2026/03/23 by Kate Birkbeck · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #European Political History Analysis #History of Emotions Research #Military History and Strategy
paper · doi:10.1093/dh/dhag010
openalex publication_date 2026/03/23 · openalex created_date 2026/03/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
In September 1869, the founder of the National Rifle Association of Great Britain (NRA-GB) Francis Charteris, better known as Lord Elcho, wrote an open call to US riflemen in The Times of London. Elcho pointed to something that he considered both countries to have in common: the rifle had made the United States “a free state” and “our colony a great nation.” It was due to the rifle, Elcho wrote, that “the new world has been subdued and civilized.” It was intuitive to him, then, that rifle shooting as a sport was intimately connected to imperial and military dominance. After a decade of the NRA-GB’s existence, rifle shooting had become the national pastime of the United Kingdom, and this was due to national coordination. Elcho declared that “we have not only the best rifles, but the best rifle shots in the world.” And yet, despite new breech-loading technology developing on both sides of the Atlantic, and that the rifle “used to be the far-famed weapon of the Americans,” he did not know of any “match rifles or American Wimbledon.” And so, magnanimously hoping to encourage “friendly feelings … between the two great representative nations of the Anglo-Saxon race,” Elcho challenged US riflemen to compete against the British at the annual NRA-GB meeting at Wimbledon Common.1