Nitro Express

Created from loading the already popular .450 Black Powder Express with cordite, the .450 NE was a fast and accurate cartridge capable of taking all African and Indian dangerous game.

[1] Rigby soon solved the problems with the .450 NE, which quickly became the standard big-game cartridge used throughout Britain’s African colonies and India.

In 1903 Jeffery & Co decided to outdo them all, creating the .600 Nitro Express, the most powerful sporting cartridge commercially available for over half a century.

In 1899 Rigby approached the engineers at Mauser to make a special Gewehr 98 bolt action to handle their .400/350 Nitro Express.

In the late 1890s, the British Empire was facing a series of internal insurrections in India and the Sudan, and the .450 calibre .577/450 Martini–Henry rifle was the most widely distributed firearm in the hands of the anti-British forces.