Ukase: We Command All Nations to Keep the Peace. Dr. J.H. McLean’s Peace-Makers

by James Henry McLean, Myron Coloney

This book is a curious and fascinating piece of personal military history. Its author, Dr James McLean of St Louis, was a purveyor of patent medicines - and an inventor and manufacturer of guns and munitions. His book is summed up in its sub-title : ‘We command all nations to keep the peace’ - in that it is an avowed attempt to make future wars impossible by increasing the destructive power of current weaponry. Published in 1880 in the aftermath of such conflicts as the American Civil War, the Crimean War and the Franco-Prussian war, the book, complete with detailed illustrations and diagrams, features many of McLean’s military innovations including, a portable fortress ( iron boxes filled with debris and fitted together); metal shields with loopholes which can be joined up to protect infantry; ‘ironclad’ ships, torpedoes, the Hercules naval gun; and a forerunner of the machine gun called ‘the Pulverizer’ which, the author claims, can fire 1,200 shots in a minute. Whether we believe McLean’s’s noble intentions in inventing such fearsome weapons, or dismiss it as a cynical piece of brilliant advertising for his own products, ‘Peace-Makers’ cannot fail to interest students of military hardware at the dawn of the age of fully mechanised warfare.

200 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1880

Reviews

[Osiris Oliphant · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is a rumor about another catalog from the 1880s that is sometimes mentioned along with this book. It was supposed to have been written by a troubled man who complained of being followed around the country by shadowy figures tasked with annoying him and ruining any chance he might have to get a job.

He claimed to be an inventor and to have patented a few million dollar inventions that he never explained in any detail. Only occasionally whispering that one had to do with extra large basements that were as big as the houses. And something about extra big furniture for these big American houses.

He is supposed to have written two books. One, a memoir of his travels and troubles, hopping trains and being annoyed by shadows, and the other was a catalog of his larger than normal furniture designs.