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Old 22nd September 2015, 10:58 PM   #48
Jim McDougall
Arms Historian
 
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Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: Route 66
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Absolutely, and as you can see as a reliable participant on Wikipedia, it is all very much relative, and many entries such as those you placed are entirely usable. As I noted, it is incumbent on the user to take caution in the use of the material and must serve as a benchmark, not a final citation.

With Pininterest, I must admit I am largely unfamiliar but I know my wife, daughters etc use it a great deal. I had never thought of it as a resource for research as I thought it was mostly montage's of unattributed photos. While these are of course wonderfully attractive and intriguing, I have thought they were not especially helpful without captioning or pertinent identifying data. Is this perception incorrect?
It would be admittedly a great resource if indeed with those factors.

Actually with the armor, it seems references I had seen noted the mail had come from Birmingham, of course the key industrial area known for arms and all manner of equipment. Wilkinson was of course not in Birmingham so perhaps it might have been a Wilkinson subcontractor. Of these there were a good number, especially for colonially intended products. It seems that Mole was one for swords for example in those headed for India.

After Omdurman and during the Condominium, there was such a demand for souveniers that when supplies of actual items from the Sudanese faltered, there were facsimile items such as spearheads etc made in Birmingham to supply the souks.

The equipage of the Mahdist forces was certainly a hodgepodge and gathered from all kinds of sources, so to see varying helmets, swords, etc. must have been amazing. The sound mail hauberks from Mamluk/Ottoman sources certainly would have been represented in considerable numbers.

The examples of British manufacture which were apparently in degree with the Khedival forces as I found, were left and only the helmets taken, along of course with rifles etc. In the early part of the Mahdiyya most tribesmen did not even have swords. In references I have seen, many of the rank and file had wooden swords, and retrieved the swords of the fallen during the combats.

It would be extremely difficult to assert the presence of or absence of certain types of arms and armor in these campaigns due to the remarkably ersatz nature of equipping these forces. It is still interesting to seek any examples which may have been used in degree however.
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