A Cultural History of Firearms in the Age of Empire

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.

Karen Jones is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Kent, and specializes in US and Environmental history. She has published widely on environmental issues and the American West specifically, and is currently completing a manuscript for the University of Colorado Press on hunting, nature and the nineteenth-century American West. Giacomo Macola is Senior Lecturer in African History at the University of Kent. The author of numerous articles on Zambian history, his latest monograph is entitled Liberal Nationalism in Central Africa: A Biography of Harry Mwaanga Nkumbula (2010). He is currently writing a social history of the gun in Central Africa to the early twentieth century. David Welch is Professor of Modern History and Director of the Centre for the Study of War, Propaganda and Society at the University of Kent. His books include Germany, Propaganda and Total War, 1914-1918 (2000) and The Third Reich: Politics and Propaganda (2002). He is the editor (with Jo Fox) of Justifying War: Propaganda, Politics and the Modern Age (2012). His latest book, Propaganda: Power and Persuasion, will be published in 2013 to coincide with opening of the British Library's exhibition of the same name.