All Africans opposed the European domination of their homelands from the begining, and when push came to shove, protected their lands with love and great ferocity, never giving a scrap of their land willingly. But whenever African opposition gained momentum, the superiority of European military power prevented any long term success.
While the African resistance had the advantage of fighting on home ground, they
could not ultimately overcome the firepower of the European's -especially with
the newly invented Maxim machine gun.
The
English poet Hilaire Belloc summed up this situation aptly when he wrote:
"Whatever
happens we have got,
The Maxim gun, and
they have not".
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The Maxim gun was invented in 1884 by an American Hiram Maxim while he was domiciled in England.
It
was the first fully automatic, single barrelled machine gun. Novel for the time
was the use of the energy of each bullet's recoil to eject the spent cartridge
and insert the next bullet. The Maxim could fire until the entire belt of bullets
were used up -or until it jammed.
As all gun barrels become inaccurate or
unworkable when overheated, the Maxim's barrel was encased in a brass waterfilled
jacket that needed to be continually refilled.
The
Maxim machine gun was grudingly adopted by the British Army in 1890 -the men signing
the cheques preferred the slash and dash of the cavalry, this lead was eagerly
followed by most other European nations.
According to often quoted sources,
the Maxim was first used to devastating effect in the Anglo-Matabele war of 1893-94,
where in one encounter the murderous Maxim gun cut down 5,000 Matabele warriors
armed only with muzzle loading rifles, spears and the belief that this was their
land that they were protecting.
So went most of the African resistance,
unable to withstand the technological superiority of the invading European nations.
By this invention, warfare had changed forever, and the Maxim gun would leave it's indelible mark on the casualties of WW I, where all the European combatants had the Maxim machinegun -or better copies.
The Maxim gun mounted on a Dunonald gun carriage.
disengaged, the firing pin is cocked and the trigger sear disengaged.
This rotates and allows the firing pin (3) to snap forward, firing the chambered
cartridge (4).
Recoil (5) starts immediately the bullet starts to move .
As the bullet leaves the muzzle, some of the escaping gases are caught in
the booster and impinge on the face of the muzzle, assisting the barrel and
other moving parts to the rear.
the roller (5), breaking the toggle action.
The recoil accelerates the lock assembly to the rear (6).
This motion winds up the fusee (recoil) chain.
The rotary action of the sidelevers shank (not shown) pushes down on the
projecting tail of the tumbler (7), that pulls the firing pin to the rear, where the
tumbler is held in a cocked position by the trigger sear (8).
Meanwhile the extractor has drawn the next cartridge out of the belt and into
the feed slot. As the lock assembly moves to the rear (6), the extractor drops
sharply down (9), aligning the fresh cartridge B with the bore and the spent
case A with the ejection tube.
cartridge B, held by the extractor, is chambered (11). The spent case A is
pushed into the ejection tube (12), being held there by a spring to act as a plug
to seal the ejection tube from contaminents entering and clogging the mechanism.
The spent case is pushed out by the next spent case.
moves sharply upward (14), leaving the spent case A in the ejection tube.
At the top of the extractor's cycle, it takes up cartridge C.
As the connecting rod is now straight, this disengages the trigger sear (15)
and the gun will fire again if the lock trigger is still held back by pressure on
the trigger.