Arms Regimes across Empires. Edited by Felix Brahm and Daniel Stahl
Who should have access to weapons and who should be prevented from possessing them? Denying certain social and political groups access to arms while enabling others to purchase them has been an instrument of creating a hierarchical world order since the nineteenth century and even before. However, the historians’ prevalent focus on disarmament and demilitarisation within Europe, concerning especially the defeated belligerents after 1919, has long distracted attention from the fact that policies of arms control had a global dimension and were shaped by policies that the imperial powers implemented in the late nineteenth century. With a view of examining how arms control regimes shaped an emerging global order, this special issue considers developments from the era of New Imperialism to the inter-war period.
The articles look into different European empires and the imperialistic policies of the United States and European powers in Central America and China. The comparative approach is complemented by the study of trans-imperial relations and activities in both international and local arenas. The contributions contrast the views from the metropoles with perspectives from different countries and regions under foreign influence or domination, namely in Eastern Africa, Central America, South and East Asia, the Middle East and Eastern Europe. They pay attention to the political, social and cultural significance of imperial arms control and take into account how activities on a local level fed into developments on a larger scale and informed politics of arms control in the metropoles.

Forum on A. Dirk Moses' The Problems of Genocide, edited by Robert Gerwarth