Federico:
Ah! Ok, now I understand, I'm sorry! No, no, let me explain... I'm concentrating in the Army Museum because is the one I'm more familiar with... that Museum was founded in 1803, or at least the institution that constitutes its backbone was founded then. It starts an expansion, understood as a fierce policy of acquisition of exemplars, at the decade of 1830, when all the Military Delegations around the world are asked to send items that could be deemed interesting for the museum's objectives. This policy was more or less maintained through the whole century, and though far from being the main body of items sent, they included ethnographic objects, a percentage of which were weapons. The celebration of the 1886 "Exposición General de Filipinas" ("General Exposition of the Philippines") in Madrid saw indeed an increase of the flux of items from there, but it doesn't means that it was inexistent before that. Not to forget the donations from private individuals.
So, the interest was there long before the Colonies were lost. I hope this clarifies things a little bit...
