My deep apologies! In trying to dust this project off and get it back and moving toward resolution, I essentially forgot that I did, indeed, seek the advice of this community. Frankly, I think I rather lost contact with the discussion. Together we may all have also discovered that very little is known concretely about the “arms industry” in the pre-modern world. Collectors are good at assembling old weapons, preserving them, assigning them to named categories, but WE have few sources of information on how and why they came to be as they are.
My cannons offer hard evidence that before 1898 SOMEBODY in the Philippine world was able and interested in MAKING artillery that was “modern.” That was a time when a great many folks were familiar with re-purposed firearms (Trapdoor Springfields and Sniders, rolling block Remingtons etc etc). And I THINK somebody in the central Philippines decided to turn that approach to cannons. I can’t find information on that work, but I admire and respect it. Who were those guys?
The other reality is, that between about 1903 and 1915, across the world, the state of artillery design moved in directions that made earlier capabilities of 1898 truly “primitive.”
Again, I apologize for the repetition of my inquiry and I sincerely respect that quality of this community.
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