Barbed Wire: A Political History

A political history of the everyday invention that changed the world. No less than the internal combustion engine, the transistor, or the silicon chip, barbed wire is the quintessentially modern creation, a product that has influenced the lives of millions of people across the globe since its invention in the late nineteenth century. In this far-ranging work of historical analysis, French historian Olivier Razac makes a major—and unexpected—addition to the list of technologies that have come to define the modern world, uncovering the hidden political history of barbed wire for the first time. Cheap and mass-produced, barbed wire accomplished what no other product did before it, or has since done more effectively: the control of vast amounts of open space. As Razac shows, few other technologies did more to usher in the hallmarks of the modern era: the harnessing of nature, brutal mass warfare, political conquest and repression, and genocide. In a narrative that spans the history of the American Frontier, the trenches of World War I, the Holocaust, and beyond, Barbed Wire looks unflinchingly at a central and fascinating thread of modern life. Barbed Wire is illustrated with rare photographs from European and American archives. 40 b/w photographs.