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In this innovative and accessible history of small arms and gun violence, Maartje Abbenhuis reveals how the invention of ready-to-use rifle cartridges in the industrial era revolutionised gun violence on and off the battlefield and made death accessible to all. The most famous of these expanding bullets, which flooded the market from the 1850s onward, was the dum-dum bullet. This bullet fundamentally altered perceptions of who might use a gun and when. The book examines why, of all military inventions, this bullet was regulated by international law, and traces the changing landscape of public responses to its use and abuse through the many wars and instances of state violence during the first half of the twentieth century. It shows that the legal framing of this 'barbarous' ammunition helped to entrench public expectations around its unacceptability, yet also hid a world of actual violence that employed the same technology repeatedly.
List of contents
Acknowledgements; 1. The dum-dum bullet in history; 2. Angels of death: the violence of Minié bullets in the 1850s and 1860s; 3. A question of life itself: exploding projectiles and the St Petersburg Declaration of 1868; 4. Unseen death: 'Man-stopping' bullets and everyday violence before 1890; 5. Bullets that do not kill: Explaining the dum-dum 'hysteria' of the 1890s; 6. For every atrocity, a dum-dum, 1900-1950; Epilogue: the dum-dum bullet's enduring fascination; Bibliography; Index.
About the author
Maartje Abbenhuis is Professor in Modern History in the School of Humanities at Waipapa Taumata Rau University of Auckland. She is the author of several critically acclaimed books and co-author of Global War, Global Catastrophe, which won the 2022 Tomlinson Prize.
