Empire of Guns: The Violent Making of the Industrial Revolution

'Fascinating... this book is a triumph' GuardianThe revolutionary new understanding of how the gun trade facilitated the expansion of the British Empire and changed the course of world history. History teaches that from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century the industrial revolution transformed Britain from an agricultural and artisanal economy to one dominated by industry and machine, ushering in unprecedented growth in technology and trade and putting the country at the centre of the world. In Empire of Guns, prize-winning historian Priya Satia argues that far from the bucolic image of cotton mills that define popular perception the true root of economic and imperial expansion was the lucrative military contracting that enabled the country s near-constant state of war. Through in-depth research, Satia elucidates this story through the life of prominent British gun-maker and Quaker, Samuel Galton. Reconciling the pacifist tenet of his faith with the pragmatism of the times, he argued that the inescapable profitability of conflict meant all members of an industrialised economy were irrefutably complicit in war. Through his story, and a detailed study of the British gun trade, Satia illuminates the nation s emergence as a global superpower, the roots of the government s role in economic development, and the origins of our era s debates about gun control.Empire of Guns expertly brings to life a bustling industrial society with a human story at its heart to offer a radically new understanding of a critical historical moment and all that followed from it