Many thanks for the comments. The Taku Forts pictures are very interesting, I'd seen a few on the internet. It would of course be have been MORE interesting if they'd arranged a load of cannons in the foreground !
The most useful general text I've used on old cannons was Blackmore 1976 The armouries of the Tower of London. v1 Ordnance.
This led me to a very thick volume : Needham 1974 Science and Civilisation in China: Military technology : the gunpowder epic.
There is also an article - with drawings - on cannon from the Taku forts in the Illustrated London News for April 1861 [this is available online].
The series of rings strengthening the barrel seem to be common in China, and they also made breech-loading guns. It is really a question of whether there is a distinguishing feature in manufacture between Chinese and European types.
Of course, it is easy to work your way up a dead-end street by grabbing hold of the "made in China" idea. The gun in Newcastle could be European after all, and I would love it to be from a Tudor wreck : especially the Mary Rose ! But, I can't see the people at Woolwich giving such a thing away in 1863.
Incidentally, Clephan got a very experienced worker from a local iron works to look at it in 1904. He said the barrel was cast iron, and the wrings are wrought iron (and shrunk on, as you would expect); the tail piece and trunnions are of forged iron. Were the barrels of European cannons of this type usually made with bars of wrought iron ... or were cast iron barrels common ?
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