Historical Aspects of Cannons and Structures

Abstract

Foreign ships came into the territorial seas in the late Edo period forced the shogunate to revitalize the general plan for defending the country. Defending with cannons was planned as a strategic choice and manufacturing of cannons was promoted using the technology in that period. Material processing especially related to the manufacturing of cannons has already been studied in the series of research on material processing and manufacturing in that period. Structures were required by cannons deployed against the foreign ships. Those structures were mainly batteries called Daiba, including other fortifications. They were constructed on the sea and by the seashore all over the country. Components and system for defense are incorporated into the structures for defense and larger structures are composed based on their components and system. The aim of this paper is to research how the components of the structures for defense by deploying cannons had been composed.