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Old 3rd May 2007, 07:35 AM   #6
Philip
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Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: California
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Thanks, Fernando, for your comments and the added details. My study of these guns has been somewhat limited by unfamiliarity with the material in Portuguese collections. What I have been able to look at in detail has typically been in US and British collections and dealers' inventories, and this material has typically been presented as Malay, Javanese, or Indonesian. Although I am fairly familiar with the Ceylonese guns with Portuguese-style flint mechanisms, my exposure to matchlocks from this area has been almost nil. This is perhaps reflected in my hasty conclusion that the gun in question had to be Malay, without giving due consideration to Ceylonese antecedents.

By the way, you mention the Philippines as being an eventual recipient of the Luso-Cingalese musket technology (as quoted in Daehnhardt). I have yet to encounter a Philippine-made example, although we can't rule out the Moros or other tribal groups making use of imported specimens in the past. If you can locate a reference to a Portuguese style musket of Philippine manufacture, please share it.

The great Portuguese influence on the gun traditions of the Moros and other southern groups has been in the form of not muskets, but swivel-cannons for boats. The famous "lantakas" are thought to descend from light artillery on swivel mounts brought to the area first by the Portuguese, and later by the Dutch. Many of these guns that were introduced by the Europeans were breech-loaders (a design extensively copied by the Chinese, Koreans, and Thais; occasionally manufactured in Brunei and Japan as well), but it seems that in the Malay culture sphere, the swivel pieces tended to remain muzzle-loaders. The few Malay breech loading cannon are mechanically and proportionally quite similar to Portuguese models of the 16th-17th cents.

I look forward to receipt of the additional materials that you mention.
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