"History of Early Rifles?" Topic

Can anyone point me to a history of rifles before the American longrifle please?

While I could not find a general history specific to
rifled long guns, Greener's work
link is regarded as the standard for ( as the title
suggests) the development of rifling and rifled weapons.

Greener was a shotgun guy (he had several patents for shotgun modifications and accessories) and his book, "The Gun and its Development," is much more concerned with shotguns than rifles and rifled weapons. With that said, there are about 4 or 5 pages on the early development of rifling beginning on page 620 of the 9th edition of his book (the copy linked to by Ed at archive dot org).

As brief as it is, Greener's book does have more on the early development of rifled firearms than any other general history I know. Other general works on firearms aren't likely to provide much more on the history of rifled firearms before the mid to late 1800s, "A History of Firearms" by H.B.C. Pollard for example, doesn't. There is simply too much history of firearms, and the history of early rifled firearms is too small a part of it, for there to be much in a general survey history of firearms.

There is also a brief discussion of the development of rifling and rifled small arms in an article by W.S. Curtis found at:

link

If you want more information or detail than is provided by Greener or Curtis, I'd recommend looking for a specific history of early rifled firearms-albeit based on my brief search and, by inference, Ed's search, I'm not sure such a book exists.

Dennis is correct. T'ain't NO GOOD history of the
early (pre-C 19) development, etc., of rifled long
guns, at least not on-line.

Or my google-fu is woefully weak the past two days…

Google-fu made a mild recovery. See if you can find
a couple books by Henry J. Kauffman (deceased 1974),
specifically _The Pennsylvania Kentucky Rifle_, _The
American Gunsmith_ and _Early American Gunsmiths 1650 -
1850_.

In the latter two, you'll find mention of Jacob
Deckert, born in Germany, emigrated to the colonies
in 1748 (age 8, so family emigration) and worked as
a gunsmith in Lancaster, Pa., until his death in 1822.

Deckert rifles equipped many of the riflemen in the
AWI.

Kauffman was an antiquarian of note and authored
many books on different sorts of early Americana,
iron/brass items, architecture, Pennsylvania Dutch
folkart, axes, farmhouses – the list goes on.

And that, bereft of information as it is, really
does exhaust my google-fu !

You might take a look at the Dixie Gun Works online catalog-- they have dozens of pages of reference books listed. There ought to be something useful there.

khanscom's suggestion was a good one, and the catalog may be found here:

link

I went ahead and looked at the 42 pages of books listed in the catalog (I'm doing some research of my own on mid-19th century percussion arms and hoped I might find something useful to me) and found a few books that might-repeat might-provide some of the information you are looking for-I warn you that firearms books with a limited market are not cheap. Anyway, here is one on 17th and 18th century rifles from Germany:

link

The Royal Armouries in Leeds has a good collection of early rifles, mostly hunting weapons. If I remember correctly some date from before 1600 & possibly even 1500. You might try contacting them as to reference books on the subject.