Priya Satia has written a bold, ambitious, and far-reaching account of the role of the armament and gun industries in the making of the industrial revolution. The story picks up in the eighteenth century, when the flintlock is replacing the matchlock musket. The emerging nation-states of Europe are in a constant state of war, fighting for dominance in Europe, the Americas, and Asia. The armament and gun industries are clearly keys to how this drama unfolds.
By investigating the armament and gun industries in eighteenth-century Britain, Satia gives the reader a front-row seat for the industrial revolution, supplanting the previous view that the textile industry led the way. Satia shows the active involvement of government in shaping the evolution of production technology and industrial structure. Through the use of extensive archival material on Galton and other major British arms manufacturers, Satia provides a glimpse of the unofficial public-private partnership in the armament industry, akin to the official joint-stock partnerships in trade and finance. Satia is a master at uncovering the structures and workings of personal networks, contractual arrangements, and social tensions. One is often left in awe of the issues and events she connects.
The heart of the book focuses on the relationship between the major gun manufacturers in Birmingham and the government Ordnance Office in London. The dynamic interactions take center stage because of the constant state of war, domestic and foreign. Domestically, the proliferation of guns in the hands of Jacobites and others posed a threat to the newly emerging nation-state. The government's strategy was to keep producers small and artisanal, with each dependent on government support. Externally, arms were needed for the war efforts, so the state also had a vested interest in improving the efficiency of production and supply. Out of this tension Satia tells a nuanced and often convincing story about the state's role in encouraging the spread of interchangeable parts technology as a way to simultaneously reduce cost and control producers. Along the way, she explicates the relationship between the state, the market, and the causes of the industrial revolution, positioning the state as a causal player in juxtaposition to Adam Smith's free market.
A strength, or perhaps weakness (I reserve judgment) of the book is that the Ordnance Office is not placed within the context of the state's overall war machine. Ordnance expenditures were a small share of the government's military expenditures. Navy expenditures were far greater. Army purchases were also much larger, for the Army had to build logistics and payment systems across space, national boundaries, currencies, and even continents. Revolutions in transportation and financial networks were also part of the eighteenth century's social and economic transformation, but they get hardly a mention.
Judging from the remainder of the book, I suspect that the reason for this focus is that Satia is more interested in pursuing the history of guns in capitalist culture than she is in explaining the triumph of capitalism. This is understandable. The opening of part two, “Interlude: A Brief Lesson from African History,” is supposed to serve as segue from guns as instruments of violence to guns as cultural symbols. Satia argues that the vast majority of guns shipped to Africa as part of the slave trade were luxury consumption or status goods, not used for war or slave raiding. As an expert in this area, I must state clearly and emphatically that this is categorically not true. The literature is selectively chosen to support Satia's point of view, which leads this reviewer to suspect the validity of other claims made in the book.
The irony is that Satia could have made the point by staying home. The literature on the American system of manufactures relates the more ornate craftsmanship of British guns to the greater degree of status-consciousness in eighteenth-century British society, one of many points where Satia's arguments could have been strengthened by evidence marshalled by economic historians. There are no graphs or tables of any kind in the book. Instead, we are fed what is often an overwhelming feast of interesting vignettes, select quotations, and revealed network connections. The reader can lose sight of the forest for the trees, but patience and perseverance are often rewarded.
So, how has gun culture evolved in capitalist society, at least British capitalist society? Initially, guns were seldom used in crimes, murder, social altercations, or by rioters or mobs. Social violence was still personal. A knife or a sword was more meaningful, reliable, and perhaps more available (we are not told for sure). It is in the protection of private property and wealth, however, that guns emerge as sanctioned social violence. Why? Because private property needed protecting and guns were good protection at a safe distance. Less accurate, perhaps, but that just added personal distance from responsibility. Legal justification quickly followed. In colonial pursuits, the logic is reversed. Guns become the offensive weapons of trespassers, unless used to end unjustifiable practices by Indigenous people, like slavery, slave trading and other local customs. More on cross-country comparisons would have been welcomed, especially the implication that racial justifications could hide the illogic in colonial encounters.
In sum, Sativa has written an important and learned book that addresses a pressing issue in Western culture. The style is provocative and fast-paced—written with abandon. While readers will wish for additional forms of evidence to justify some of the claims, there is something here for everyone, general reader and expert alike.
