However, focusing only on the operation of prohibitory regulatory norms obscures the way arms trade regulation also constituted a specific colonial form of arms control as governmentality, whereby mechanisms of prohibition and prescription were both put to the service of governing which peoples could legitimately use what kinds of arms. Of course, efforts to manage arms flows to potentially unruly colonial subjects by constantly seeking to balance permission and proscription were neither completely effective nor ever effectively complete. First, efforts at restraint were perennially subject to strategies of evasion undertaken by local actors operating with their own normative and cartographic understandings (Tagliacozzo 2005; Mathew 2016). Second, arms trade regulation was a contested terrain over which advocates of permission and advocates of restraint often clashed. For example, pressures for restraint were offset by pressures to use the provision of arms to secure access to markets and the loyalty or security of allies in a context of intra-European competition to maintain and expand formal and informal empires (Grant 2007; Chew 2012). Policy on the ground, therefore, often appeared contradictory. Nevertheless, proponents of permission and proscription generally agreed on the broad goals of policy—to maintain imperial influence and imperial order. As will be illustrated below, they agreed even more on the broader logics in which arguments for permission and proscription were to be located—those governing sovereignty, free trade, development, and the standard of civilization. For example, the Brussels Act certainly failed to pre- vent a substantial arms trade into Abyssinia and Somalia where, by 1908, British officials considered the act had “completely broken down”29 largely as a result of French support for a profitable arms trade through French-controlled Djibouti. In this case, colonial norms of sovereignty provided the regulatory space for proliferation. The legal legitimacy of this transit trade was enshrined by Article Ten of the Brussels Act, which, some- what ironically, had been vigorously promoted by the British. This affirmed the right of inland territories “under the sovereignty or protectorate” of another signatory power to acquire arms via the territory of a coastal power, and Italy had previously announced Abyssinia’s adhesion to the agreement. Compounding the irony, at one point in the negotiations the French had suggested the conference had “no power to impose a right of transit on any Sovereign state.”30 Enforcement of both the arms and slave trade regulations of Brussels was also hampered by French refusal to permit searches of sea vessels flying the French flag. Arms smuggling dhow owners operating in both the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf quickly realized the French flag represented “a license to traffic” (Mathew 2016, 35),  as it made each dhow an “island of colonial sovereignty” (ibid., 34) and therefore immune to search. This is not to imply sovereignty norms offered an unfettered license to trade. The arms provisions of the Brussels Act were ultimately predicated on the fact that European powers exercised “rights of sovereignty” (Article Nine) in their colonial possessions. Thus, the act and its implementation were suffused with norms of sovereignty that both underpinned restrictions on the arms trade and provided the regulatory spaces permitting their circumvention. Similarly, both the advocates for free trade in arms in the spaces of empire and the advocates of restriction crafted their arguments by reference to the shared ideational frames of free trade, development, and the standard of civilization—each heavily imbricated in the other. In Africa, for example, free trade advocates argued the offer of arms was essential for recruiting African la- borers and that arms proliferation would speed the de- population of local wildlife, thus hastening the day when natives switched from hunting and alcohol to legitimate trade (Storey 2008, 196). Conversely, proponents of restriction such as Alexander Mackay (1890, 42) of the Church Missionary Society deplored the fact that “in the name of Christianity, free trade and civilization we see firewater and firearms pouring in every port [in Africa].” However, for Mackay, the solution lay not only in “forbidding the import of arms and ammunition” but in pro- peace” so “the natives will . . . busy themselves with growing whatever they can get a fair price for instead of fighting” (Letter to The Times, May 8, 1889). In this sense, the Brussels Act represented the archetype of regulation in the spaces of empire, combining restrictions on the arms and liquor trades with calls for the development of “agricultural labour and . . . the industrial arts” amongst native populations (Article Two). At the same time, the precise ways in which these twin processes of grafting and counter-grafting played out varied from region to region and over time. For example, in Singapore, policy from the 1820s onwards oscillated between permission and proscription, as free trade and merchant pressure on the one hand and concerns about the destabilizing impact of the firearms trade on the other hand were weighed in different ways at different times (Tagliacozzo 2005, 270; Chew 2012, 174–79). At Muscat, commercial treaties between the sultan and various powers (particularly the French) enshrining free trade severely hampered Britain’s ability to curtail the trade in the Persian Gulf. This was only finally resolved by the aforementioned 1913 agreement between Britain and France. Thus, free trade norms were constantly exposed to serial processes of grafting and counter-grafting. Nevertheless, as the nineteenth century merged into the early twentieth century, arms trade regulation in the spaces of empire was increasingly seen as consonant with a dominant imaginary of liberal market norms (Mathew 2016). This is not to downplay the pressures for imperial powers to supply arms to local allies, or the way broader colonial conceptions of economic and geostrategic interest militated against cooperation to limit the arms traffic as at Djibouti and Muscat.31 However, such factors ultimately illustrate the way in which particular assemblages of norms, formal and informal practices, responses to evasions, and norm-derived conceptions of interest constituted colonial practices of arms control as governmentality. Understood in this way, oscillations in policy in the same region or between different spheres of colonial interest reflected the attempt (always imperfect) to manage arms flows according to where people were placed in the racially inflected triple hierarchies of civilization, loyalty, and utility to imperial power—hierarchies that could be either mutually reinforcing or mutually opposed depending on circumstance. Pressures to arm or disarm locals also illustrated how judgements about what constituted interest were predicated on a particular moral economy (8908), 1906. in which European norms of racial superiority and imperialism framed the standards of appropriate behavior of the era (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998, 892) and the fluid but always subordinate identities of the other. The centrality of European racial and imperial norms in arms governance was illustrated in the late 1870s when the Cape Colony in Southern Africa introduced a licensing system aimed at disarming supposedly disloyal native tribes (Storey 2004, 707). In response, one tribe, the Basuto, proclaimed their loyalty to the Queen and asked whether “we are to be disarmed because we are black.”32 In British India, Acts in 1858, 1860, 1878, and 1909 constantly refined and revised who had the right to own, import, export, and produce what kinds of arms, where they could be transferred to, and under what conditions. Each act was also regularly amended via a series of notifications that led one official reviewing rules on exports to Aden to lament “it is impossible to say . . . with absolute certainty what are now the precise powers of the Government of India under the [1878] Arms Act.”33 This illustrates how such regulations were not just about the effective management of arms flows but also an intrinsic part of the process by which imperial gradations of race, culture, and threat were actually produced. Indeed, in this context, the performative of adherence to, and refinement of, regulatory processes was as important as actually achieving a concrete impact on arms flows.
, focusing only on the operation of prohibitory regulatory norms obscures the way arms trade regulation also constituted a specific colonial form of arms control as governmentality, whereby mechanisms of prohibition and prescription were both put to the service of governing which peoples could legitimately use what kinds of arms. efforts to manage arms flows to potentially unruly colonial subjects by constantly seeking to balance permission and proscription were neither completely effective nor ever effectively complete. arms trade regulation was a contested terrain over which advocates of permission and advocates of restraint often clashed. use the provision of arms to secure access to markets and the loyalty or security of allies in a context of intra-European competition to maintain and expand formal and informal empires Policy appeared contradictory , proponents of permission enerally agreed on the broad goals of policy—to maintain imperial influence and imperial order. permission and proscription were to be located—those governing sovereignty, free trade, development, and the standard of civilization In this case colonial norms of sovereignty provided the regulatory space for proliferation Arms smuggling dhow owners operating in both the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf quickly realized the French flag represented “a license to traffic”  as it made each dhow an “island of colonial sovereignty” The arms provisions of the Brussels Act were ultimately predicated on the fact that European powers exercised “rights of sovereignty” (Article Nine) in their colonial possessions. Thus, the act and its implementation were suffused with norms of sovereignty that both underpinned restrictions on the arms trade and provided the regulatory spaces permitting their circumvention. the day when natives switched from hunting and alcohol to legitimate trade Mackay deplored the fact that “in the name of Christianity, free trade and civilization we see firewater and firearms pouring in every port [in Africa].” However, for Mackay, the solution lay not only in “forbidding the import of arms and ammunition” but in pro- peace” so “the natives will . . . busy themselves with growing whatever they can get a fair price for instead of fighting” represented the archetype of regulation in the spaces of empire, combining restrictions on the arms trades amongst native populations Nevertheless, as the nineteenth century merged into the early twentieth century, arms trade regulation in the spaces of empire was increasingly seen as consonant with a dominant imaginary of liberal market norms the pressures for imperial powers to supply arms to local allies, or the way broader colonial conceptions of economic and geostrategic interest militated against cooperation to limit the arms traffic as at Djibouti and Muscat such factors ultimately illustrate the way in which particular assemblages of norms, formal and informal practices, responses to evasions, and norm-derived conceptions of interest constituted colonial practices of arms control as governmentality. oscillations in policy in the same region or between different spheres of colonial interest reflected the attempt (always imperfect) to manage arms flows according to where people were placed in the racially inflected triple hierarchies of civilization, loyalty, and utility to imperial power—hierarchies that could be either mutually reinforcing or mutually opposed depending on circumstance. Pressures to arm or disarm locals also illustrated how judgements about what constituted interest were predicated on a particular moral economy norms of racial superiority and imperialism framed the standards and the fluid but always subordinate identities of the other. The centrality of European racial and imperial norms in arms governance was illustrated in the late 1870s when the Cape Colony in Southern Africa introduced a licensing system aimed at disarming supposedly disloyal native tribes , one tribe, the Basuto, proclaimed their loyalty to the Queen and asked whether “we are to be disarmed because we are black.” In British India, Acts in 1858, 1860, 1878, and 1909 constantly refined and revised who had the right to own, import, export, and produce what kinds of arms, where they could be transferred to, and under what conditions. This illustrates how such regulations were not just about the effective management of arms flows but also an intrinsic part of the process by which imperial gradations of race, culture, and threat were actually produced.