I believe you need to follow the money. In order to produce high quality firearms you need to have wealthy people. During the Victorian era England had a large number of wealthy people with significant amounts of discretionary income. That's why the number of high quality gun makers were centered there. The highest number of wealthy people were centered around London. I'm not saying that there were no other high quality gun makers in other countries but the number of high end manufactures centered in England. High quality requires skill and the number of high end manufactures in England produced many highly skilled tradesmen. It's well know that these highly skilled tradesmen frequenty moved from one company to the next, most likely to increase personal wealth and this resulted in a critical transfer of technology from one company to the next. This technology transfer and melding of one technology with the next is what really accelerated quality in English guns and in my opinion, for what it is worth, is why English guns in general are the highest quality and those made in London are at the very top.

The volume of guns produced really has nothing to do with the highest quality. Although manufacturers such as Beretta and Remington produced good quality and perhaps high quality guns, they did not produce the highest quality firearms. Even their high end, hand made guns did not reach the level of quality seen in the highest quality guns in and around London IMHO.

Tom C

�There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot.�
Aldo Leopold