Jonathan Grant has produced an impressive, deeply researched, and clearly argued study of the interwar arms trade from the perspective of private industry in France and Britain. It is an issue that demands close examination if we are to understand the concurrent political and strategic negotiations over international disarmament that formed such an important strand of the history connecting the two world wars. A series of case studies involving the major exporting firms Vickers-Armstrong, Schneider-Creusot, and Škoda, based largely upon company documents as well as a selection of government papers, expands our general understanding not only of how closely industry and government cooperated during these years but, in particular, of the business effects of the disarmament discussions. This is the first comprehensive history to focus systematically upon the actions and roles of private business in this fashion. It treats the arms trade as a business phenomenon—in contrast to most existing literature, which sees it in political and state-centered terms. The focus falls more or less naturally upon Eastern Europe where the multiple post-1918 successor states sought British and French investment, armaments, and technology transfers. British firms received essentially nothing from government in terms of financial guarantees, for the Treasury consistently opposed supporting private arms exports. In this sense, British trade policy reinforced the wider public desire for disarmament, even if it was indirectly through resistance to aiding the rearmament of these smaller states. Yet French initiatives to expand political and strategic influence among the Eastern European states via dominance of their armaments supply proved problematic also, for the business interests of French arms firms did not always coincide with the diplomatic priorities at the Quai d'Orsay.

One welcome result of Grant's approach is that we can at last begin to evaluate one of the most well-known yet most misunderstood elements of the arms trade during the decades following World War I: the narrative of “the merchants of death”—the arms dealers. The notion that armaments manufacturers were operating a secret cabal to foment conflict and profit from it was widespread during the interwar decades. It found specific expression in the debates of the League of Nations and prompted high-profile public political inquiries in both Britain and the United States during the 1930s. An infamous case cited by campaigners of the time, including Fenner Brockway (The Bloody Traffic [1933]) and Philip Noel-Baker (The Private Manufacture of Armaments [1937]), was the 1933 Škoda scandal in Romania. It possessed all the requisite elements: manufactured war scares, political corruption, and the widespread use of bribes to win inflated arms contracts. Grant provides the most detailed and balanced analysis to date on how the scandal unfolded and what it actually revealed about the practices of the competing firms and their respective governments.

As the evidence shows, arms firms were indeed competing for customers throughout the interwar period and were anxious to avoid the business consequences of the surging popular pressures for meaningful international disarmament. A factory report from Vickers-Armstrong in 1928 noted candidly that “a dearth of machinegun orders will have a considerable bearing on factory profit” (p. 76). As the League of Nations negotiations over a disarmament convention reached their climax, Vickers-Armstrong noted in 1932 that “until disarmament talks cease and the financial situation of the world, especially in South America, improves, we cannot expect to do much” (p. 161). Arms manufacturers were genuinely concerned about their prospects in the event of the conclusion of a disarmament treaty. But the point is that these were businesses, not political conspirators. They sought to win large orders, whether for warships, aircraft, artillery, rifles, ammunition, or tanks. This meant breaking into new markets and winning the competition for contracts, and this in turn opened the way for shady practices. But it also demanded careful assessments by the companies of the credit risks inherent in low bids, flexible payment schedules, and long-term payment plans with cash-strapped customers. Not only that, but “they actually moderated their behaviour and eschewed some business ventures to avoid anticipated public outcry until the disarmament din died down and was replaced by rearmament” (p. 221). Eventually they were proved correct. The book finishes by looking at that shift toward outright rearmament that took hold from the mid-1930s on. British and French rearmament forced firms to prioritize domestic orders over exports. Meanwhile, the nature of the German arms trade under the Nazi regime was qualitatively different from anything that had come before.

The book's narrative keeps tightly to the case studies and is not integrated with the political history of the international disarmament negotiations themselves. To see the story Grant tells in its broader context, one can very profitably read Between Depression and Disarmament in combination with the account of disarmament contained in Zara Steiner's unrivalled survey of interwar international politics, The Lights that Failed: European International History, 1919–1933 (2005). Taken on its own terms, this book is a substantial contribution to ongoing reassessments of the relationships between interwar governments, the League of Nations, and private armaments manufacturers; between national armaments policies, private production capabilities, and the international economy; and between armaments themselves and the desperate desire for disarmament that so influenced interwar diplomacy.