A cultural history of firearms in the age of empire

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Bibliographic Information

A cultural history of firearms in the age of empire

edited by Karen Jones, Giacomo Macola, David Welch

Ashgate, c2013

  • : hbk

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Note

Includes bibliographical references (p. [285]-305) and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

Firearms have been studied by imperial historians mainly as means of human destruction and material production. Yet firearms have always been invested with a whole array of additional social and symbolical meanings. By placing these meanings at the centre of analysis, the essays presented in this volume extend the study of the gun beyond the confines of military history and the examination of its impact on specific colonial encounters. By bringing cultural perspectives to bear on this most pervasive of technological artefacts, the contributors explore the densely interwoven relationships between firearms and broad processes of social change. In so doing, they contribute to a fuller understanding of some of the most significant consequences of British and American imperial expansions. Not the least original feature of the book is its global frame of reference. Bringing together historians of different periods and regions, A Cultural History of Firearms in the Age of Empire overcomes traditional compartmentalisations of historical knowledge and encourages the drawing of novel and illuminating comparisons across time and space.

Table of Contents

  • Contents: Introduction: new perspectives on firearms in the age of empire, Karen Jones, Giacomo Macola and David Welch
  • Part I Adopting Guns: Environment, Class and Gender on the Imperial Frontier: Guns, violence and identity on the trans-Appalchian American frontier, Matthew C. Ward
  • Guns, masculinity and marksmanship: codes of killing and conservation in the 19th-century American West, Karen Jones
  • Fishers of men and hunters of lion: British missionaries and big game hunting in colonial Africa, Jason Bruner
  • Cockney sportsmen? Recreational shooting in London and beyond, 1800-1870, Matthew Cragoe. Part II Resisting Guns: Edged Weapons and the Politics of Indigenous Honour: 'They disdain firearms': the relationship between guns and the Ngoni of eastern Zambia to the early 20th century, Giacomo Macola
  • 'Hardly a place for a nervous old gentleman to take a stroll'
  • firearms and the Zulu during the Anglo-Zulu War, Jack Hogan
  • Steel and blood: for a cultural history of edged weapons between the late 19th and the early 20th centuries, Gianluca Pastori. Part III Controlling Guns: Gun Laws, Race and Citizenship: The battle of Dubai: firearms on Britain's Arabian frontier, 1906-1915, Simon Ball
  • 'Give him a gun, NOW': soldiers but not quite soldiers in South Africa's Second World War, 1939-1945, Bill Nasson
  • 'Better die fighting against injustice than to die like a dog': African-Americans and guns, 1866-1941, Kevin Yuill. Part IV Celebrating Guns: Firearms in Popular and Military Cultures: Retrospective icon: the Martini-Henry, Ian F.W. Beckett
  • 'The shooting of the Boers was extraordinary': British views of Boer marksmanship in the 2nd Anglo-Boer War, 1899-1902, Spencer Jones
  • Irish paramilitarism and gun cultures, 1910-1921, Timothy Bowman
  • Bibliography
  • Index.

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