Go to AfricaBib home

Go to AfricaBib home AfricaBib Go to database home

bibliographic database
Line
Previous page New search

The free AfricaBib App for Android is available here

Book Book Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:A cultural history of firearms in the age of empire
Editors:Jones, Karen R.ISNI
Macola, GiacomoISNI
Welch, DavidISNI
Year:2013
Pages:317
Language:English
City of publisher:Farnham
Publisher:Ashgate
ISBN:9781409447528; 9781472402264; 9781409447535
Geographic terms:world
Africa
South Africa
Zambia
Subjects:small arms
imperialism
missions
Ngoni
Anglo-Zulu War
Anglo-Boer wars
World War II
symbols
social change
Abstract:The central concern of this book is the study of the processes through which firearms and societies have shaped one another across time and space. The contributions show that, between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, the age of modern empires, firearms were much more than weapons of human destruction and/or tools of material production. By exploring the cultural symbolism of firearms, the authors assess the centrality of this technological artefact to class, gender and ethnic identities in both the metropolis and the colonies. The book is divided into four parts: I Adopting guns: environment, class and gender on the imperial frontier; II Resisting guns: edged weapons and the politics of indigenous honour; III Controlling guns: gun laws, race and citizenship; IV Celebrating guns: firearms in popular and military cultures. Papers dealing with Africa are, in part I: Fishers of men and hunters of lion: British missionaries and the big game hunting in colonial Africa (Jason Bruner); in part II: 'They disdain firearms': the relationship between guns and the Ngoni of eastern Zambia to the early twentieth 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); in part III: 'Give him a gun, NOW': soldiers but not quite soldiers in South Africa's Second World War, 1939-1945 (Bill Nasson); in part IV: Retrospective icon: the Martini-Henry (Ian F.N. Beckett, South Africa, Sudan); 'The shooting of the Boers was extraordinary': British views of Boer marksmanship in the Second Anglo-Boer War, 1899-1902 (Spencer Jones). [ASC Leiden abstract]
Cover