Empire of Guns: The Violent Making of the Industrial Revolution

by Priya Satia

Overview

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2018 BY THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE AND SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE

By a prize-winning young historian, an authoritative work that reframes the Industrial Revolution, the expansion of British empire, and emergence of industrial capitalism by presenting them as inextricable from the gun trade

"A fascinating and important glimpse into how violence fueled the industrial revolution, Priya Satia's book stuns with deep scholarship and sparkling prose."—Siddhartha Mukherjee, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies

We have long understood the Industrial Revolution as a triumphant story of innovation and technology. Empire of Guns, a rich and ambitious new book by award-winning historian Priya Satia, upends this conventional wisdom by placing war and Britain's prosperous gun trade at the heart of the Industrial Revolution and the state's imperial expansion.

Satia brings to life this bustling industrial society with the story of a scandal: Samuel Galton of Birmingham, one of Britain's most prominent gunmakers, has been condemned by his fellow Quakers, who argue that his profession violates the society's pacifist principles. In his fervent self-defense, Galton argues that the state's heavy reliance on industry for all of its war needs means that every member of the British industrial economy is implicated in Britain's near-constant state of war.

Empire of Guns uses the story of Galton and the gun trade, from Birmingham to the outermost edges of the British empire, to illuminate the nation's emergence as a global superpower, the roots of the state's role in economic development, and the origins of our era's debates about gun control and the "military-industrial complex" — that thorny partnership of government, the economy, and the military. Through Satia's eyes, we acquire a radically new understanding of this critical historical moment and all that followed from it.

Sweeping in its scope and entirely original in its approach, Empire of Guns is a masterful new work of history — a rigorous historical argument with a human story at its heart.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780735221864
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/10/2018
Pages:	544
Sales rank:	1,260,247
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.80(d)

About the Author

Priya Satia is a Professor of History at Stanford University. She is the author of Spies in Arabia: The Great War and the Cultural Foundations of Britain's Covert Empire in the Middle East, and her writing has appeared in Slate, the Financial Times, The Nation, and the Huffington Post, among other publications. She received a MSc in Development Studies (Economics) at the London School of Economics and a PhD in History at the University of California, Berkeley. She lives in Stanford, California with her family.

Table of Contents

Preface xi

Introduction 1

Part 1 The Industrial Life of Guns

1 The State and the Gun Industry, Part 1: 1688-1756 25

2 Who Made Guns? 66

3 The State and the Gun Industry, Part 2: 1756-1815 101

4 The State, War, and Industrial Revolution 146

Part 2 The Social Life of Guns

Interlude: A Brief Lesson from African History 183

5 Guns and Money 191

6 Guns in Arms, Part 1: Home 219

7 Guns in Arms, Part 2: Abroad 261

Part 3 The Moral Life of Guns

Interlude: A Brief Account of the Society of Friends 303

8 Galton's Disownment 316

9 The Gun Trade after 1815 345

10 Opposition to the Gun Trade after 1815 380

Acknowledgments 411

Notes 417

Bibliography 485

Index 511

Editorial Reviews

02/05/2018
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. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

Satia’s detailed retelling of the Industrial Revolution and Britain’s relentless empire expansion notably contradicts simple free market narratives. . . . She argues convincingly that the expansion of the armaments industry and the government’s role in it is inseparable from the rise of innumerable associated industries from finance to mining. . . . Fascinating.”—The New York Times
 
“A fascinating study of the centrality of militarism in 18th-century British life, and how imperial expansion and arms went hand in hand…This book is a triumph.” —Guardian

“Satia marshals an overwhelming amount of evidence to show, comprehensively, that guns had a place at the center of every conventional tale historians have so far told about the origins of the modern, industrialized world. . . . Spanning four continents and three centuries, tackling the fundamental nature of industrialization and capitalism, Empire of Guns belongs to the last decade’s resurgence in so-called ‘big history’. . . . Though not presented as a political book, the implications of Satia’s work are difficult to ignore. . . . This book leaves us with the disquieting notion that guns—whether the slow and inaccurate weapons of the eighteenth century or today’s models—do more than alternately cloak or explore human inclination towards violence. They also shape it—not just at the individual level, as we are accustomed to debating, but at the societal, even civilizational or global, level as well. ‘As we make objects, they make us.’”—The New Republic

“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 solid contribution to the history of technology and commerce, with broad implications for the present.” – Kirkus

“A fascinating and important glimpse into how violence fueled the industrial revolution, Priya Satia’s book stuns with deep scholarship and sparkling prose.” —Siddhartha Mukherjee, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies
 
“Empire of Guns is a richly researched and probing historical narrative that challenges our understanding of the engines that drove Britain’s industrial revolution. With this book, Priya Satia introduces Samuel Galton and the economies of guns and war into the historical equation and, with it, affirms her place as a deeply captivating and thought-provoking historian.”—Caroline Elkins, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Imperial Reckoning

“Empire of Guns is an important revisionist account of the industrial revolution, reminding us that the making of the modern state and the making of modern capitalism were tightly intertwined. A revelatory book.”—Sven Beckert, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Empire of Cotton

 “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 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  

From the Publisher

2018-02-06
Mr. Owen, meet Mr. Colt: a wide-ranging if overlong history of the role of arms manufacturing in the Industrial Revolution.The rise of mechanized industry in Britain, writes Satia (History/Stanford Univ.; Spies in Arabia: The Great War and the Cultural Foundations of Britain's Covert Empire in the Middle East, 2009), corresponded to a period of "more or less constant war." There was always France to fight, of course, but also the rebellious American Colonies and uprisings elsewhere in the empire, and the Dutch and the Spanish. An economy flourished, therefore, in the manufacture and sale of armaments and other military provisions. One of Satia's perhaps unlikely case studies is Samuel Galton, a nominally good Quaker who managed to reconcile that belief system with making a fortune in weaponry. Then as now, the arms merchants were not especially particular about where their products wound up. As Satia observes, in the 18th century alone, millions of guns sprang forth from workshops and factories in the Midlands and London, winding up in the hands of buyers everywhere in the world; in 1715, "the government discovered that London gunsmiths were making 15,500 guns," with some 4,000 of them "for Service not Known," as a contemporary document put it. A century later, and more than 151,000 British guns were bound for India, Indonesia, and China. This early military-industrial complex also valued interchangeability, standardization, and mass production, which would come to define the manufacture of nearly everything else. While standardization was not commonplace until after the Crimean War, it was at a premium well before. After 1815, Satia writes, the gun business faded somewhat as slavery wound down, for the slave trade was bound up part and parcel in armaments. She closes with a sharp look at today's mass shootings, which she considers "historically specific"—i.e., the product of a time in which guns are used for private grievances more than empire-building.A solid contribution to the history of technology and commerce, with broad implications for the present.

Kirkus Reviews

"Satia does not displace the well-grounded depiction of industrialization based in textiles and railroads; rather, she convincingly supplements it, demonstrating the equal significance of the heretofore overlooked role of the military requirements of empire. This book, written in sparkling prose, is a potentially paradigm-changing work. Highly recommended."

CHOICE - R. Spickerman

"A fascinating study of the centrality of militarism in 18th-century British life, and how imperial expansion and arms went hand in hand. This book is a triumph."

Guardian

"Satia marshals an overwhelming amount of evidence to show, comprehensively, that guns had a place at the center of every conventional tale historians have so far told about the origins of the modern, industrialized world. . . . Though not presented as a political book, the implications of Satia's work are difficult to ignore."

The New Republic

"It is impossible to do justice to such a comprehensive and thought-provoking book that will appeal to general readers and scholars alike. . . . The influence of Empire of Guns on the scholarship of industrialization is sure to rival that of the firearms' on global capitalism."

Business History Review - Lindsay Schakenbach Regele

"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 fascinating and important glimpse into how violence fueled the industrial revolution, Priya Satia's book stuns with deep scholarship and sparkling prose."

Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies - Siddhartha Mukherjee

"Empire of Guns is an important revisionist account of the industrial revolution, reminding us that the making of the modern state and the making of modern capitalism were tightly intertwined. A revelatory book."

finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Empire of Cotton - Sven Beckert

"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."

author of Age of Anger - Pankaj Mishra

"Empire of Guns is a richly researched and probing historical narrative that challenges our understanding of the engines that drove Britain's industrial revolution. With this book, Priya Satia introduces Samuel Galton and the economies of guns and war into the historical equation and, with it, affirms her place as a deeply captivating and thought-provoking historian."

winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Imperial Reckoning - Caroline Elkins

"Empire of Guns offers a sweeping revision of the history of the origins of the industrial revolution and the nature of capitalism itself."

Public Books

"Satia's detailed retelling of the Industrial Revolution and Britain's relentless empire expansion notably contradicts simple free market narratives. . . . She argues convincingly that the expansion of the armaments industry and the government's role in it is inseparable from the rise of innumerable associated industries from finance to mining. . . . Fascinating."

The New York Times

03/15/2018
In her second book, Satiya (history, Stanford Univ.; Spies in Arabia) draws on the archives of British gun manufacturing family, the Galtons, to argue a different story as to how and why the Industrial Revolution began in the British Isles in the 18th century. The time period was a century of near constant wars, and wars required weapons. Thus, the government was drawn into weapons manufacturing. Standardization of parts and improved reliability (e.g., better grade iron) were important to the government; mechanization and use of more efficient power sources much less so. The recurring conflicts of the century and the use of guns as trade objects in Africa and other continents increased demand and industrialization. Satiya thoughtfully questions how the Galtons rationalized their involvement in the gun trade and why their Quaker brothers were so late in condemning them for it? What was the psychological import of bearing weapons in Africa and India? When did gun violence become a domestic issue in England and why? VERDICT Satiya's latest work has much to offer history readers, both casual and academic. As a bonus, it's exceptionally crafted.—David Keymer, Cleveland

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