The Social History of the Machine Gun [Paperback]

John Ellis (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

A classic study of the cultural implications of a lethal technology. Reissued with a foreword and an excellent bibliographic essay on automatic weapons by Edward Ezell, it remains provocative and persuasive.

(Isis )

Arguing that the history of technology is inseparable from social history in general, Mr. Ellis weighs the machine gun's impact on weaponry, warfare, and society.

(New York Times )

Product Details

• Paperback: 200 pages
• Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press (August 1, 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0801833582
• ISBN-13: 978-0801833588
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #258,727 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

41 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An unusual perspective, August 7, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Social History of the Machine Gun (Hardcover)

Mr. Ellis has written a most unusual book. His thesis contends that the invention of the machine gun and the failure of the military to recognize it significance in the decades leading up to WWI, considering it useful only against tribesmen and other "primitives", led directly to the horrific slaughter of WWI and the static warefare of the trenches. He looks in depth at the military subculture of Victorian England and how it was incapable of recognizing the significance of the machine gun-and those who attempted to place the weapon into the British Army's scheme of things were sanctioned and gagged. When we finally get to the chapter on WWI it is akin to reading one of Shakespear's tragedies. The inevitability of the butchery is made all that more terrible by the knowledge that the deliberite myopia of the British and French higher command ensured that their troops used outmoded tactics against emplaced German forces and their Maxim guns. The author gives one case where two German machine guns annihilated a six-hundred man British infantry battalion in the space of a couple of hours with no casulties sustained by the Germans. In other words six German soldiers killed and wounded hundreds. The final chapter covers the years following WWI as well as the role of the weapon in movies of all things. Some might disagree with Mr. Ellis, that the invention of one device could be responsible for such sweeping changes in both social and military circles is unrealistic, but Mr. Ellis presents a very skillfull work that states just that. If you are looking for a technical history of the machine gun then this book isn't for you, but if you are curious about the impact that the industrial revolution has made on humanity then this book will be a fascinating read.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The obsolescence of the soldier, April 3, 2001

By 

Vágner Camilo Alves (Rio de Janeiro, Brasil) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Social History of the Machine Gun (Paperback)

This is a unique book. John Ellis has written more than a technical history of the machine guns, a weapon which has really revolutionized the battlefields and the military world. Mr. Ellis tells us a story about the resilience of customs, practices and traditions, in spite of the fact that the material reality that once enabled these customs and practices to thrive have already gone away. The 19th Century's officers and commanders were accustomed to thinking in terms of human intrepidity and courage as the most important attributes to carry the day in the battlefields. Machine guns were the first specific application of the technique and logic of the industrial revolution in military combat. Firing an inordinate stream of bullets, machine guns came to be the definitive symbols of the machine age in military history, regardless of marksmanship or easy targets. Nevertheless, ingrained beliefs die hard. The militaries in all major powers continued to cling to the idea of the irreplaceability of the infantry and cavalry charges, with bayonets, swords and lances, as the final judge of victory or defeat in military matters. In this sad tale about the final triumph of the material conditions against an ideal and constructed world, there would not be any place for happy endings. Archaic tactics and a longing for offensives, on the one hand, plus the continued production of more powerful and improved machine guns, on the other, set the backdrop for the appalling bloodbaths of the First World War, like Gallipoli, Verdun and the Somme. This is a book that will please not only social scientists or scholars, but also anyone with an interest in this topic (First World War, military matters and gun history) with a sophisticated taste for reading and studying. It is important to mention also the dozens of wonderful pictures and drawings that illustrates all the book, which give the reader enhanced pleasure.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Understand how technology changes the battlefield, October 22, 2005

By 

Michael A Neulander "Political Philosophy" (VA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Social History of the Machine Gun (Paperback)

John Ellis has written a masterful work on how technology changes the battlefield; in this case, it is the machine gun. The machine gun had been in existence since the Civil War in the form of the Gatling gun, mounted on a carriage similar to a small field artillery piece. Around the 1890's it had gone through several improvements until it looked similar to the ones we use today which are bipod mounted, belt fed and easy to maneuver with on the battlefield. The machine guns first use in this form all be it on a smaller scale was in the Russo Japanese War of 1905. Every major country in the world had military observers attached to both sides of the conflict and they all wrote in their official reports about its effective use by the Japanese on the battlefield. When WWI starts in August 1914, only the Germans have produced a prodigious amount of machine guns during the nine years since the Russo Japanese War. They had men trained as machine gunners as a specialty in infantry tactics and had assigned billets in each company for machine gunners. It seems as thought the Allied Powers had either ignored, or did not read the reports from the Russo Japanese War and where behind technologically, logistically and operationally in machine guns. To give one example of the muddleheaded thinking of the stodgy French generals; in the French military academy and in their training manuals they still advocated the "spirit of the bayonet", touting it to be the weapon that would inflict the maximum amount of casualties in the next war.

Needless to say at the beginning of the war all those poor French soldiers ordered over the top of the trenches by their incompetent generals to march with their rifles mounted with fixed bayonets through no mans land to storm the German trenches were mowed down by the voluminous and accurate German machine gun fire. There are diaries of German machine gunners stating how after a while they could not continue to fire into the advancing French line because the carnage was too much for them to take! After a few attacks the Allies learned their lesson and feverishly scrambled to incorporate the machine gun in their battle plans. The Germans managed to hold onto the technological edge throughout the war in machine gun technology until we showed up with the Browning .30 caliber machine gun near the end of the war. By the way, we did not have much in the way of machine guns when we showed up late in 1917 and were using inferior French machine guns that we bought at a premium price. They being cheaply made they had a nasty tendency to jam easily when they came in contact with the least little bit of mud or dirt, just the thing for trench warfare.

I am fond of telling school kids that come to the Virginia War Museum where I am a docent that the Viet Nam War Memorial wall contains the names of 55,000 American soldiers who died in that conflict in a nine-year period. The Allied forces in 1916 in the battle of the Somme lost over 60,000 men in the first day when they attacked the German trenches! Of course, not just the machine gun, but field artillery technology had also outstripped the generals understanding of modern warfare. This was the great lesson militarily of WWI. Generals and political leaders not fully grasping the advances in weaponry and using outmoded tactics from the last conflict to fight this new war.

As a retired Army officer, I recommend this book for military, political professionals and for philosophers.