Review by Choice Review
Satia (Stanford Univ.) here argues that in focusing on the role of textiles and railroads in catalyzing industrialization, historians have overlooked the role of technical military innovation prior to the 19th century. Thus, she chooses not to commence her investigation with discussions common to industrialization histories, such as those focused on harnessing new forms of energy for production or divisions of labor. Instead, she begins with Britain's colonial and geopolitical projects, which not only prompted massive expenditures for weaponry, creating an armaments industry, but also sustained the state's promotion of technical innovation therein. Such innovation, including the initial work on steam engines, puddling furnaces, and even copper sheeting, in turn facilitated the leap to industrialization in other areas, such as textiles. In the process, the author also documents Britain's weapons culture and the moral questions the existence of an armaments industry raises. 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. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. --Roland Spickermann, University of Texas - Permian Basin
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Stanford historian Satia presents a strong narrative bolstered by excellent archival research into the English arms industry during the nearly perpetual wars waged by Great Britain from the last-third of the eighteenth century to the first-half of the nineteenth. Satia describes Britain's economy then as a military-industrial society that steered practically all economic activity toward war. Beginning with the surprising story of a Quaker gunmaker who had to defend his family business from attacks by fellow congregants in 1795, Satia goes on to interweave intellectual, economic, military, political, and imperial history. Along the way, she illuminates the social and moral life of guns, which is of great interest and which she gradually connects to the evolution of the modern nation-state. Featuring tremendous scholarship and a perhaps daunting time span, 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.--Pekoll, James Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
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.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
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Review by Library Journal Review
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 © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
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. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
