The following quotes come from: The Journal of African History Volume 12-1971-No. 2: "Firearms in Africa: an Introduction" Gavin White pages 173-184

I found these quotes from White most instructive and thought them to be worth consideration before I would write any or use rules for Darkest Africa.

page 173-174 "Professor J. Lynch of University College, London, dealt with 'The Role of firearms in the Spanish conquest of America'. If an entire paper can be reduced to one sentence, he concluded that firearms were too primitive and too few to account for the Spanish success, though they did provide a psychological advantage."

He reaches three conclusions:

"First, the impact of firearms in African warfare was not as decisive as had been expected. Perhaps the expectation itself was the product of some unhistorical ideology. The collection and lore of firearms have attracted impartial scholars and enthusiasts, but they have also attracted devotees who regard firearms as symbols of industrial or social or other prowess. To such devotees it is impossible for those with firearms to lose battles to those without firearms, and to some it is impossible for those who have not developed or made firearms to maintain or use them properly. Something of this may be found in accounts of Amerindian trade guns, and it may well have found its way into accounts by foreign travellers of the use or abuse of firearms in Africa."

"A second tentative conclusion is that firearms in war had an intial success but rapidly declined in significance. This might be through the enemy acquiring equivalent weapons, or evolving tactics to cope with them, or through the original weapons deteriorating or being deprived of ammunition. The third conclusion relates to tactics and training. Not only did individual soldiers require experience in using and maintaining new weapons, but entire societies sometimes had to be restructured. In Africa, as in Europe and the Ottoman Empire, mounted knights or spearmen were unwilling to lose the prestige of a hard-earned skill which had suddenly become obsolete."

Local manufacture in Africa was very limited.

"powder and shot were produced, and guns were repaired, but we have only found reference to the manufacture of complete weapons in relatively few and late instances. This contrasts markedly with the manufacture of guns in India, Afghanistan, China, and Japan. In assessing this fact, technical skill is not the only factor of importance. It may be that arms were only manufactured where cheap imports were not available, and that manufacture, whether in West Africa or China or Afghanistan, was more an indication of embargo than of technical competence."

page 178

"...if a king locked up all his stocks of arms until he was at war, he could not expect his supporters to use them to advantage. A few African states did have standing armies, but even some of these must have found it expensive to provide musketry practice....As for Africa, we find some references to firearms used in hunting, though this is mainly in southern Africa. But there is another possible use of firearms which remains quite unchronicled, and that is the protection of crops. This use may have been critical in Africa. That it was once a critical factor in Europe is seen in the origins of sport....It was the duty of men to hunt and to clear the land, and presumably to eliminate or intimidate animals excluded from a patch of former bush in a slash-burn or citamene system of agriculture. These animals would seek to return to their former habitat. Firearms to prevent them might well tip the balance to make new crops profitable; in particular the introduction of Indian corn (maize) may have been related to firearms. And a body of men who habitually used firearms to protect their crops, not to mention those who used firearms to protect their livestock, would be incidentally available for war.

"However, the type of firearms most suitable for keeping pigs and baboons out of the crops would not be military. The trade musket, not intended for rapid reloading, cheap to buy, simple to repair, light in weight, and with no delicate parts, would be more popular than either a military musket or a later military weapon dependent on imported parts and cartridges....Little is known on this subject, but its importance is seen in the immense quantities of trade muskets which were shipped to Africa through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries."

page 182 Birmingham England was a gun manufacturing center in England since the eighteenth century.

"In the declining years of Birmingham, 1880-1905, half a million guns were made each year, while Liege (Belgium) had increased to a million a year. It is said that the vast majority of Birmingham guns went to Africa; in 1864 it cannot have been more than half, since only 119,503 out of 221,726 barrels produced were of 'plain iron' such as might be found in trade guns. By 1866...it was estimated that Birmingham sent to Africa between 100,000 and 150,000 guns per year; the same source adds that these guns had a variety of names since 'each district has its own peculiar taste' in Africa. By 1907 the entire Birmingham trade in African guns was estimated to have been 20,000,000 guns, while that of Liege, only recently active in the African market, had only reached 3,000,000....It is impossible to estimate how many surplus military guns went to Africa, but it must have been high in the millions. For what it is worth, Birmingham gunmakers complained that military guns were dumped so cheaply that they actually undersold trade guns.

Other titles in The Journal of African History Volume 12-1971-Number 2:

R. A. Kea "Firearms and Warfare on the Gold and Slave Coasts from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries."
Humphrey J Fisher and Virginia Rowland: "Firearms in the Central Sudan"
Myron J Echenberg: "Late Nineteenth-Century Military Technology in Upper Volta"

Volume 12-1971-Number 4

Shula Marks: "Firearms in Southern Africa; A Survey"
Richard Gray: "Portuguese Musketeers on the Zambesi"
Anthony Atmore: "Sotho Arms and Ammunition in the Nineteenth Cetury"
Anthony Atmore: "Firearms in South-Central Africa"
J J Guy: "A Note on Firearms in the Zulu Kingdom with special reference to the Anglo-Zulu War, 1879
S Miers: "Notes on the Arms Trade and Government Policy in Southern Africa between 1870 and 1890"
Hiliare Belloc: "The Modern Traveller"
I shall never forget the way
That Blood stood upon this awful day
Preserved us all from death.
He stood upon a little mound,
Cast his lethargic eyes around,
And said beneath his breath:
Whatever happens, we have got
The Maxim Gun, and they have not.

Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History: Volume 6 number 3 May 1978

J N Tuck: "Jules Ferry, Upper Burmaa and Siam: The Defence of the French Imperial Frontier in Mainland Southeast Asia, 1883-1885"
Adrain Preston: "Wolseley, the Khartoum Relief Expedition and the Defence of India, 1885-1890"

Volume 20 number 1 Jan 1992

T R Moreman: "The British and Indian Armies and the North-West Frontier Warfare, 1849-1914"

Volume 18 number 1 Jan 1990

Robert V Kubicek: "The Colonial Steamer and the Occupation of West Africa by the Victorian State, 1840-1900"

Volume 15 number 1 Oct 1986

Peter Burroughs: "Imperial Defence and the Victorian Army"

Volume 16 number 3 May 1988

C M Andrews and A S Kanya-Forstner: "Centre and Periphery in the Making of the Second French Colonial Empire, 1815-1920"

Volume 4 number 1 Oct 1975

Edward M Spiers: "The Use of the Dum Dum Bullet in Colonial Warfare"

Volume 10 number 2 Jan 1982

Sneh Mahajan: "The Defence of India and the End of Isolation."
Martin Lynn: "Consul and Kings: British Policy, 'the Man on the Spot', and the Seizure of lagos, 1851"

Volume 10 number 3 May 1982

D H Johnson: "The Death of Gordon: A Victorian Myth"

Volume 2 number 1 Oct 1973

G J Alder: "India and the Crimean War"