00:00Among the numerous ways one can make a living, dealing in arms, aside from legs and ears, of course, is,
00:07well, definitely one way to go about it.
00:11Naturally, there's little good to be said about a merchant of death, but it was without a doubt an eventful
00:17profession, which is why you see it such a popular trope in fiction.
00:21But how did being an arms dealer come about, and what was it actually like?
00:26Well, weapons have been sold since practically forever.
00:30Get your caveman clubs, one for a rock, two for a saber tooth.
00:35But prior to industrialization, arms dealing was a very low-volume affair.
00:40Guns were hard to make and expensive, so there just weren't that many to go round.
00:46I mean, of course, they were still traded.
00:48The Portuguese and the Dutch, our usual suspects, had been selling a couple of thousand firearms here and there since
00:54the 16th century.
00:56And yet, arms dealing didn't really take off until the Industrial Revolution.
01:00And that leads us, as always, to our dear Great Britain.
01:06Hmm, yes.
01:07From the 1850s onwards, we see a veritable explosion in the number of private weapons manufacturers.
01:13Chief among them were the Armstrong, Nordenfeldt, and Maxim companies, which combined innovation with mass production to deadly results.
01:23Their biggest client was, of course, the Crown.
01:26What with empire building and all that, yet beyond Her Majesty's arsenal, pardon the expression, there were more than a
01:32few eager customers.
01:34Obviously, selling weapons to rival powers like France or Germany was a no bueno, or however you say it.
01:42But, oh, look, there's a rebellion in China.
01:45Oh, and the Japanese are fighting the Russians.
01:48So, unfortunately, for humanity in general, the late 19th and early 20th centuries provided ample demand for weapons, and the
01:58rising British arms industry was more than happy to oblige.
02:02Its agents were unscrupulous men, and none was more unscrupulous than Basil Zahirov.
02:09Originally from Greece, he toured the world pretending to be a Russian aristocrat.
02:15It charmed his way into the global elite, managing, among other things, to plunder a railroad company in St. Louis,
02:23and to marry one of the wealthiest bachelorettes in Philadelphia.
02:27Then, in the wake of the glorious British conquest of, um, I mean liberation of Cyprus, where Zahirov happened to
02:36be staying at the time,
02:38he found a lucrative opportunity.
02:41You see, the old Ottoman arsenal on the island was of no use to the crown,
02:46but it could be sold at a considerable markup to the right people.
02:51For example, the Greeks, still yearning to reclaim their lost lands.
02:57Conveniently, Zahirov happened to be friends with one of the most renowned Greek diplomats at the time,
03:03who would eventually become Prime Minister.
03:06And that definitely helped speed things along.
03:10Now, I mean, one could easily imagine what Mr. Zahirov would have thought back then.
03:14If peddling old arms was this lucrative, imagine what it would be like selling the new stuff.
03:20Well, my.
03:21Meanwhile, back in London,
03:24he found the biggest underdog in the British arms industry, Thorsten Nordenfeldt.
03:31He was originally from Sweden,
03:33and while he did have factories in England,
03:36he lacked connections to the upper echelons of society,
03:39which was exactly what Zahirov could help with.
03:43They actually took the world by storm.
03:46Nordenfeldt had a knack for inventing dangerous technology with questionable safety standards,
03:52and Zahirov had the unmatched talent of hyping it up.
03:55Let's get ready to rumble!
03:59Or whatever the equivalent was back then.
04:02When Nordenfeldt created the world's first ever torpedo-bearing submarine in 1884,
04:08Zahirov made no delays in selling a prototype back home in Greece.
04:13Then he told the Ottomans about it and promptly sold them two submarines.
04:18But now that the Turks had submarines,
04:20well, the Russian Black Sea Navy was no longer safe.
04:23So they bought three submarines,
04:25which reminds me of a book.
04:27Why, you need insurance.
04:28By just in case.
04:29Now, in reality,
04:31the Nordenfeldt submarine was a glorified human oven,
04:34prone to overheating and turning upside down.
04:37But why let such details get in the way of such a profitable transaction?
04:43Of course, not all of Nordenfeldt's products were shams.
04:46Their machine gun was top of the line, for its time,
04:49capable of firing 3,000 rounds in three minutes.
04:53It wasn't the best.
04:55That honor went to the Maxim gun.
04:58But that was no problem for Zahirov.
05:00He simply sabotaged his opponent's demonstration
05:03whenever the two competed for the same contract.
05:05Such lofty ethics.
05:08However, Maxim was backed by powerful allies, I tell you.
05:13The company's largest shareholder
05:15and honorary SideQuest board member
05:17was Nathaniel Rothschild,
05:20a man not fond of losing money.
05:24When he got wind of Zahirov's dealings,
05:26he called up Nordenfeldt and made him an offer he couldn't refuse.
05:30He would merge his company with Maxim's,
05:34retaining Zahirov so he could market their combined product line.
05:39After the deal went through,
05:40Nordenfeldt would suffer a string of unfortunate accidents,
05:47ultimately going bankrupt and selling all his shares for pennies on the dollar.
05:53Lord Rothschild would perfect his takeover strategy over the next two decades,
05:58successfully merging with Vickers and Armstrong.
06:01All the while, Zahirov would continue selling weapons to the highest bidder,
06:07sometimes even to the enemies of Britain itself.
06:10By 1914, he had supplied machine guns
06:13to nearly every future participant in the Great War.
06:17And in the aftermath of Germany's disarmament,
06:20Zahirov was instrumental in setting up a chain of affiliates
06:24through which to funnel arms of questionable legality.
06:27And we all know how that went.
06:30Ultimately, Zahirov would not live to see the fruits of his efforts,
06:35though not before spending his last two days on Earth
06:37burning all his notebooks and journals.
06:41They shall never know about that weekend on the French Revere.
06:44Unlike Mr. Zahirov,
06:46we here at SideQuest prefer earning our keep
06:49without plunging the world into devastating conflicts.
06:52It's a lot in life.
06:54It's not a lot, but it's a life.
06:57If you'd like to see more of these little adventures of ours,
07:00consider supporting us on Patreon.
07:02Though, of course, we'll also appreciate it
07:04if you share our videos with your friends and loved ones
07:07and, of course, any aspiring arms dealers you happen to know.
07:12Anyhow, we shall discuss more lucrative business opportunities
07:16in the not-too-distant future
07:18in the next competitively cutthroat episode of SideQuest.
07:26I don't like the word gun.
07:28Whenever I say it, people get triggered.
07:34I don't want to let them in the kitchen.
07:35In a way, I see the word gun.
07:35But I think people are allergic to teeth,
07:36I don't want to think're raven faz they're going to completely
07:36like the word gun.
07:36I don't want to know.
07:37It can take it into a village.
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