Cannons & Cartels

Abstract

One of the most attractive exhibits at the Crystal Palace exhibition in London in 1851 was a 6 pounder cannon made of cast steel, a solid flawless ingot weighing 2,000 kilograms, more than twice as much as any previously cast.¹ Admired by, among others, the ageing Lord Wellington, who had defeated Napoleon at the battle of Waterloo in 1815, it promised enhanced reach and much greater reliability. The cannon was produced by the firm Friedrich Krupp AG from the Ruhr Area in Prussian Westphalia, which was to become synonymous with the rise of Prussia and then, the German Reich as a military power before the First World War. In fact, like many other steel and armaments companies, such as the French Schneider Creusot, Krupp regularly exhibited its ever larger and more deadly weapons in national pavilions or its own company pavilions at later world exhibitions.