The history of weaponry is essentially the history of human ingenuity
ABOUT 10 pages into A History of the World in 100 Weapons, two thoughts will occur to you.
The first is that human beings are ingenious. We have evolved an intelligence that has allowed us to conquer a planet; from the deepest ocean trench to its highest peak. We have ventured into outer space and ambled across the dust on another world. We have also made massive advances in mastering inner space, producing medicines and pioneering surgical procedures to mend flesh and bone, often carried out with vast distances between surgeon and patient.
Technology is just one offspring of our ingenuity. Without it we would remain dreamers, unable to drop into the abyss or scale lofty heights, lift us beyond the atmosphere or extend the average lifespan towards a century. Our ingenuity is part of what makes us human.
The second thought is that we have used inordinate ingenuity trying to find more efficient ways of killing each other. Unfortunately, this too is part of what makes us human.
In his introduction military history expert Dr Chris McNab outlines the incentives and benefits of going to war.
“Warfare is, sadly for humankind, one of the most technologically and intellectually productive social conditions. Ever since prehistoric man first grabbed a rock as a ‘force-multiplier’ for his fist, war has been fundamentally bound up with the attempt to achieve technological superiority over the enemy.”
Like it or not, war, and the threat of war, stirs our ingenuity like nothing else. It throws down the gauntlet for us to invent and survive or be overcome and perish.
McNab’s hefty tome — one wonders if the book itself could be classified as a weapon — is clear and concisely written, but it is the use of images that makes the book both impressive and terrifying. They include artists’ impressions, intricate graphics and, for more recent warfare, photographs. A quick flick through will find: hundreds of two-man Egyptian chariots meeting three-man Hittite chariots on a dusty plain during the epic battle of Kadesh in 1274 BC; a Roman trireme showing the formation of its rowers and highlighting its lethal bronze-coated wooden ram for punching through other vessels at the waterline; British army recruits bayoneting sacks of straw in 1942; Colonel Paul Tibbets waving to photographers from the cockpit of the Enola Gay before his infamous flight to Hiroshima; US Special Forces abseiling down ropes from a hovering Huey helicopter somewhere in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam and three US navy crew members scanning computer monitors and keying in information to prepare the launch of a Tomahawk missile.
In the biography of each weapon, McNab outlines its use and its effect, not only on the unfortunate victim but also sometimes on the mentality of entire continents. This is true of the dory, the spear weapon of choice of Alexander the Great’s. By coupling the weapon with phalanx formations Alexander brought north Africa, Eastern Europe and central Asia to its knees. The phalanx bristling with dorys eventually met its match against the Romans.
A domino effect can be followed from antiquity to modern times. Each weapon meets its match and falls, and so on. The spear meets the sword, the sword meets the longbow, the longbow meets the cannon.
The combatants of both world wars retooled old technology in an effort to gain the upper hand. Grenades, flame throwers and the Vickers machine-gun were little more than First World War innovations, just as the Second World War featured Spitfires, U-boats and T-34 tanks. But desperate times called for desperate measures and both wars featured at least one weapon capable of inflicting horrendous injuries and also damage to the psyche of civilians.
The first occurred on April 22, 1915, during the battle of Ypres. With troops on both sides stuck in trench warfare, the Germans began pumping chlorine across no-man’s land, killing up to 1,400 Allied troops and injuring 4,000 others. Soon the Allies were deploying deplorable chemicals.
The second was detonated 580 metres above the city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, unleashing a fireball hotter than the surface of the sun. The fission device, Little Boy, instantly killed 70,000 people and about the same number would die within months from radiation poisoning. This weapon triggered the nuclear age, which we are still struggling to cope with.
The final section of the book is a testament to how much money and effort the US has put into warfare. From B-52s and Sidewinders, to M16s and Apaches. However, there is one weapon that McNab states is “arguably the most influential weapon in history”. But surprisingly, it’s not American. It is a Russian contribution to the world of firearms. It even has its own creation myth. The story goes that a Red Army sergeant received injuries during the battle of Bryansk in 1941 and used his time in recovery to dream up a more effective assault rifle. In January 1948, his concept became reality when it won a design contest to become the Soviets’ standard infantry rifle. The sergeant’s name was Kalashnikov. His rifle is the AK47. It has been adopted by more than 60 countries, innumerous freedom fighters, dictators and drug lords.
McNab doesn’t deal with the future of weaponology, apart from the objective prediction that manned combat aircraft will cease this century.
He only concedes that our ingenuity will result in ever more sophisticated weapons, wielded over and over again. “We should always remind ourselves that the end result is endlessly, terribly, the same — people die or suffer a lifetime of debilitating injury.”
It’s another thought that will occur to you while reading this fine book, but stays long after you put it down.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
