Twitter tirade calling him a con man and troublemaker who hates whites and cops Sharpton was headed to Baltimore to hold a press event defending Cummings the Baltimore Sun wrote in a scathing op ed that Trump was the most dishonest man ever to occupy the Oval Office and that it was better to have some vermin living in your neighborhood than to be 12020 Democratic presidential candidate and Castro said Trump's racist tweets and comments about Cummings the 4 Democratic congresswoman of color immigrants and civil rights icon and Congressman John Lewis are deliberate there's a pattern here this guy is the biggest identity politician that we have seen in the last 50 years and huge gauges in what's known as racial priming basically using this language in taking actions to try and get people to move into their camps by racial and ethnic identity and that's how he thinks he won in 2016 and that's how we think she's going to win in 2020 illogic Cummings is leading multiple investigations of the president's governmental dealings his committee also voted along party lines last week to authorize subpoenas for personal e-mails and texts used for official business by top White House aides including presidential daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared cushion or another trump cabinet member is out Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats is resigning after a turbulent 2 years in which he and President Trump were often at odds Trump name Texas Republican Congressman John Rachleff who is a fierce Trump loyalist to replace coats and testimony to Congress as part of the annual national intelligence assessment code said North Korea would be unlikely to give up its nuclear weapons or its ability to produce them because its leaders ultimately view nuclear weapons that's critical to regime survival Trump publically bristled at the testimony of coats as well as the head. The CIA and other officials who contradicted his own positions on North Korea Iran Afghanistan and the self-styled Islamic slate state group he tweeted that the intelligence officials were passive and naive The Senate is expected to try and fail to override President Trump's vetoes of 3 resolutions that would block weapons sales to Saudi Arabia the vote is set for this evening senators voted on a bipartisan basis to block Trump's plan to bypass Congress with emergency declarations to allow the weapons sales but the resolutions passed with margins of $53.51 votes well short of the $67.00 senators whose votes would be needed to override Trump's veto I might lean elfin dairy letters and politics is next day and welcome to letters and politics I'm it shows rich so you go to Jr has one of the largest and early years gun manufacturers of the 18th century in Birmingham England through the fortune he amassed by selling his guns to an eager British Empire wishing to buy them Samuel Goldwyn Innes family would also become some of the earliest financial giants have created banks whose vestiges can still be found today in such large institutions as h.s.b.c. Semi-colon was also a Quaker and pacifism as a main tenant for Quakers and this would get him in trouble with his own church which he was a prominent member of today we're going to be in conversation about the story and how the manufacturing of guns colonialism and slavery were tied up into the Industrial Revolution and how they're still tied into our financial world today my guest is Prius setia Prius setia is a professor of history at Stanford University and she is the author of the book Empire of guns the violent making of the Industrial Revolution Prius idea it is my very good pleasure to welcome you to our radio station thank you much for having me now before we get to the beginning of this relationship to guns industrialization Empire slavery of finance. World all these things 1st lay out for me right now how are our our guns still tied into our financial world today in general we've known this for a long time people have talked about the military industrial complex for instance for decades the firearms industry is part of that complex it's kind of hard not to talk about the beginnings because I think the relationship is historical and there's a historical and twined meant between financial institutions government institutions and. Sometimes specific companies but generally Also entire industries that are related to production of material for war and so if you look at today for instance major banking institutions that are involved in financing the government are also involved in financing the firearms industry and are also consumer banks the banks that we go to and part of this is just the concentration of some of these industries whether it's finance reform firearms. But. The new tech giants as well are also really concentrated and that concentration is also why the it's hard to get away from origins because some of these are very very storied very historic. Companies that have been with us since the beginning of the industrial age and that's why it's so difficult to extricate them from from one another like the state institutions we have evolved in tandem with an entanglement with the financial institutions that we have today and some of the other industries and companies that we have today it's easy to villainize the n.r.a. Today and perhaps rightfully so but the n.r.a. Is actually a small part You're would argue well I just think that we we've villainize them as a very powerful lobby which they are but we're not looking at what they're representing They represent of course gun owners in this country but they also represent the firearms manufacturers around the world because. The American civilian market is the single biggest gun market in the world and as gun controls have become tighter everywhere else in the world this civilian market has become increasingly important to firearms manufacturers so they put a lot more pressure. On keeping this market open through the n.r.a. So the n.r.a. Is is part of their part it is a problem because of these other interests and governments have an interest in supporting firearms industries doing this through the n.r.a. Because they all want the world's firearms industries to be really healthy so that when they need arms in case of war something like that those industries will be will be there and ready functioning again functioning already full tilt the story from scratch Ok let's dive in to the history now and now we're going to go to. Great Britain and you focus on a particular period of time rather 125 years or so and that's between 16 and 1850 What's what's significant about those years 16181515 there's something 16808815 you can think of as sort of the long 18th century when and that's the time in which the industrial revolution occurred I mean people debate exactly when it occurred within that period but there's general agreement that it did occur sometime in that window and secondly the that's the big economic narrative of the time that's also the period in which you can identify a certain set of consistent political problems that are shaping what's going on in Britain and one is you know there's this revolution in 6989 called the Glorious Revolution which establishes a constitutional monarchy and in England and defending that settlement is the main political agenda. Mr Emberg ords talkers to the extent that it establishes that parliament is the ultimate authority but Parliament is still not a representative body at this point it only represents the interests of a small elite so it's not a democratic polity but it's moving away from the kind of absolute just monarchy that is flourishing at this point in your in the rest of Europe and other parts of the world. Because the British want to protect this settlement of $69.00 that revolution and the creation of a constitutional monarchy they have to push back against European powers that would like to see that undone which is the Spanish and the French and so in 815 the French are finally defeated and that question is resolved and from that point that British French rivalry is kind of settled so that's the other reason why this is kind of a coherent period or a long 18th century. A number of wars or the 9 years of war the war of Spanish Succession the 7 Years War the us the American Independence War the French Revolution and also the Napoleonic Wars Yeah and the War of the Austrian succession is in there too before before the 7 Years War Yeah Britain is almost always at war during this long so this is a man for guns so there is a demand for guns that's always increasing and the order of magnitude that British gun makers can produce increases dramatically from the beginning of the period to the end of this period and that's what I'm trying to explain how does that happen because they're still doing it in an artisan away but at the beginning of the period they can produce a tens of thousands per year and by $850.00 they can produce millions So what do you is that industrial revolution if it is how did it happen I mean there's not a sudden introduction of tons and tons of machinery into the methods for producing and so can we still call this an industrial revolution and what are the driving I think we can and then what how do you explain how that happened given that there that it isn't about the introduction of a lot of machinery and just a little more about the industrial just just for a basis here and you know still revolution Same same time period that we're talking here and and yeah would you argue the industrial revolution in. Doesn't happen with this mass production over the years of good yeah I mean I I want to make an argument that the transformation in the British economy that you see in this period was related to the fact that Britain is almost continually war in this period I don't think that those are coincidental factors I I think that the one is related to the other and it's something that people have resisted saying for a long time. Partly I think because it was in this period that we had the birth of modern liberal political economy and this is when Adam Smith is writing and he's criticizing what's going on around him he's criticizing the workers he well yeah he thinks that he's criticizing the well he's offering a theory of how economic progress should happen and it should be a Pacific affair it should be based on war war is a drain on the economy according to that dearie and I think what we've done is taken that theory as a literal description of what was going on at the time rather than see it as a work of persuasion that was you know responding to the reality that Adam Smith was seeing around him which was in fact that war was really shaping the economy at that time here if you think here about the United States just off the top of my head you know you get the wars of the Spanish-American War being 98 you get to economic development out of that World War one when you get the right the booming 19 twenties and of course a good depression but one major way we get out of the depression is through World War 2 and on and on again we accept that. We accept that war drove a lot of economic growth in the 20th century we know about the military industrial complex and yet for some reason when we talk about the invention of industrialism and the 1st industrial revolution in 1000 century Britain there is this reluctance to have it be about war because that would imply that we need war for economic development and then if you have a country that's trying to develop today what are you going to say prescribe are you going to say you should just have someone else and I don't Stephan only not the message of the book because the mechanism by which. War drives economic change in this book is through state purchasing so you can all. As imagine nonmilitary forms of state purchasing that could also have a you know stimulating effect on on an economy so it's not necessary that the war be at the heart of it growth but I think that's one of the I think it's the fear of that take away that people has to take 2 to associate is parallel narratives of constant war and economic transformation in the 18th century and that's interesting about Adam Smith modern times considered the father of capitalism most people and you wrote a lot about ethics as well should we forget about that but I think a lot of people probably don't realize that Adam Smith was trying to figure out a way of growing the economy without war yeah he didn't like that there were a lot of people criticizing what was called Old corruption at the time which was the fact that any lead set of people were government contractors and making a lot of money in what looked like you know increasingly sort of scandalous ways profiting from more essentially and many people were critical of this but I think we know about that critique but we haven't sort of internalized what that means which is that in fact government contracting really was a driving force in the economy at the time and so how do we accommodate that and how we understand the births the birth of industrialism Tell me about the Goldman family so the godson family were a Quaker family based in Birmingham for most of the 18th century they came originally from Bristol which is the port city closest to Birmingham and. They were involved in gun making for decades and decades even though they were Quakers and no one in the Quaker church in Birmingham seems to have raised any kind of objection to that fact. Because it is the last of its quitters exactly the Quakers believe in the un I mean the kind of main principle of. The Quaker sect is belief in the un-Christian nature of war and yet no no one in the church seems to have objected for many many years until suddenly they did and to me that was a really intriguing historical mystery why do they not object for so long given what we know about Quakers and then why do they suddenly object when they do you know why then. What changed about point that suddenly made the Goldman family business a problem and we talk about the Goldman family you should probably talk about the main figure of this and that Samuel Goldwyn Jr Yes there are 3 seminal cults and he's the middle one. Middle generation so tell me more about this dynamic of being Quakers and being their manufacturing guns. Is their manufacturing guns and I think in trying to understand why the Quaker church did not object because their gun company I think they've become the single biggest gun manufacturing firm in the country so in the government records about firearm procurement the government often refers to these government these firearms contractors as a goal to and the gun makers because they were the single most prominent and among the group of important gun contractors for the state so they were the biggest players also a big player in the Quaker community because they're helping. Bankroll. Whatever they're all there they're very prominent So yes they make contributions to the church they're. There you know well known and. Very well respected Quaker. Citizens and and eminent citizens of Birmingham there's nothing scandalous about them or what they do until suddenly there is something scandalous about them in the $790.00 s. And so I was setting out to understand how that happened and you did a lot archival work and in Birmingham I did yes I looked at the whole the there are thousands of. Pieces of material you know materials in the Goldman family archive which are in the in the Birmingham City Archives and they're also records of other gunmakers there as well Birmingham was a big hub of gun making developed by the British government specifically at the start of this period that we're talking about I also looked at the government records to put those together with the golden records and then the records of what's known as the the Worshipful Company of gun makers the gun making company that was based in London Birmingham was. Created to sort of rival initially so and then I also looked at some records in India because the East India Company was also a big player in the story and sort of a partner in the state it was also a story of empire it is called the owners of my right is because all these wars that the British are fighting most of them are global wars and many of the contests take place either in North America or in South Asia or in some other part of the world so it is these are wars to. Protect the settlement of $1689.00 but there are also wars of conquest all over the world so there's an argument here that. That industrialism was also driven then by imperial conquest so in going through the documents were you able to find out about Quakers and why it was 879-7925 again when the scandal or ups was yeah why then were you able to figure that out I think I did yes. So I think a couple of things happened. So one thing is that I think Quakers became much more conscious of a need to be as leak as a cli consistent on a national stage where they've been criticised Well so what happens was that the abolitionist movement takes off this is a movement to end the slave trade and Quakers become very prominent in that movement and it's a movement that takes off after the British lose the war against the American colonies in 783 that's the only defeat they experience in the 18th century and it gives them a great deal of pause and sort of it's an opportunity to say what are we doing wrong why is God punishing us what is the moral liability for which were being punished Oh maybe it's the slave trade and so the abolitionist movement takes off Quakers are really important in it and they become much more conscious of the need for ethical consistency on a national stage their collective reputation so that's one issue at the same time though guns start to look different and exactly that moment so for most of the 18th century up till the 790 s. Guns are mainly used you know in their civilian uses they're mainly used in. Crimes are on property they're not used in crimes of passion they're not used really for homicide or things like that that isn't better just use a different weapon Exactly and the heat of the moment you would use whatever's heavier is to mean just the effort you had to put into a reload even if that is yeah 18th century musket would be a very frustrating when to turn to when you're really mad. But then in the 70 ninety's things changed because the wars that started in the 790 s. Are on a whole on a scale on President and right and hundreds of thousands of Britons become soldiers and there's a whole new level of exposure and exposure to an experience with firearms and for the 1st time you start to see new kinds of casual violence using guns that's unrelated to property and guns start to look bad in her scandalous in a new way. And so I think Quakers become more conscious of scandal and guns start to look more scandalous at exactly the same moment in the seventy's ninety's and that's why Golden's business becomes a problem then in particular where a conversation with previous 30 year she is a professor at Stanford University she is the author of several books her latest which we are in conversation about is called Empire of guns the violent making of the Industrial Revolution so the church then confronts Samuel Goldwyn Jr Yeah about this they confront him and it's almost seems like they do it reluctantly because the way the Quaker sect is organized is there's a. Kind of an annual there's a yearly meeting and quarterly meetings and monthly meetings and it's geographical So London is sort of. The leader of the national kind of organization of churches and from London the pressure starts to come that Ok we hear that there are people amongst us who are in violation of our commitment not to make arms or participate in war and reluctantly one gets the feeling the Birmingham. Meeting starts to take action and respond to those requests from London that everybody kind of fall into line on this point and I think one of the reason there's a reluctance is because the Goldmans are so prominent and such important members of the church there and also in Birmingham generally otherwise good Quakers and they're otherwise good quite agree that guns there otherwise very active and all kinds of philanthropic work there. You know I mean yeah there were very very well reputed and they do all kinds of other things besides making guns so so there's a sense that that's not their only that's not their only business and they're important in so many other ways to Quakers right here in America one thing American friends sport Service Committee I think Tell me more about Quakers for people who may not know about Ok so there is a sect that are founded sort of in the crucible of the civil wars of the 17th century when there are all these political battles around religion that are fought out as military contests the Reformation So this is after the century later and so George Fox you know in prison. Arrives at this. At this understanding that what they're doing is un-Christian and his ideas start to spread amongst a lot of soldiers and ex olders especially And he also travels to North America and spreads the this new faith that way as well and so they are they develop as sort of a sect apart. Who Refuse the military zation of these religious religio political struggles that are taking place in England at the time so they sever many civil disabilities to as as all. Dissenting sects in Britain do until the early 1900 century so they're barred from public office and things like that but because they have they are kind of a well. Connected network within themselves many of them really prominent in particular trades and. Industries They also have a lot of. Kind of group. Love strength as a group you know they're represented they have a collective reputation for honesty reliability good credit and that makes them. Attractive as people to do business with for other merchant communities and industrialists but also for the government to they are also attracted to those qualities and so what you see happening is that even though they are this sector suffering different kinds of discrimination disability and so on they also. Become kind of intended with the almost at that they almost come to the center of the structures of power meetings and tree Britain they set up banks that become really important to the financing of war you know and this is one thing that Goldman points out when everyone suddenly becomes upset with his business in the Quaker church he says Well Ok I'm making guns but you have a bank that's involved that helps the government. Prosecute its wars and you know you produce iron that I use in my guns that and that also so how are you any different from me so what he sees when he looks at his Quaker network is you know everyone implicated in some way and how is he any worse than even the level you're paying taxes everyone who's. Paying taxes every time you buy a cup of beer and a tax is automatically paid and then then you're implicated and that's his response that matters really we're all participating on some level or not you make that argument today yes I mean that's it's he's. There's something to that I think that we we like to forget because I think it does in so far as any protests we do is about preserving our own conscience then the more we avoid acknowledging our collective complicity or systemic complicity the better we feel. You know insofar as that's the end of protests but if our approach is this is really about achieving some kind of real change we need to think. More about entire systems and I think we've kind of lost that ability since the end of the Cold War if I can go out on a limb. What I was different before the Cold War Well I think I mean we all understood we were a part of it I think they were just alternative people were thinking in terms of alternative systems they were theories of you know there were other alternatives to capitalist industrial way of life there were socialist alternatives right there was the you know him and he David Thoreau and tax resistance is like something you could do to. To engage an entire system right or do with road or would have agreed with. Yes you would that's what you would have said what he wanted Yeah yeah exactly so I think I think you know we've sort of lost those kinds of alternatives and have just accepted the existing order as it is and then we try and find the particular problems in it to fix but the rest of the system will be made intact and the question is can you really do that you know if you think about it. There the origins of our modern economic order depended on trade in drugs slaves and firearms and all the kinds of things that we would think of as sort of bad commodities to trade and now right but those are part of the origins of the entire system so one you really have to wonder whether they're just exceptions to a generally. Good system or whether you know we should be thinking wait a minute this whole system is the exploitative in some way and depends on it and it's inequitable in many different ways and it depends on violence and all kinds of things that we wouldn't be at peace with certainly won't have the same kind of development these different better or worse but we're different a bit of element I imagine. They're going to take out these other things take our guns take us leave then the question you could do with this is Tim have even developed without those particular kinds of goods I mean the slave trade was so foundational to the entire creation of our global system would it have formed without that. Right I don't I don't think so that's a pretty profound question so what's the counterfactual you know I don't I don't know if we would have a global system the way we do now if we hadn't had to slave trade almost all the commodities that became essential to global markets depended on slave labor of some kind and guns and guns guns were very important currency they opened up markets they allowed the British to trade in markets that otherwise were not welcoming to them they opened up places for settlers from Europe I mean they were really important to the creation of our global economic system so Samuel Goldwyn Jr goes back to the church and we're all implicated don't buy. The church respond yeah they didn't buy it then I don't think I would have either I was like yeah I get it I know if you're saying I just paid some self-doubt on my bike by these days they didn't buy it they said well you know obviously there's a huge difference in degree of implication and Dalton's answer to that was if this is about principle then degree doesn't matter it should leave it up to your private judgment it's for you to live with your conscience because only you can judge it if it's just a matter of degree. But interestingly So 2 things happen one the church should buy it but he he kind of ignored the excommunication so they formally disown him but he's always not Keeps Going to church anyway and eventually he sort of almost weasels his way back even into the church business that he's been barred from so he gives donations to the expansion of the burial grounds for instance just a few years after this even though technically he's not supposed to and even though at that point he's really really heavily involved in arms production for the Napoleonic wars and so they tolerate that his presence and his contributions so that's one thing that happened in the on. Other hand in with time many later generations of Quakers who looked back on his defense that he wrote actually thought it was quite persuasive so there's a kind of shifting opinion about it over time and they looked back and thought Actually this makes a lot of sense that there are Agency is limited there are systemic constraints on how much you can actually distance yourself from producing things that will be used in war yeah I mean there are people who do it tax resisters even today but there's a steep price for doing it was you're willing to live a. Life that some are completely Oh yeah I did but there's even consequences there were people can do and you see today I don't know if you saw the headlines lately about Project maven and Google and the Google employees who are circulating a petition that Google must not work on this Defense Department initiative which would use Google artificial intelligence products to enhance in possibly in our use of drones Yeah like recognizing exactly and the thing is though that even if let's say they succeed in and they're and they're expressing this is part of the. Like commitment to the don't be evil slogan of Google but let's say this particular petition succeeds within Google and they back out of Project maven nevertheless Google will still be competing for contracts for offering its cloud technology services to the Defense Department I mean in other words so many other ways it's like all the other big tech companies will you know they do wind up serving our defense interests which are often offense in through the defense of it so it's really really hard to completely disconnect from I cannot make activity that's going to in some way wind up contributing to. Militaristic our military. Activity hard to do it's hard not to feel that yeah it's hard not to be evil even Stanford University you know we get Pentagon funding for different you know and efforts within the university and it often comes with this this happened a few years ago too and the way it was on was that you know there would be civilian spin offs from so much of this investment so it's good for everybody right. Money talks from goal to yeah to Google to good. Conversation with Priya said Priya setia is a professor of history at Stanford University author of the book Empire of guns the violent making of the industrial revolution and. The debate I guess we'll call it between Samuel Goldwyn Jr and the Quaker church we also get a remnant of this debate that's still around today about guns and that being what the protection of home or the protection of property because because there was one way that he would argue that guns are Ok. That's correct again that in so far as you're using them so in the 18th century they didn't have formal police in Britain so how would you protect your property you would have a gun by the bedside and that was considered acceptable even for Quakers Quakers start disapproving of even that use of guns at this moment in 790 s. And the look and you know through the next I guess 15 or 20 years but up till that point that was considered an acceptable and. Respectable even use of guns because what else could you write you need to there are an instrument of terror and you want to terrorize people from violating your property and the law did the same thing it was designed to. Terrorize people so that they would commit infractions that would require really severe punishment. So yes he did he did believe that was an appropriate use and often when people were shot. In the course of violating some property courts would. Would acquit would acquit you for shooting someone in the course of defending your property that was Ok to do but a part of our debate still to their. Yes So but the thing is in the United States for a very very until 2008 most interpretations of the 2nd Amendment understood that it was really. Directed at ensuring the provision of military arms than it from for national or public defense and not about the individual right to an arm for personal subsets of defense that changed only very recently. Our decision to sack a Supreme Court decision in cycling and in Britain that use of arms really ended kind of at the end of the 18th century because that's when you do get formal police services and then people it was understood that having your own gun in your house was sort of redundant because there were courts and police to handle the protection of property for use there are very very tight gun possession laws in Britain. Throughout the modern period. Korea certain years talk a little bit more maybe in detail about how the fortunes amassed from the early. Gun industry would end up getting into finance go Galt and guns would the money from the guns would actually eventually form it's own back yeah I mean literally just created his own yes yes I know for in the midst of the Napoleonic wars when the family's wealth was really skyrocketing from all this gun manufacturing for the war they opened a bank. And. A few banks opened up at that point in Birmingham for that for similar reasons because there's enough wealth in enough families to do that and they actually partner in forming this bank with a man called Joseph Givens and Givens was one of the other members of the Quaker church who was appointed to reclaim Dalton and persuaded him to leave his gun manufacturing business and get into something else and clearly Gibbons didn't mind. 2 years later you know just a few years later partnering with Dalton knowing that all the wealth he was bringing to their partnership had come from government factoring and so they start this bank and later on they do. Givens leaves and another partner comes in but the bank survives and does really well and eventually it's folded into what becomes the middle and bank which eventually then got folded into h.s.b.c. Today one of the largest one of the largest and most important Exactly and the other big British banks today Lloyd's invite plays are also you know old Quaker banks that originated in this period and that were whose growth was also related to all this war related finance and trade that was going on in this period was it was Lloyd's and Barclays was there from Gunns know the lawyers in Barclays are intermarried with the Goldmans So they're you know their connections are all there . All Quakers but the lawyers were iron dealers and so they provided a lot of the iron that the goblins used in their firearms so they did not themselves make guns but they're implicated in it and they were also important both those things were important in financing the government's wars in that period so they were implicated that way as well. So awkward i almost on the other but I love Quakers I love Quakers you know these are the good guys these are still an inventive these are the good guys. But it's a very human story that's the thing is there aren't any villains right it's systemic. And you know even Adam Smith said when he was criticizing the relationship between the East India Company and the government he said anyone in the in this position would be behaving this way The problem is the system right so so we also need to you know go back to thinking in terms of systems and think about ways to. Change systems rather than just leave everything intact in eliminate the one little bad detail as if the rest is not scandalous. Oh Hobson Hobson was. A critic of. So he was he's a political economist and a liberal and a critic of the world mean then what he does now no it doesn't me Ok so. And it's interesting too because his ideas become so important to learn and was obviously a lot of. Yeah so he comes up with a system as systematic critic you know critique of. The economy that he saw around him 100 years after this gotten story unfolded and what he saw then at the turn of the 20th century was that another version of corruption that basically there are certain narrow sectional interests in the British economy like the financial establishment and certain industries that basically. Corrupt co-opt the government to fulfill their particular interests and they drive foreign policy for the government and the government is just serving those sectional interests to the cost of everybody else and that everybody else become sort of duped by this jingoistic propaganda that these narrow interests. Spread around the country and and that imperialism and the expansion of Empire are basically being driven by these narrow sectional interests and this is an idea that Lenin later picks up and in some ways. You know that you can trace the connection between what he's saying and what gotten said 100 years before except that one hopes and his thing is that only certain narrow sections of the economy benefit from this not everyone else and I think God would have said look we're all benefiting from this in some way. And I wonder it's hard to say probably maybe Hobson was more right in his time because there's more concentration of certain industries at that time. Than in Golden's time but you know maybe maybe there are other ways in which the general population was also profiting in ways that Hobson didn't realize. Gholston never to go to ever. Get out of the gun is. So so ever have a reflection on this later in our own not so the golden Jr who wrote the defense. Was the whole family gets out of the gold gotten get out of the gun business in 115 when the wars against France and and I think that's because. Suddenly government orders kind of stop and they also no longer have the outlet of the slave trade because the slave trade has been abolished in $1807.00 and so it's not the most thriving industry to be an $815.00 and they have this bank instead so they pull out of it at that point going to finance and they're in banking and they have all kinds of other investments in interest they're just so wealthy also at that point that. They don't need to pursue actively pursue an industrial business any more at that point. And so this is the golden era of the defense he dies in 1832. But his son who's called Samuel Terra he has gotten just stops doing any kind of business and just lives off the wealth that's been accumulated in his later years and so and his son is Francisco Alton who is the father of eugenics. Who is a you know kind of a gentleman of leisure at that point and there's somebody Quaker you know he's no longer the family sees being Quakers when Samuel territory is God and marries outside the fold he marries By lot of Darwin so. Charles Darwin is his nephew I guess through. Through her Francis Galton and Charles Darwin were cousins. Yeah so they're really you know. The Quakers have you know this and doggedness tradition and once they break out of that territory it's gotten breaks out of that but they marry into some of these really prominent families within Britain and are become part of the mainstream of kind of British intellectual and political. Establishments 1003 what is the role of state in all this so what I found was that you know when I say that war drove a lot of industrial activity what I'm saying is that. State offices like the ordinance department that was the had the job procuring war material. That they are doing things in what we would look back and call the private sector. And they were doing things there to make it possible for Britain British gun makers to produce orders of magnitude more with each successive war so they were changing the organization of the industry they were playing with. You know they were creating things that we would call factories looking back sort of trying to create efficiencies in the system so that they could get greater and greater output they were playing with the design of the gun in order to arrive at something that would be maximally mass produce a ball so you see government offices really heavily involved in the design of the commodity itself and in the in the industrial organization of its production in a way that I think historians haven't really recognized you know that this day had such an important role in driving. Industrialism and the expansion of industrial capacity so that it could produce on a mass scale a mass scale that we think of when we think of industrial revolution. Prancer earlier book Spies in Arabia this is about the Middle East. World War one period with no connection between that and there is a connection the 1st book. Which came out in 2008 was also about military technology it was about the British invention of aerial policing in the Middle East in the period around the world war World War one so when I set out to write a 2nd book it was again going to be about military technology but I wanted to look at trade in in weaponry and so I had intended to write a book on the on arms training in the modern period generally but when I started to look for the beginning of that story and I stumbled on this archive of the golden family and I felt like wait a minute there's a story here that challenges our received wisdom about the industrial revolution and it needed a book of its own I just kind of hunkered down and decided to write a book on the 18th century. And the Industrial Revolution and so. This book does go up through you know quick and dirty through the 20th century at the end but it's much more anchored in the 18th century than I had originally imagined it would be were to go through in the 20th century when I do try and bring things up to the present so that we can connect the dots between you know how the dynamics that govern the trade in small arms from 815 to the present and also the dynamics of how we criticize that and how we continue to go you know the critique Quaker critique of gotten and how much we continue to do that when we focus on the villainy of no say the n.r.a. Rather than looking at wider systemic complicity. Why these issues well what spurred you because you know me for Again it took you about 10 years yeah maybe the longer I write this book do the research everything I had to do wasn't particularly on what your I guess your doctoral thesis was on Well I think you know there is that that continued interest in military technology and I've always been interested in power in the exercise of power and the tools that are used to exercise power that make that made imperialism possible in ways that maybe it would it would not otherwise have been you need the British needed technology in order to do what they did in the Middle East. And so on it's that's always been sort of an abiding interest but there is also a personal story and the gun control debate was was on at the time you know when I started this book in 2007 I think I was there was a shooting incident within my family and I opened the book with that story and I think you know those are the sort of intimate or personal stories that. Make. More general history personally relevant I mean and the reason why this is the history of guns is the biggest risk because I think most people. First or 2nd or 3rd degree kind of interaction with with guns where something has happened and and we all live this reality the reality of gun violence and so it touched my family too and working through you know this figuring out the place why guns are so pervasive in our world how they became so pervasive how they continued to be unregulated when we regulate the sale of every other kind of weapon I mean that that was a way for me to come to terms with you know why this incident happened in my family you know just how did the gun get into the hands of you know my my uncle you know when this incident happened Kato and more about that incident Yeah we're in this at this point. Yeah it was it was an incident over property and this wasn't in Punjab which is where my family is from I'm just. Seconds. So my family's from a small place and an Indian job and there was a dispute over property between. My uncle and his uncle so and so my uncle and my grandfather's younger brother and it was just there was this backdrop of. Violence within the state of Punjab there was the secessionist movement at that time. And I do think there's a relationship between civilian violence and you know military violence as well but in any case finally this this kind of constant conflict between these these 2 branches of the family got to a point where my uncle shot at his uncle and. And you know all kinds of things went wrong and went downhill from that point and it was just a very very sad and. Painful events in the family and I could see the effect on my dad and it bothered me and because we had the memories of that place were so wonderful and it was such a big family and just seeing the kind of destruction of that and over property and I think writing the book did help me understand you know why why guns are why we turn toward guns in disputes over property because it's a way of. Committing violence. In a way that feels impersonal At times I think and I think what my uncle was doing was trying to make his uncle feel like a stranger who's trespassing on his property and kind of denying the the real you know loving emotional bond that existed between between them and so yes in a way this writing the book help help me I didn't expect going in that I would find this when I looked at data about untimely death in Britain that all of the gun does would be about property that was a surprise to really find that but I did find that and so it was really helpful to understand that and to understand why there are why guns are so important in Punjabi culture also which they are and I think that's partly a legacy of British Empire their idea of Marshall races in fun job and how. The spread of guns and that culture you think that's true of empire all former colonial places you know I think you know in India generally gun control laws are really tight and that's a that's a colonial legacy the British want to didn't want Indians to have guns but fun job these. There's there's there's something about guns in Punjab and I think that part of it comes from an idea I mean after there was this big mutiny big revolution big rebellion in India against British rule in 5758 and after putting down that rebellion the British decided that they were going to trust jobbies especially. As soldiers in the British Indian army so heavy recruitment from Punjab began at that point and there was this whole race theory associated with that which is that these are martial people who are have a particular kind of masculinity and that. Just guns are appropriate there in a way that they wouldn't be in Bengal all or some other place in India and so I think Punjab some point start to buy in to that identity too and there's a lot of smuggling of guns into India because there are tight gun controls. When Indians want guns they come through the Northwest Frontier which is present Afghanistan through Punjab into the rest of India and they're coming there from the Persian Gulf they're coming from Oman and the British really really struggle in their early 20th century and that entire period before they lose India and Pakistan . To control that flow of arms into Afghanistan in present day Punjab so so I think the presence of guns there and the affection for guns there and the reliance on guns there is is a cultural legacy partly of you know 200 years of British rule. Pretty a city that was very interesting thank you thank you so much for having me on it was was fascinating Prius 30 years been our guest again she is a professor of history at Stanford University and she's the author of the book Empire of guns the violent making of the industrial revolution. And it does appear letters and politics the show is produced by Deanna Martinez Kirsten Thomas is our engineer you can find archives of our previous shows online at. Our g m It shows a rich and. This is. Community radio. One. Point one f.m. . Point 3 f.m. And f.m. Translator k 25. Point 5 f.m. Or you may be listening worldwide it or. Some of the. Limits. By. If you want. Everyone say often. What they got. This Law and Disorder. We speak with attorney and. Former President of the National Lawyers who just returned from the Puerto Rico where as you hear from reports rebellion even if just a revolution is underway. We speak also with Attorney Kevin one of the protectors 3 others was arrested for protecting the Venezuelan embassy in Washington against the attempt to. Do joint interview with Natasha I was down at the embassy and some of the activity there. New York City attorney and author Michael Steven Smith. York City Attorney. President Donald Trump's recent attacks on for Congress women people of color telling them to go back home echoes the dehumanizing demagoguery of fascist strong men who use race baiting to scapegoat and divide and conquer victimizing Latinos has been a strategy of trumps ever since the election when he called Mexicans criminals and rapists after Hurricane Maria wrecked the American colony of Puerto Rico in 2015 killing nearly 3000 people and severely damaging the electrical grid Trump went to San Juan where we saw him throwing paper towels at people. Here to speak with us today is the former president of the National Lawyers Guild attorney Natasha Bannon She currently works as associate counsel at the New York City based Latino justice she graduated from Kuni Law School where she was editor in chief of the Cuny Law Review She wrote an article for that journal called Puerto Rico's odious debt the economic crisis of colonialism she's on the board of directors of the Center for Constitutional Rights Attorney Natasha Bannon Welcome back to Law and Disorder Thanks for having me let's 1st speak about the situation put to Rico and then the situation involving refugees on the border the people of Puerto Rico who are still recovering from the terrible effects of Hurricane Maria are also burdened by what has been called an odious debt obligation what kind of recovery did the Puerto Rican people make from the hurricanes damage there really hasn't been much of a recovery the recovery that I think folks see when they go to the island now as tourists is really superficial it means that for the most part of like tricity has been restored there's running water in most places all of the things that were originally pretty atrocious and really kind of shocking to the conscience that folks after hurricane Madea devastated the island you know as the largest hurricane in the history of the island of the 3rd worst natural disaster in the history of all u.s. Jurisdiction that was continues to be felt to this day and will be for generations and that's because it really just uncovered deep structural inequalities that already existed when we think of recovery we're really trying to talk about a just recovery what is a recovery look like that centers of Puerto Rican rise and that prioritizes them and what they need in order to be able to live dignified dies and it isn't just water and electricity obviously those are critical components food as well but it's really about you know how do we thing.