1034 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE tion concerning the state made up of contending departments and agencies interconnected with various sections of society, before turn ing to discussions of state agencies like the Business Department, the Mining Corps, the army’s technical establishment, and the Overseas Trading Corporation (Seehandlung). The Business Department and the Seehandlung sought to develop a rural industrial base, while the Mining Corps developed its own mines, forges, and foundries, based on techniques from the 1500s and 1600s. Although not significant in terms of overall investment, these strategies produced improvements welcomed by businessmen in the 1810s and 1820s. By the 1830s and 1840s, however, the visions of development promoted by state offi cials were no longer seen by businessmen as beneficial. Although initially ambivalent about modern technology, members of the army began supporting the development of railroads in the 1830s against other segments of the state which saw railroads as diverging from their visions of an appropriate future. King Frederick William III allowed competing approaches in the state, but sided with proponents of mercantilist change in the 1810s and 1820s, and supported a law beneficial to railroads in 1838. His son supported railroads also, but increasingly turned to reactionary policies in the 1840s. Thus, seg ments of tfie state provided an impetus to technological change until the 1830s and 1840s, when state officials, soldiers, and businessmen, disagreeing about what policies should be followed and who should control production, became increasingly alienated from one another. Brose provides a valuable corrective to visions of a monolithic Prus sian state. Competition and even chaos were common. The stress on antiquity was initially liberating, but by the 1830s and 1840s stulti fying. Although this is a solid contribution to our understanding of technology policy and its construction and to our understanding of the Prussian state and society, the topical approach makes for redun dancies. Another weakness results from Brose’s decision to discuss theoretical issues at the beginning and end, with a description of events in between. Combining the two would have produced a stronger argument. Edmund Todd Dr. Todd teaches in the Department of History at the University of New Haven. Guns for the Tsar: American Technology and the Small Arms Industry in Nineteenth-Century Russia. By Joseph Bradley. DeKalb: Northern Il linois University Press, 1990. Pp. xi + 274; illustrations, notes, bibli ography, index. $30.00. This is a book that touches on many themes: technology transfer, military tactics, production engineering, product standardization, salesmanship, small arms design and development, and industrial re lations. Based on a commendably broad range of sources, its seven TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 1035 chapters deal first with the broad lines of small-arms development in the industrial age, then with the situation in pre-1860s Russia, before turning to the export of advanced small-arms technology to Russia and the effect this had on both the Russian and U.S. arms industry. The book is well printed and well designed, but there are passages where convoluted sentences test the reader. In the Crimean War, French and British infantrymen could actu ally pick off with their rifles the Russian artillery gunners at a range of well over a half-mile, whereas the Russian infantry with their smoothbores could only reach 300 yards. The Russians looked for imports, and Samuel Colt’s factory secured orders for converting old smoothbores to rifles, while the handicraft gunmakers of Liège also received big orders. Both the Belgians and the New Englanders were supplying inferior goods, and knew it, but, as Colt’s converted rifles never reached the battlefield while imported Colt revolver-making machinery was much appreciated, good relationships continued be tween the U.S. factories and Russian war ministry officials. The coop eration further prospered in the 1860s, when St. Petersburg urgently required new arms technology. By that time the breechloader, using metal cartridges, was establish ing itself, and the very competent Russian officers who visited the U.S. arms industry selected the rifle designed by Colonel Hiram Ber dan. Thus was born the trusty Berdanka, which is praised in many Russian war histories and novels. Initially, the Berdan was supplied by Colt, but tools were imported...