Barbed Wire’s Impact on Land, Livestock, and Liberty

In 2003, the heavy metal band Iron Maiden released their album, Dance of Death, which including the epic ‘Paschendale’ [sic]¹‘Iron Maiden – Paschendale’. 2024. Genius <https://genius.com/Iron-maiden-paschendale-lyrics> [accessed 12 January 2024]:

Whistles, shouts and more gun fire
Lifeless bodies hang on barbed wire
Battlefield nothing but a bloody tomb
Be reunited with my dead friends soon
Many soldiers eighteen year
Drown in mud, no more tears
Surely a war no-one can win,
Killing time about to begin.

Coils and coils of barbed wire stretched across the desolate expanse of no-man’s-land stand as a symbolic representation of the First World War. Amnesty International incorporates barbed wire into its emblem, signifying oppression, the curtailment of freedom, and evoking memories of its widespread deployment in Nazi concentration camps.

The influence of barbed wire on the world tends to be overlooked. There’s this saying that ‘barbed wire tamed the American West.’ Yet, it also ‘tamed’ Africa and Australia, among numerous other regions, facilitating the territorial acquisitions of Colonialism.

This is a considerable departure from its initial purpose of managing livestock. Yet, that’s how we’ve come to recognise barbed wire today, with many of us possibly bearing the scars of getting uncomfortably close to it. Barbed wire made its way to Britain in the late 19th century, not long after Lucien B. Smith invented it in the United States in 1867²Wikipedia Contributors. 2023. ‘Barbed Wire’, Wikipedia (Wikimedia Foundation) <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbed_wire#:~:text=The%20first%20patent%20in%20the%20United%20States%20for%20barbed%20wire> [accessed 12 January 2024]. The precise date of its introduction isn’t documented, but it probably occurred in the late 1870s or early 1880s.

The introduction of barbed wire into Britain brought about a notable transformation in agricultural methods and land management. It offered an economical way to corral livestock and demarcate property limits, supplanting traditional hedgerows and stone walls. It’s much swifter to string a stretch of barbed wire across a segment of a collapsed wall than to rebuild it.

Nevertheless, its arrival sparked clashes and disputes, especially where it posed a restriction to free roaming commoners’ stock. This problem was especially marked in regions with traditional common land rights.

• 1
  ‘Iron Maiden – Paschendale’. 2024. Genius <https://genius.com/Iron-maiden-paschendale-lyrics> [accessed 12 January 2024]
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  Wikipedia Contributors. 2023. ‘Barbed Wire’, Wikipedia (Wikimedia Foundation) <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbed_wire#:~:text=The%20first%20patent%20in%20the%20United%20States%20for%20barbed%20wire> [accessed 12 January 2024]