[3] After the Mauser brothers finished work on the Model 71/84 in 1880, the design team set out to create a small caliber repeater that used smokeless powder.

[5] Paul Mauser, who was not aware of the commission's work until 1888, managed to sell an improved version of his M1871/84 rifles as M1887 to the Ottoman Empire.

[6] In 1886, Manufacture d’Armes de L’État started trials of several mostly foreign designs (including Kropatchek and Jarmann[7]) of which the M1885 Remington–Lee won, but was considered too complicated to be adopted.

[9] Paul Mauser didn't participate in the aforementioned rounds of the Belgian trials, but as soon as he was aware of the Kommissionsgewehr rifle, he started developing a new one.

[10] He patented a rear-locked bolt design somewhat similar to a Lee action in February 1888[11] and a detachable magazine in April 1888 (shown to the left).

[10] This was to no avail because it was too late (since December 1887 they already started the final troop trials of the future Lee-Metford, the pattern of which was sealed in November 1888 after minor tweaks[15]).

[6] The last round of Beverloo trials with reportedly 24 participants (including Nagant, Schulhof, Marga, Mannlicher, and Engh) began in May 1889 and continued into the summer.

[23][24] The trials finished in August,[25] Mauser won over the Mannlicher-derived design and a Nagant, and the rifle was adopted on October 23, 1889, with some changes to the form of the safety, tweaks to the sights, and lengthening the barrel.

FN's factory was overrun during World War I, so they outsourced production to a facility in Birmingham, England and Hopkins & Allen in the United States.

The Birmingham factory was originally set up by the well-known gunmaking firm W. W. Greener, and was subsequently handed over to the Belgian Government later in the war.

[51] While this was taking place, the Argentine Small Arms Commission contacted Mauser in 1886 to replace their Remington Rolling Block rifles.

[61] In 1893, Spain bought several thousand Argentine Modelo 1891 rifles and carbines to quell the Melilla revolt in the Moroccan Rif.

[62] A revolutionary new feature of the design was the ability to load the single-stack detachable box magazine that extended below the bottom of the stock with individual 7.65×53mm Mauser rounds by pushing the cartridges into the receiver top opening or via stripper clips.

[64] The jacket was instituted as a feature intended to maintain the effectiveness of the barrel and the solid wooden body over time, otherwise lengthening its service life and long-term accuracy when exposed to excessive firing and battlefield abuse.

[citation needed] The Model 1889 featured a single-piece solid wooden body running most of the length of the weapon, ending just aft of the muzzle.

It contained two bands, and iron sights were fitted at the middle of the receiver top and at the muzzle like virtually all other rifles of the time.