europe

5. A Tale of Two Arms Races

6. The Dreadnought Races

7. Gunning for Krupp

Abbreviations

Notes

Index

What People are Saying About This

An original and illuminating work that connects the global arms business to the spread of imperialism. Grant's archival discoveries are delightfully counterintuitive, with national arsenals selling to even the bitterest enemies of their respective states. He gives a brilliant exposition on the senseless militarization of Latin America in the late nineteenth century, where regimes confessed their folly, yet plowed ahead anyway, driven by pride, patriotism, and graft.

David Stevenson

An ambitious and wide-ranging history of the arms export trade over the half century leading up to the First World War. Grant provides a great deal of new information on unfamiliar topics, such as the Argentina-Chile naval race of the 1890s and Ethiopian emperor Menilek's purchase of European rifles. He also offers fresh material on better-known episodes, such as the modernization of Meiji Japan and arms sales to the Balkans.
— David Stevenson, London School of Economics and Political Science

Geoffrey Wawro

An original and illuminating work that connects the global arms business to the spread of imperialism. Grant's archival discoveries are delightfully counterintuitive, with national arsenals selling to even the bitterest enemies of their respective states. He gives a brilliant exposition on the senseless militarization of Latin America in the late nineteenth century, where regimes confessed their folly, yet plowed ahead anyway, driven by pride, patriotism, and graft.
— Geoffrey Wawro, author of The Franco-Prussian War

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