Empire of Guns: The Violent Making of the Industrial Revolution

Empire of Guns: The Violent Making of the Industrial Revolution by Satia, Priya. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780735221864.

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 Satias 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 Britains prosperous gun trade at the heart of the Industrial Revolution and the states imperial expansion. Satia brings to life this bustling industrial society with the story of a scandal: Samuel Galton of Birmingham, one of Britains most prominent gunmakers, has been condemned by his fellow Quakers, who argue that his profession violates the societys pacifist principles. In his fervent self-defense, Galton argues that the states heavy reliance on industry for all of its war needs means that every member of the British industrial economy is implicated in Britains 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 nations emergence as a global superpower, the roots of the states role in economic development, and the origins of our eras debates about gun control and the "military-industrial complex" -- that thorny partnership of government, the economy, and the military. Through Satias 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.