Raymond Bonner's review of CJ Chivers' new book, The Gun: The AK-47 and the Evolution of War, was mostly entertaining and informative, but I object to his rather cavalier indictment of my great-great-grandfather (The lean, mean killing machine, 29 January). He describes Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim, who "gave the world the first truly automatic weapon", as an "egomaniacal trigamist, cad and draft dodger".
This part of the review comes in the context of Bonner summarising the historical background set by Chivers' book, which looks back to the development of earlier lethal weapons, notably the Gatling gun and the Maxim machine gun. While Gatling is described as "an American idealist sickened by the thousands of dead and dying on the civil war battlefields, who envisioned a weapon that would allow one man to kill as many as hundred, thus reducing the need for large armies", Maxim is callously dismissed. I cannot tell if this description comes from the reviewer or straight from the book, but Bonner could have presented a more nuanced perspective on Maxim.
As he notes, the Maxim machine gun "made its public debut at an exhibition in South Kensington, and was inaugurated in battle by the British in Sudan. Its infamy was sealed on the Somme, when German soldiers used it to slaughter British troops. The machine gun changed how armies were organised and war was waged."
It was obviously a brutal tool but, as the review also makes clear, it was just one in a line of guns developed in the 19th and 20th centuries. The book's primary focus is the history of the AK-47, whose development was apparently inspired by the Soviet government's desire for a gun that could fire as many rounds as the Maxim but was lighter to carry. Maxim's invention is just part of this broader story of how governments have been more than happy to adopt innovations in warfare that allow for more effective killing.
While our family would probably agree that Maxim was no saint – not least for leaving his wife and children behind when he moved to England in the 1880s – his descendants do feel affection for him and some pride in his accomplishments. Maxim grew up in poverty in rural Maine, was largely self-educated, and seems to have been someone who could not stop inventing things. From what we know of him, Maxim does not seem to have had any special pride in the invention of the machine gun, and later in life spent most of his time investigating manned flight. One of his other inventions at this point, the Flying Machine, is still in use today at Blackpool Pleasure Beach.
The British government and Queen Victoria thought enough of his accomplishments to grant him a knighthood and, as I recall, the machine gun itself is one of the first exhibits visitors see when they enter the Imperial War Museum in London; so he and his gun still have a place in British history.
