Testing times: Swiss military weapons procurement 1870–1900

This article concerns Swiss weapons procurement at the end of the nineteenth century and attempts to explain how and why a small number of officers and politicians made consequential decisions about the arms that would defend their nation. People and processes are described and selection criteria are illuminated by looking at some weapons proposals that were rejected. The article concludes by explaining why the rigorous and logical procedures previously described seemed to have failed when the troubled IG.89 ‘Schmidt-Rubin’1 rifle was adopted by locating it not solely in a technological or organisational context but in the wider realm of international politics.