Industrialization of War, 1840–84 235
could produce handguns en masse and on demand. By 1870, Russia,
Spain, Turkey, Sweden, Denmark, and Egypt had all followed the
British example by importing American milling machinery for gun-
making.^17 In Belgium, Liège gunmakers formed a new company to
import American machinery. It seemed the only way to satisfy a
British order for 150,000 rifles, which was lodged in 1854 when
British home production was lagging.^18
The result was to alter the European gun trade profoundly. Artisan
methods faded away; and as new machines were installed in govern
ment arsenals, the international trade in small arms, focused on Liège
for centuries past, shrank back to relatively trivial proportions.^19
Another consequence was this. Before the 1850s, change in the
design of small arms issued to hundreds of thousands of soldiers had
been a long-drawn-out and inherently awkward enterprise. That was
why European muskets had remained so nearly the same for 150
years. With automatic machinery, however, once new jigs had been
made, hundreds of thousands of guns of a brand new design could be
produced in a single year. An entire army could be reequipped about
as quickly as soldiers could be familiarized with the new weapon. The
door was thus opened wide for further improvements in the design of
small arms, but only at the cost of upsetting all existing tactical rules
and infantry drill regulations.
The difficulties of altering small-arms designs when production re
mained artisanal had been made painfully obvious to the Prussians
after 1840, when King Frederick William decided to begin equipping
his army with breech-loading rifles. The initial order was for 60,000
such weapons. Seven years later, in 1847, Johann Nicholas von
Dreyse, the inventor, was able to turn out only 10,000 guns a year
from his workshops and found it difficult to maintain quality control at
that scale of production. Since the Prussian army numbered some
thing like 320,000 with its reserves, it would have taken more than
thirty years to complete the changeover from muskets to breech
loaders at such a rate of manufacture. No wonder the Prussians in
sponse to the American System”; Conrad Gill, History of Birmingham: Manor and
Borough to 1865 (London, 1952), p. 295.
- This, at any rate, was the proud boast of Charles H. Fitch, “Report on the
Manufacture of Interchangeable Mechanisms,” U.S. Congress, Miscellaneous Documents
of the House of Representatives, 4th Cong., 2d sess. 1882–82, 13, pt. 2: 613–14. Unfortu
nately, Fitch gives no details and I have not found confirmatory evidence from all of the
purchasers.
- Cf. Claude Gaier, Four Centuries of Liege G unmaking (London, 1977), p. 122.
- Ibid., pp. 190–95.
