Girding for Battle: The Arms Trade in a Global Perspective, 1815-1940 (review)

Abstract

This book comprises ten case studies in the history of the international arms trade, dealing mainly with the later nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth. The topics included range from Egypt under Ali Pasha and Khedive Ismail to the U.S. Navy after the Civil War; the Balkans and Latin America between 1870 and 1914; Latvia in the 1920s; German clandestine submarine exports in the same decade; and (during the 1930s) Japanese and German military sales to Ethiopia and Italian and American policy towards arms sales to Soviet Russia. All the studies (several by younger historians) are of good scholarly standard, and many draw on extensive and multi-lingual research in archival and little known published sources.