What drove the Industrial Revolution? According to conventional wisdom, it was individual innovation and unfettered private enterprise. According to Priya Satia, it was war-making, the production of firearms, and massive state intervention. The central figure in her new book is a Quaker gunmaker immersed in the rapidly transforming economy of eighteenth-century England. (Encore presentation.)

Priya Satia, Empire of Guns: The Violent Making of the Industrial Revolution Penguin Press, 2018

Priya Satia, “We Are All Implicated in the Gun Industry” The Nation

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