I recently purchased and quickly read Peter Smithhurst's latest Osprey offering, "The Gatling Gun."
While I found the book well laid out and providing good information and history, as an American, I was a little offended by what I can only describe as a bit of unnecessary self-righteousness with a jab that served no purpose.
In discussing the Gatling gun's early uses, Smithhurst first focuses on the theoretical use in the ACW and the real use in the American wars with the native Americans. Smithhurst writes as an introduction to this passage:
"In a relentless quest for land – and possibly other treasure – with a total disregard for any birthrights of the native Americans who happened to be in the way of "progress" [condescension heaped upon condescension]it was inevitable that sooner or later, trouble would erupt." (page 33).
Forget that this is a study of military technology and not (or should not have been) a revisionist history of the old west, it is very ironic for a number of reasons.
First, in the four instances mentioned, because of the skirmish nature and wide expanses of the conflict, they were used to little effect or loss of life.
Second, and here is the real irony, Smithhurst follows this later with a discussion of the uses by the British army. All of said uses were Imperialistic in nature, yet he not only refrains from the same labeling, he in fact (in particular in the case of the Ashanti War, paints the British Imperialists as heroic facing great odds. The closest he comes to any insinuation is in describing Zululand and the fact that maybe diamonds might have been a part of the reason for British intervention (not quite as scathing is it…especially considering how many Zulus died in that particular campaign).
Further, while he provides the four episodes of American use with scant casualties, he does not seem nearly as offended by the British use to compile thousands of dead native peoples across nearly every continent.
Finally, while there were great injustices in the US-Native American wars and how native Americans were treated (and it is far more complicated than just the US trampling Native Americans…ask the Pawnee how they felt abut the Sioux), the root cause was a desire for land for the masses of new Americans, not to steal from them their resources (although this was part in parcel). However, from the Ashanti lands, to India, to the Sudan, and many others, British armies used Gatlings to lay low thousands of native peoples in an unabashed effort to take their resources with not even the saving grace, pale as it might have been, of providing farm land to the huddled masses.
I say this not as someone greatly offended or put upon. It was a long time ago. I say this not as someone who is looking to boycott (I buy and continue to buy Osprey Books) or otherwise upset the apple cart. I say this as an American (of Native American extraction I might add) who is just a little tired of the trend of one-sided indignation that seems to be pointed in my direction solely for having the misfortune of being born American (ironically in the face of much better examples from the forces of the author's own ancestry). People in glass houses should not fire Gatling Guns…
I am really not certain why a book about a particular weapon needs the revisionist calling out of Manifest Destiny in the first place(and personally, I find "The White Man's Burdon" far more offending on its face). For me, the peachiness marred an otherwise fine effort.
reveals a long-lost Martian tripod.
