Tear Gas: From the Battlefields of World War I to the Streets of Today

by Anna Feigenbaum

The story of how a chemical weapon went from the battlefield to the streets

One hundred years ago, French troops fired tear gas grenades into German trenches. Designed to force people out from behind barricades and trenches, tear gas causes burning of the eyes and skin, tearing, and gagging. Chemical weapons are now banned from war zones. But today, tear gas has become the most commonly used form of “less-lethal” police force. In 2011, the year that protests exploded from the Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street, tear gas sales tripled. Most tear gas is produced in the United States, and many images of protestors in Tahrir Square showed tear gas canisters with “Made in USA” printed on them, while Britain continues to sell tear gas to countries on its own human-rights blacklist.

An engrossing century-spanning narrative, Tear Gas is the first history of this weapon, and takes us from military labs and chemical weapons expos to union assemblies and protest camps, drawing on declassified reports and witness testimonies to show how policing with poison came to be.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, Science, Police, War, World War I

224 pages, Paperback

First published May 17, 2016

Reviews

[Charles Heath · Rating 5 out of 5]

The social history of poison gas. The sick intersection of science, the military, and marketing. An excellent example of research and and engaging authorial voice. From the trenches of WWI to the Occupy movement, gas has become an ubiquitous part of modern life, now a "safe" method of "keeping the peace." What these gasses do, however, is maim, disfigure, kill, and poison. The poisoning of the atmosphere, of the public square, is designed to destroy the cohesion and spirit of a mob. Long used against labor, colonial subjects, and radicalized bodies, now one of the leading growth segments in the neoliberal globalized world of militarized police. The work ends with the author's uplifting examples of resistance, including the author's own anti-gas efforts, protests, and public service.

[Charlie Rosenthal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ban tear gas. No such thing as a less-lethal weapon.

[John Defrog: global citizen, local gadfly · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was sort of an impulse buy at a local indie bookstore (Bleak House Books, which closed last year), but it was relevant to my interests, as police use of tear gas was a hot topic during the 2019 protests in Hong Kong, during which police fired roughly 16,000 rounds of tear gas in a six-month period. There was quite a bit of debate about it at the time – both in terms of improper and indiscriminate usage (frequently violating the police’s own operational guidelines) and the possible health consequences of firing that much gas, as well as the fact that tear gas is literally banned by the Geneva Convention in warfare, so why do the police get to throw it around?

This book tracks the origins of tear gas during World War 1; how it was commercialized as a “less lethal” tool for dealing with protests (“Look, it’s either this or shoot them, right? Which would you prefer?”); how proponents sold the narrative that tear gas was generally harmless (despite being banned in war as too inhumane); how it became a huge business; how its use by police forces worldwide has become normalized; and how increasing police militarization has led to tear gas being frequently misused as a way to punish peaceful protesters and escalate violence rather than simply getting crowds to disperse.

Anna Feigenbaum isn’t a neutral observer here – the book has a political and moral POV, and what you make of this will likely depend on where your own sympathies lie. But it’s not wrong either – it’s a concise and well-researched history of how we got here, and offers some suggestions on what we might do about it. But then I’m not exactly neutral either (and not just because I've experienced CS gas first-hand and can assure you it's a form of torture). This book was published before the 2019 HK protests, but tear-gas / police brutality anecdotes from 2019 would fit in seamlessly here. Which goes to show that what happened in HK is actually normal in other parts of the world. When the HK govt justified its actions by saying the police conformed to international policing standards, turns out they were right – just not in a good way.

[Lina · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think I put this on my TBR as soon as it was published back in 2017, but I never got around to reading it until the massively repressive and violent actions of the US police during the 2020 BLM protests made it abundantly clear that the way tear gas is used can only be described as a crime against humanity.

What we call "tear gas" is a wide range of several different chemical weapons that first saw the light of day during the first World War, and have seen an immense amount of refining, development and PR work in the century that followed. There is a lot of ground to cover here, and I think Feigenbaum does a great job at providing an accessible single-volume overview of the subject, mainly focusing on the US and the UK (and their colonial victims).

This isn’t a light read, but not because of the writing; every single paragraph filled me with rage. These weapons are not "humane" or "safe" in any conceivable way, despite what the massive marketing campaigns and decades of trigger happy politicians and cops may try to tell you.

[Jack · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The defiant protester. The running crowd. The chaos. You may have seen so many shots of tear gas smoke that these images have come to feel like stock photography. A poison cloud that has become a lazy signifier of troubled times, a metaphor that has lost its power through repetition. You turn the page. You flick the channel. Your thumb scrolls down the Twitter feed.

After all, they say it’s safe."

Cops doing cop shit, typical American fuckery, and the genesis point of militarized police.

You never forget the first time you get tear gassed. It changes a lot of things for you and how you see the world.

It is hypocritically billed as the humane option of crowd control, yet was created with the expressed intent of causing as much physical and mental distress and pain as possible. It is absolutely very capable of causing death on its own, and that's before you even factor in when cops intentionally shoot superheated metal canisters directly at people's faces and bodies from grenade launchers and using the chaos to advance and bludgeon the already incapacitated.

This book will piss you off. Chemical weapons are literally banned under international law, but America made sure to write in loopholes when eventually signing the Geneva Conventions. None of the information is surprising, but that doesn't make it any less enraging.

Read this book. There's no such thing as a less-than-lethal weapon, and the fact that this nomenclature exists at all is a sick joke on all of our expense.

[Felicity · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good overview book, though it stumbles at the end. I know it’s not supposed to be an ‘academic’ text, but it’s engagement with abolition could have been more clear and persuasive - it’s muddled by hedging on things like reform.

[Dustin Kochensparger · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting book about the storied history of one of the most controversial policing tools of our time, it ultimately is a bit long winded for what the author intends. Straddling the line between a scholarly research paper and a book for public consumption, it ends up a bit overbearing in the exhaustive description and retelling of many of the historical points. I think a book half as long could have had the same, if not a stronger impact in getting to the message at the end. A very good read for anyone researching the space or that wants to understand the deep history of this controversial class of substances.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ask yourself "who benefits from the escalation of force"? What is tear gas and where did it come from?

Feigenbaum's work here is fascinating. From the trenches of WWI to the repression of the bonus marchers in 1932 all the way to Ferguson and the present day and lots in between this highly readable primer scratches the surface at answering those questions. It certainly pulled the blinders off my perceptions.

[Lele Fuchur · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beängstigend und verdammt gut.

[Josh Hayles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Banger

[AM · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great throughline on how people conspire to make money off the oppression of people.

[Jenn Hartlove · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a child, I accidentally maced myself (I thought it was a perfume), and that experience certainly embedded itself in my memory. I picked up this book because I wanted to better understand the history and consequences of irritating gas use in various external and internal conflicts. I learned new things. I certainly have a better appreciation for the physical/psychological effects of tearing/irritating gas use--and was surprised that there is a lack of scientific medical study for the biological or psychological effects.