Final published version
Licence: CC BY: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Cold Steel, Weak Flesh
T2 - Mechanism, Masculinity and the Anxieties of Late Victorian Empire
AU - Brown, Michael
PY - 2017/4/30
Y1 - 2017/4/30
N2 - This article considers the reception and representation of advanced military technology in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Britain. It argues that technologies such as the breech-loading rifle and the machine gun existed in an ambiguous relationship with contemporary ideas about martial masculinities and in many cases served to fuel anxieties about the physical prowess of the British soldier. In turn, these anxieties encouraged a preoccupation in both military and popular domains with that most visceral of weapons, the bayonet, an obsession which was to have profound consequences for British military thinking at the dawn of the First World War.
AB - This article considers the reception and representation of advanced military technology in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Britain. It argues that technologies such as the breech-loading rifle and the machine gun existed in an ambiguous relationship with contemporary ideas about martial masculinities and in many cases served to fuel anxieties about the physical prowess of the British soldier. In turn, these anxieties encouraged a preoccupation in both military and popular domains with that most visceral of weapons, the bayonet, an obsession which was to have profound consequences for British military thinking at the dawn of the First World War.
KW - Masculinity
KW - gender
KW - war
KW - empire
KW - technology
U2 - 10.1080/14780038.2016.1269538
DO - 10.1080/14780038.2016.1269538
M3 - Journal article
C2 - 28620269
VL - 14
SP - 155
EP - 181
JO - CULTURAL & SOCIAL HISTORY
JF - CULTURAL & SOCIAL HISTORY
IS - 2
ER -