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Rulers, Guns, and Money

Rulers, Guns, and Money

The Global Arms Trade in the Age of Imperialism

Jonathan A. Grant

ISBN 9780674024427

Publication date: 03/15/2007

The explosion of the industrial revolution and the rise of imperialism in the second half of the nineteenth century served to dramatically increase the supply and demand for weapons on a global scale. No longer could arms manufacturers in industrialized nations subsist by supplying their own states' arsenals, causing them to seek markets beyond their own borders.

Challenging the traditional view of arms dealers as agents of their own countries, Jonathan Grant asserts that these firms pursued their own economic interests while convincing their homeland governments that weapons sales delivered national prestige and could influence foreign countries. Industrial and banking interests often worked counter to diplomatic interests as arms sales could potentially provide nonindustrial states with the means to resist imperialism or pursue their own imperial ambitions. It was not mere coincidence that the only African country not conquered by Europeans, Ethiopia, purchased weapons from Italy prior to an attempted Italian invasion.

From the rise of Remington and Winchester during the American Civil War, to the German firm Krupp's negotiations with the Russian government, to an intense military modernization contest between Chile and Argentina, Grant vividly chronicles how an arms trade led to an all-out arms race, and ultimately to war.

Praise

  • An ambitious and wide-ranging history of the arms export trade over the half century leading up to the First World War. Grant provides a great deal of new information on unfamiliar topics, such as the Argentina-Chile naval race of the 1890s and Ethiopian emperor Menilek's purchase of European rifles. He also offers fresh material on better-known episodes, such as the modernization of Meiji Japan and arms sales to the Balkans.

    —David Stevenson, London School of Economics and Political Science

Author

  • Jonathan A. Grant is Associate Professor of History, Florida State University.

Book Details

  • 304 pages
  • 0-11/16 x 6-1/8 x 9-1/4 inches
  • Harvard University Press

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