2002 - Our Year in Review

This is our third year-in-review article. It’s hard to believe how quickly time flies. The past year has once again been the most active and successful for ARMA so far. Our acquisition of historical source manuals continued with 5 new ones being added and our membership grew by more than 75 new members. We had the addition of a new Advisor, Dr. David Nicolle, and we hosted more events than ever before, including seminars or NTP Workshops in: Las Vegas, Provo, San Francisco, Los Alamos, Sarasota, Atlanta, Princeton, New York City, Illinois, South Carolina, Sweden, and also here in Houston. That's twelve events in the USA alone, virtually one a month.

We continued our interaction with the academic community as ARMA also presented lectures and demos at NYU, Texas A&M, Furman University, Columbus, and the TEMA event at the University of St. Thomas. Additionally, there was the first ARMA Europe gathering in Krakow, Poland, and ARMA members attending the Paris HEMA event, as well as ARMA Australia’s hosting of the historical fencing symposium down under.

Additionally, we held the ARMA Retreat event in Georgia, plus the ARMA DC & Virginia Study Group get-together, and our attendance at the Las Vegas Sword Show. ARMA and its advisors were also featured once more on The History Channel, consulted with major computer game developers, lectured and performed at the ORIGINS gaming convention, and even appeared briefly in a FOX TV special on extreme videos.
Members continued making many great contacts and colleagues within the ARMA community. We produced more than half a dozen significant new research articles and several essays, added over 100 megs of training and test-cutting videos, extended the member’s materials, and added special projects galore to the site. Our training curriculum was further refined, our Study Sheets updated, and we certified several new Free Scholars.
We added a new vendor for wasters and wooden weapons, replacing an unreliable and unethical one, and acquiring many new training tool designs in the process.

Articles on ARMA or written by ARMA members were published in Renaissance Magazine, The Sword, Master of Arms, Fighter, and Histoire Medievale. Plus, we saw the publication of the Codex Wallerstein manual (from Paladin Press) co-authored by our own Poland Study Group Director. We also added to the site another exclusive interview with leading expert Dr. Sydney Anglo, and several special featured research papers on swords and historical fencing.

A major loss for the entire historical fencing and arms and armor community was felt with the passing of the great and inspiring sword researcher, and our own senior Advisor, Ewart Oakeshott, who will be missed terribly. Mr. Oakeshott’s legacy and influence will continue long after his time.

The biggest event news for us in 2002 was, of course, our change-over in January from “HACA” to ARMA, marking recognition of the "renaissance" in historical fencing studies. In summary, 2002 was a year of growth and change and exciting new directions.