The Firearm Revolution

Catherine Fletcher looks at examples from the Royal Armouries collection to explores the changes that this new technology brought with it, from crime to the court and from gun control to assassinations.

Have you ever wondered how guns went from an innovative military technology to become widely used, normal objects in European culture? In her new book, The Firearms Revolution, Professor Catherine Fletcher explores this very question.

This talk brings together original research in multiple archives, a wide range of visual evidence, and objects from the Royal Armouries collection to bring to life the first century of guns' proliferation, from their production in the foothills of the Alps to their role in establishing the European empires.

We meet the sixteenth-century arms broker whose accounts bring historic arms dealing to life, the assassin sneaking over the border to buy his contraband guns and the radical women accused of going about with two illegal wheellock weapons each. And we hear about the earliest debates over gun control: should firearms be more tightly regulated, or should they be widely allowed for self-defence? From the luxury guns of the European courts to the plain weapons of farmers and soldiers, learn more about how this technology changed society.

Image: Wheellock pistol, early example with exposed lock. About 1520, Pontebba, Italy. Royal Armouries XII.1765