Victorian Origins of the Arms Trade

Military History:

From about 1850 the world began to arm. In the American Civil War and the Anglo-German Naval Race may be observed the foundations of the modern export trade in weapons.

Blog Post Dated December 2021

HMS Dreadnought, launched 1906

In the decades immediately following the Napoleonic Wars, it is in fact possible to detect the earliest stirrings of the modern arms trade. After the Mexican War of Independence (1810-1821) from the colonial rule of the Spanish, a group of British banks arranged a loan for the new government to purchase a surplus lot of 70,000 India Pattern muskets to arm the new Mexican Army. As a sovereign loan, its term was to be 60 years, and it was to be paid back from the proceeds of the import duties the Mexicans imposed. The loan was guaranteed against these duties, the banks accrued unto themselves the right to take control of the collection of the duties should payments falter, and of course, the Royal Navy would always be on hand to take sterner action should there be any mention of default.

As Brian DeLay notes, in his address to the American Academy of Arts and Science (November 2019)

“Broke and exhausted from its long war for independence, Mexico lacked the cash necessary to buy new arms on the open market from one of the major global producers at the time. So, in the mid 1820s, Mexico secures two major loans from prominent banks in London that are guaranteed by two-thirds of all the country’s customs receipts, which were really its only reliable source of income at that moment. Almost all of these loans were converted immediately into used war material, things left over from the Napoleonic Wars, such as 4 frigates, five thousand pistols, four thousand carbines, and seventy thousand East Indian Pattern “Brown Bess” muskets. …..

“Just 3 years after making the deal with these London banks, Mexico defaults on its payments. Mexico would in fact spend the next sixty years in sovereign default, more or less barred from international capital markets and in a very unstable condition.”

DeLey neglects to comment, in his account, that the Mexican arms deal, for the sum of £3.2 million, and brokered through Barings and Barclays, came at the same time as a severe financial crash on the London market (the catastrophic failure of December 1825). This was caused not by arms deals, but by a speculative bubble in Latin American mining ventures, which burst when prospective yields failed to materialise. Thousands of investors were wiped out. So, not a propitious time for Mexico to be re-arming!

Pretty much everything about the future arms industry is pre-figured in the story of Mexico’s 1825 arms deal - poor country decides it needs weapons and pays a heavy price for what turns out to be a pup, the manipulators of the capital markets make a killing, arms manufacturers become increasingly important in international affairs, international trade, and the domestic economy. But there is one big element missing during the nineteenth century - national governments.

Of course, the manufacture and sale of weapons has been operational since the dawn of organised politics. Rome, middle ages, early Europe, introduction of gunpowder, government involvement. Yak yak about how it worked with edged weapons, then discuss the intro of gunpowder. Early examples, then Orban, then the quote about not trading with the ottomans.

The Dardanelles gun (1464) based on the Basilica of 1453

To the extent that there was an arms trade of any character before 1840, it is Orban the Hungarian who epitomises it. When arms used in warfare were predominantly of the edged metal variety (swords, daggers, pikes, lances), it was common practice for the victors to carry off the battlefield quantities of the weapons discarded by the defeated enemy. This was, I suppose, a sort of informal trade in weapons. The ranged weapon was the bow (I discount the javelin perhaps unfairly) - the long bow and the cross bow. These tended to carry more cultural baggage, and were of less interest to the victorious - usually they were simply smashed. The English used the long bow, the French the cross bow, the Syrian auxiliary archers attached to the Roman Legions, and so on.

Really, to the extent we are able to speak of a formal arms trade, it is a trade in skill, knowledge, and craftsmanship. The artisans who made the weapons were artists and traders, and tended to ply their trade to highest bidders, and move their activities to where demand was most acute. There did indeed exist Royal Arsenals and Workshops, for example, but these were strangely transient, and essentially only active during periods of actual hostility. Craftsmen armourers were remarkably flexible and mobile - with little sense of loyalty nor hinderance appeared to hold them back, nor corrupt their value in the eyes of potential customers.

In Europe, three developments undermined these long established traditions in the business of weaponry. The widespread use of gunpowder, the coming of the industrial revolution, and the sharpening of the rivalry between sovereign nations at arms that succeeded the Seven Years War and the Napoleonic wars.

Early European canon, 1326, ascribed to Walter de Milemete

The use of gunpowder in artillery pieces became common in Europe during the 14th Century. Philip of Burgundy (1363-1404) was an important proponent of the large gun, for use against fortifications. (See Odruik, 1377). During the following century, the employment of infantry firearms became common, most frequently in the form of the musket. This was a complex early industrial weapon, able to throw a round shot capable of penetrating armour at about 75 yards. By the 16th Century the musket had transformed the role and effectiveness of the infantry on the battle field (see Pavia 1525, Breitenfeld Sept 1631).

150 years after Breitenfeld, the factory system initiated by the Industrial Revolution not only saw in the era of mass production (in terms of volume and rate of production), but also the capability to manufacture far more complex weapons with far greater reliability. The factory system, and the resources it drew into the construction process, also introduced a nationalistic dimension into the business of armaments.

However, between the outbreak of the American War of independence (1775) and the establishment of the Pattern 1853 Enfield Rifle, it is surprising how little by way of innovation occurred in the business of weapons manufacture.

Although the Napoleonic Wars were a mighty conflict that roiled the whole of Europe, and some parts beyond, weaponry, by volume and innovative type, grew surprisingly slowly. Only in the artillery arm was this not entirely the case - the production of new types in the French State Arsenals of Fontainebleau was significant, and sufficient to give French arms a district edge. It was a speciality that was to last until 1940.

In other quarters, nothing much happened. It was again the French who oversaw the rupture, in the invention and manufacture of the rifle musket, of which the Minet Cartridge was a fundamental component. The Minet Cartridge was first used to devastating effect during the American Civil War. Among the many dimensions of the debate within Whitehall on the subject of involvement in this war was, for example, the supply of weapons and ammunition, and the profits available to arms manufacturers.

Pattern 1853 Rifle-Musket, Third Model.

D W Bailey notes - “This is the most common style of P/53, manufactured between 1858 and 1863 by a large number of Birmingham and London contractors as well as the Royal Small Arms Factory at Enfield and the London Armoury Company of Bermondsey. It is this model which forms the bulk of those P/53 arms furnished to both combatants in the American civil War.” (page 149)

The standard infantry "long arm" on both sides used during the war was of two types of Rifle-Musket - the American made Springfield M1855 ( so-called after the USA military armoury at Springfield Massachusetts) and the Enfield P1853 (so-called after the London Borough of Enfield, to the east of the city in the Lee valley - hence the eventual naming of the universally famous Lee Enfield). During the civil war Union forces alone acquired 670,617 Springfields and 428,292 Enfields.

In spite of these numbers, at this time the British never stated a very clear policy about this arms trade . This was primarily because a paramount policy of the British was open navigation and total freedom of trade - the Empire was founded on that, and China, for example was invaded in order to force her to open her borders to (British) trade. The problem with America was that the USN enforced an increasingly effective blockage of southern ports - New Orleans was the crucial one. The British hated this. So, in the end, although the South acquired most of its weaponry by means of material captured on the battlefield, and from Federal armouries such as Harpers Ferry, a significant amount came from Europe by way of the blockade runners, whose base was Bermuda - a British colony.

To Be Continued