영국 제국주의 전쟁과 근대 화약무기 -아프리카 수단의 옴두르만 전투(1898. 9)를 중심으로- = British Imperial War and Modern Firearms -Focusing on the Battle of Omdurman in September 1898-

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

In the 1890s the eastern Sudan was ruled by Khalifa Abdallahi, the successor to the Mahdi, a religious leader who had led a revolt against Egyptian rule a decade earlier. Meanwhile, the British occupied Egypt to the north while a French expedition was approaching from the west. In 1896 Britain sent a large expedition under General Horatio Kitchener to conquer the Sudan. The Kitchener`s troops carried breech-loaders, Maxim guns, and field cannon. Opposing them was a Mahdist army numbering in the tens of thousands armed with spears, swords, and muskets. The two forces clashed at Omdurman near Khartoum on September 2, 1898. As the young Winston Churchill observed, it was a kind of ``total massacre`` towards Sudanic natives. After the battle, the British counted eleven thousand Dervish dead, with a loss of 48 their soldiers. Within the five hours the strongest and best-armed savage army had been destroyed and dispersed, with hardly insignificant loss to the victors. What made such a big difference between two sides? The fundamental answer was the revolution in firearms, a by-product of the Western Industrial Revolution. In the 1830s and 1840s there was a rapid advance in industrialization and science. Especially the innovations in firearms contributed to increase the ease of loading, the rapidity of fire, and the accuracy and range of bullets. Above all, these developments soon gave Western nations the ability to dominate and coerce non-Western peoples. Historians have written in detail about Western imperialism. In particular, New Imperialism in the late nineteenth century has long been the object of controversy among historians because of its extraordinary speed and scope. In trying to explain such a expansion, historians have focused on the various kinds of factors. Among the factors that explain the dramatic expansion in Africa during the New Imperialism, some technological innovations in the field of firearms played a major role. In this respect, The purpose of this paper is to analyze the role of technology, especially in the field of firearms, in the global expansion of the British empire during the late nineteenth century. In detail, this paper examines the technological innovations of the firearms that permitted Britain to conquer non-Western societies on focusing the battle of Omdurman occurred in Central Sudan of the upper Nile on September 2, 1898. It is the best-known battle in which a European-led force armed with modern weapons confronted an army of traditional African warriors.