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- Title
Konflikte um ein globalisiertes Handelsobjekt: Feuerwaffen in Ostafrika, 1850-1890.
- Authors
BRAHM, FELIX
- Abstract
This article focuses on firearms, a commodity whose markets became increasingly globalised, but also locally differentiated during the second half of the 19th century. In the case of East Africa, as the article demonstrates, firearms were integrated into the very contexts from which major contemporary conflicts sprung up. Even if it did not trigger these processes, the proliferation of firearms pushed the militarisation of the caravan business, the increase in elephant hunting, and the expansion of slave trading, and it also strengthened existing patriarchal structures. Paradoxically, it was the firearm's potential as a means of violence that made its transfer a preferred tool for building loyal and trusting relationships; at the same time, however, its transfer raised the mistrust of third parties and had the ability to establish relations of dependence. The control of the arms trade was highly contested on a local level and became a prerequisite for political authority in many parts of the region. The European moralisation of the African arms trade laid the basis for an inter-imperial agreement on its regulation in the late 1880s, which helped to enforce colonial rule on the ground.
- Subjects
EAST Africa; HISTORY of material culture; FIREARMS -- History; FIREARMS industry; ECONOMIC history; 19TH century imperialism; NINETEENTH century; HISTORY
- Publication
Werkstatt Geschichte (Klartext Verlag), 2018, Issue 77, p29
- ISSN
0942-704X
- Publication type
Article