Offering maximum efficiency for minimum cost, barbed wire is the quintessentially modern creation. Its hidden history is here uncovered for the first time, illustrated with rare archival photographs.
Few other technologies did more to usher in the hallmarks of the modern era: the harnessing of nature, brutal mass warfare, political conquest and repression, and genocide. Developed in the USA as a handy way of keeping cattle 'in' and native Americans 'out', barbed wire also played a leading role in the expansion of Australia. It realised its destiny in the trench warfare of 1914-18 and in the camp archipelagos of the world, from the Boer War to Auschwitz, from the Gulag to Guantanamo.
