In this book, William Kelleher Storey shows that guns and discussions about guns during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries were fundamentally important to the establishment of racial discrimination in South Africa. Relying mainly on materials held in archives and libraries in Britain and South Africa, Storey explains the workings of the gun trade and the technological development of the firearms. He relates the history of firearms to ecological, political, and social changes, showing that there is a close relationship between technology and politics in South Africa.
Contents
1. Guns in colonial South African history; 2. Early colonialism and guns at the Cape up to 1795; 3. Guns, conflict, and political culture along the Eastern Frontier, 1795–1840; 4. Hunting, warfare, and guns along the Northern Frontier, 1795–1868; 5. Capitalism, race, and breechloaders, 1840–1880; 6. Guns and the Langalibalele Affair, 1873–1875; 7. Guns and confederation, 1875–1876; 8. Risk, skill, and citizenship in the Eastern Cape, 1876–1879.
Review
'… without doubt the most stimulating and significant discussion concerning South Africa's colonial 'gun society' to have appeared since the publication in 1971 of the influential series of articles on guns in colonial Africa in the Journal of African History. Storey's study is consequently absolutely essential reading, not only for military historians of South Africa in the colonial period, but for all those with an interest in related technology, hunting, ecology, culture and society.' Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research
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