Awards

The Edelstein Prize

The Edelstein Prize is awarded to the author of an outstanding scholarly book in the history of technology published during the preceding three years. Established as the Dexter Prize in 1968 through the generosity of the late Sidney Edelstein—founder of the Dexter Chemical Corporation, noted expert on the history of dyes and dye processes, and 1988 recipient of SHOT's Leonardo da Vinci Medal—the Edelstein Prize is donated by Ruth Edelstein Barish and her family in memory of Sidney Edelstein and his commitment to excellence in scholarship in the history of technology.

The 2009 Edelstein Prize was awarded to William Kelleher Storey for Guns, Race, and Power in Colonial South Africa (2008). The citation read:

William Kelleher Storey's Guns, Race, and Power in Colonial South Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2008) brilliantly traces the co-evolution of guns, gun cultures, and colonial political economy in South Africa over three centuries. Drawing upon an impressive foundation of archival research, government documents, and printed primary and secondary sources, Storey shows how guns figured in the lives and everyday practices of the region's peoples. He observes that the circulation of technical knowledge was more complex than "simple transfers from the European 'core' to the colonial 'periphery.'" Storey also details the ideological significance of gun ownership and skill in debates over South African citizenship and politics. At the heart of this story was colonial South Africans' belief in the material power and symbolic importance of guns. Beyond practical utility, guns were symbolic markers of status, citizenship, and political sovereignty.

Storey's intriguing account bridges "the gap between historians of nineteenth-century South Africa and historians of nineteenth-century technology." On the technology side, he takes nothing for granted about guns—not design, not performance, use, development, diffusion, meaning, accessibility, cost, nor consequence. There are no black boxes here. Instead, with careful attention to historical details that might escape a less astute observer, Storey presents a rich tapestry of guns in constant change and movement; old and new guns in diverse use contexts; guns shipped, bought, sold, traded, cleaned, altered, repaired, given, stolen, displayed, witnessed, hid, registered, confiscated, loaded, and fired. He shows us that muskets continued in wide, often preferred, use in colonial South Africa long after rifles entered the scene, and that breechloaders were sometimes front-loaded in older, musket style. He details gun use in relation to individual skills, group organizational skills, and myriad contextual factors.

On the colonial history side, Storey explores the evolution of political power and allegiance in South Africa in relation to gun ownership, armed conflict, disarmament policies, the gun trade, gun control, and discourse about firearms in relation to citizenship and skill. There were plenty of contradictions and hypocrisy in these matters. Many settlers and colonial officials wanted to restrict indigenous Africans' access to guns, but arms traders and merchants were happy to supply growing gun markets. Chiefs who wanted more guns but lacked cash encouraged their followers to earn gun money by working as wage laborers in the colonial economy. And as guns became more lethal and widely diffused, and imperial aims more strident, colonial authorities sought to control gun ownership within a racist framework that ultimately dispossessed native African peoples not only of their guns but also of land and citizenship rights. Yet European settlers and military officials continued to recruit Africans as fighters. Indigenous Africans fought on both sides of the Anglo-Boer War of 1899–1902.

At the broadest level, Storey's account makes clear that colonization in South Africa, while closely involved with guns, depended equally on regulatory control of guns, implementation of racist laws, control of a biased legal system, and many events and relations—including the decline of wild game through hunting—that drew Africans into an industrializing, globalizing, wage-labor economy. Reflecting on the question of technological determinism, Storey asks, "How can technology be both influential and subject to human control at the same time?" His fine-grained, multilayered approach shows us precisely that.

In recognition of his outstanding research and profound historical analysis presented in Guns, Race, and Power in Colonial South Africa, we are delighted to award...