What's the slowest that gun tech could have developed?

Could there have been any possibility of a WW1 sort of conflict into the 20th century where muskets were still used?
 
Could there have been any possibility of a WW1 sort of conflict into the 20th century where muskets were still used?

World wars with muskets? Yes there were a good few contenders, the Seven Years War famously so but the American Revolutionary War also saw Britain and France fighting in India for example while Napoleon notoriously went to Egypt and fought in Palestine and Syria and the British less famously tried to force the Dardanelles add in fighting in France, Russia and the Dalmation coast and the Napoleonic wars easily cover the same ground as World War 1 (plus a few bits extra).

You have have the levee en masses with the French Republic.

But a war that dissolves into trench lines across a large swathe of territory is just very unlikely without the precise weapons mix and lack of communications systems found in 1914. So even assuming that weaponry remained static past the invention of canning (another crucial ingredient in World War1 if you want to avoid returning your armies to winter quarters) you are still likely to see discreet armies manoeuvring blocked only by fortresses or each other.
 
I don't think that is what the OP means (and the Lines of Torres Vedras or Sevastapol or Petersburg are examples of WW1 style battlefields in the 19th Century)

Perhaps in China around the time of the revolution? Although your point about other enablers for WW1 conflict is well made. If China has access to barbed wire and machine guns then why not rifles?
 
Like the Pope who forbade use of cross-bows on 'Christians', you'd need some sort of 'Geneva Convention' that banned 'rifled' weapons of war...

IIRC, *hunting* rifles were around a lot earlier than you'd expect.

Sorry, broken night, so my Google-Fu don't work...
 
Like the Pope who forbade use of cross-bows on 'Christians', you'd need some sort of 'Geneva Convention' that banned 'rifled' weapons of war...

And yet, Christians used cross-bows. And they dropped them not because of the pope, but because of rifles. So if the pope wants to loose his authority even faster than OTL, then yes, he should ban rifles.
 
Delaying rifles by a hundred years seems fairly easy with a POD a few centuries back. If the question is how to delay more advanced weapons without delaying other technology, I don't think that's possible. The only thing I can think of is the idea about China mentioned above.
 
Perhaps the lack of smokeless powder would be an easier PoD. Without it, guns are limited, while not to the point of muzzle loading rifles, but much less precise and powerful. (It was introduced with the Lebel in 1886).
 
Perhaps the lack of smokeless powder would be an easier PoD. Without it, guns are limited, while not to the point of muzzle loading rifles, but much less precise and powerful. (It was introduced with the Lebel in 1886).

That seems much more doable. During the Spanish-American War much of the US force were still using black powder in 1898. An earlier WWI and slightly later smokeless powder would work.
 
Perhaps the lack of smokeless powder would be an easier PoD. Without it, guns are limited, while not to the point of muzzle loading rifles, but much less precise and powerful. (It was introduced with the Lebel in 1886).

The problem is that many people from every industrialized or semi-industrialied was trying to develop something better than black powder. If the French don't then the British or the Germans or the Americans will. Once any kind of chemical industry develops even rudimentary they will discover something better than black powder.
 
And yet, Christians used cross-bows. And they dropped them not because of the pope, but because of rifles. So if the pope wants to loose his authority even faster than OTL, then yes, he should ban rifles.
Are we talking "rifles" in the sense of long guns, or "rifles" in the sense of weapons with grooved barrels for superior accuracy?

The problem is that many people from every industrialized or semi-industrialied was trying to develop something better than black powder. If the French don't then the British or the Germans or the Americans will. Once any kind of chemical industry develops even rudimentary they will discover something better than black powder.
Hell, IIRC some west African state was experimenting with their own black powder substitute in order to avoid being reliant on European supplies.
 
Perhaps the lack of smokeless powder would be an easier PoD. Without it, guns are limited, while not to the point of muzzle loading rifles, but much less precise and powerful. (It was introduced with the Lebel in 1886).
You would still have machine guns, maxim made his first machine gun in 45-70 government in the 1880's
Honestly for the op you would see the war move to a battle of sieges. The US was largely black powder muzzle loaders during the civil war. We had the siege of Richmond and Petersburg. This also does not stop one of the main barriers during the war, barbed wire. It would still mean trenches and the end of the cavalry charge, only more would die as cities would be under siege.
 
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