BARBED WIRE
Published by Wesleyan University Press,
Middletown, CT 06459
© 2004 by Reviel Netz
All rights reserved
First Wesleyan paperback 2009
Printed in the United States of America 5 4 3 2 1
ISBN for the paperback edition: 978-0-8195-6959-2
Set in Ehrhardt type by
BW&A Books, Inc., Durham, NC
Cataloging-in-Publication Data
appear on the last printed page of the book.
To Maya and Darya
CONTENTS
The American West and the Invention of Barbed Wire
1. Unpacking the Louisiana Purchase
Barbed Wire on the Battlefield
Barbed Wire in the Concentration Camps
MAPS AND FIGURES
MAPS
1. Centers for delivery of barbed wire, United States, 1888
2. Centers for production of barbed wire, United States, 1881
3. Lines of barbed wire, South Africa, 1902
4. Waltham, Lincolnshire, before enclosure
5. Waltham, Lincolnshire, after enclosure
6. Castle Mountain Internment Camp
8. Belzec Camp, fall–winter 1942
10. Treblinka Camp, spring 1943
FIGURES
1. Division of a large space into smaller enclosed areas
2. Price of barbed wire, United States, July 1914–July 1917
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Research for this book was begun when I was at MIT as a fellow at the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology. Then, and since, I was fortunate to have access to important collections: at Harvard, the Widener Library and the Baker Business Library (housing the U.S. Steel and Wire Company archive); at Stanford—where I teach—the Green Library and the Hoover Institute Library. During my stay in Moscow (teaching for the Stanford Overseas Program), I studied at the archive of the Memorial Society, with its unique collection of unpublished memoirs from the Stalinist era. I am filled with gratitude to the staffs of all those libraries—a gratitude multiplied by wonder and admiration at the selfless generosity of the members of the Memorial Society in Moscow.
Myles Burnyeat, Paul Laity, Richard Milner, Tom Radko, and Suzanna Tamminen have all, in turn, read my original manuscript and convinced me to proceed with it, first in abbreviated form as an article published by the London Review of Books (July 2000), then as this book. Further comments were made by many friends and colleagues, of whom I mention just a few: Maya Arad, Moritz Epple, Lori Gruen, Arne Hessenbruch, Marie Huong Nguyen, Andrea Nightingale, Leonard S. Reich, Aron Rodrigue, Relli Shechter, Walter Scheidel, Amanda Vinson, James R. Voelkel, Kelly DeVries, and Nicolas Wey-Gomez, as well as two anonymous readers for Wesleyan University Press. Maya Arad, in particular, has commented on the manuscript several times over, guiding it as it achieved its style. Responsibility, of course, remains with the author.
Ariel Tsovel’s research and activism inspire my own work in animal history. He wanted me to produce work with both intellectual and political dimensions; I hope I did.
INTRODUCTION
Define, on the two-dimensional surface of the