Dr J H McLean’s PEACE-MAKERS

This book is a curious and fascinating piece of personal military history. Its author, Dr James McLean of St Louis, was a purveyor of patent medicines – and an inventor and manufacturer of guns and munitions. His book is summed up in its sub-title : ‘We command all nations to keep the peace’ – in that it is an avowed attempt to make future wars impossible by increasing the destructive power of current weaponry. Published in 1880 in the aftermath of such conflicts as the American Civil War, the Crimean War and the Franco-Prussian war, the book, complete with detailed illustrations and diagrams, features many of McLean’s military innovations including, a portable fortress ( iron boxes filled with debris and fitted together); metal shields with loopholes which can be joined up to protect infantry; ‘ironclad’ ships, torpedoes, the Hercules naval gun; and a forerunner of the machine gun called ‘the Pulverizer’ which, the author claims, can fire 1,200 shots in a minute. Whether we believe McLean’s’s noble intentions in inventing such fearsome weapons, or dismiss it as a cynical piece of brilliant advertising for his own products, ‘Peace-Makers’ cannot fail to interest students of military hardware at the dawn of the age of fully mechanised warfare.