Quakers, guns and money
Kathleen Bell welcomes a fresh interpretation of Quaker history
When Quakers talk about their history they tend to focus on the good bits: Quakers against war, against slavery, speaking truth to power. Priya Satia’s book Empire of Guns: The Violent Making of the Industrial Revolution also talks about Quaker history, but in a way which may cause discomfort and pose challenges for Quakers today.
The Quaker Galton family are at the centre of her book. The Galtons, who lived in eighteenth century Birmingham, were linked by marriage, trade, credit and business arrangements with some of the principle Quaker families in the Midlands. Their business was the making and selling of guns, and their reputation for Quaker fair dealing helped them market their wares in bulk to the army, slave traders and colonisers. The Galtons, as Friends, refused to fight in wars and worried about the effects the uncertainty of war might have on their business. War also made them hugely rich.
Why, Priya Satia asks, did Quakers take so long to oppose the trade in guns? It was the 1790 Yearly Meeting epistle that declared ‘fabricating or selling Instruments of War’ was inconsistent with the principles of the Religious Society of Friends. This set in train events culminating in the disownment of Samuel Galton junior, who was outraged by his treatment. His lengthy printed response can be read in Friends House Library. London Quaker Morris Birkbeck annotated this copy, accusing Samuel Galton of hypocrisy. Birmingham Friends were more sympathetic. Samuel Galton and his family continued to attend Meeting for Worship and Bull Street Meeting accepted donations from them.
As the title suggests, Empire of Guns is more than a history of one Quaker family. Its themes include the different meanings of guns in the eighteenth century (including as trading currency), the close involvement of government in arms manufacture, and the ways in which eighteenth century trade, banking, farming and invention were tied up with the waging of war. Perhaps most surprising from a modern perspective is the way guns were viewed as an instrument of civilisation: impersonal, less savage than the sword, capable of causing terror and primarily of use in defending or obtaining property. Gun laws in Britain and its empire restricted gun ownership on grounds of religion, race and class to prevent rebellion at home or by subject peoples abroad. Gun ownership was a sign of power and prestige.
The themes Priya Satia addresses, as her first and last chapters make clear, remain relevant. Today, she reports that one human a minute is killed by a gun. The arms trade is still closely intertwined with both governments and large trading companies. It is just as hard now to disentangle business, trading and economic interests from the arms trade as it was in the eighteenth century. Britain is one of the world’s biggest arms suppliers.
The uncomfortable truths Priya Satia addresses go beyond questions of war. They speak to our testimonies to truth and equality. How far is the Quaker history we tell a sanitised version of history? In 1776 the radical Thomas Paine, son of a Quaker, wrote that Quakers hunted money ‘with a step as steady as Time, and an appetite as keen as Death’. That wasn’t how it seemed to the Galtons and their friends. They believed Providence had rewarded them for their industry. But when Thomas Paine looked on Quakers from below he saw wealth, power, privilege and hypocrisy. His perception might be worth considering anew. How does our Society appear today when seen from below – and are we called on to change it?
Empire of Guns: The Violent Making of the Industrial Revolution by Priya Satia is published by Penguin Press.
