Exchange between east and west?

[Mike Chidester]

An acquantance recently posed an interesting question to me. He's one of those types who's convinced of the absolute superiority of all things Asian, and obviously doesn't think much of European martial arts. His question to me was this: Since the earliest manuals we have date from several decades after the first expeditions to China and east Asia, how do we know that the martial arts recorded in the manuals weren't just the European attempts to perform techniques brought back from Asia?

While obviously I think this question is absurd, because the European arts differ significantly from their asian counterparts in many respects, it suggested a different question to me. How much exchange of ideas might there have been between Europe and Asia? Both possessing sophisicated systems of armed and unarmed combat, it seems to me that many masters would have been interested in discovering the techniques of the other continent. Is there any evidence (direct or indirect) of this sort of exchange of knowledge? Did Asian and European martial arts in any way influence each other?

[Steven Engelbach]

In response to your friend's question:

How about, because it doesn't pass the Occam's Razor test?

That is, on the one hand:

1. Expeditions went to Asia and brought back martial arts knowledge. Yet, there is nothing recorded about this, the weapons used in the west appear pretty much unaffected by far eastern influence, there is no "sudden change" in martial arts in the west after the time of any of the expedition to the east. In short, there is not evidence.

OR

2. The was a "parallel evolution" in the west of the development systematic martial arts.

Given the requirement of Occam's razor (all things being equal, take the simple explanation over the complex), I'd have to say #2.

Steve

[William Savage]

Wow Im intriqued by your theory. Since im still in highschool i deal with the asian martial arts fanatics all day. Especially since my best and most frequent sparring partner is obsessed with ninjas and stuff. Anyways about your question, I had thought that there was much illustrated evidence of well structured martial arts from early on. if i were you i might go check out the historical artwork study link on the ARMA home page. Hopfully youll find some examples of distinguishible gaurds/stances from artwork that date before the european contact with asia and are consistant with the fight manuals of the later dates.

Sticken it to the Knight haters,
William Savage

[Jaron Bernstein]

There IS some evidence of military technology migrating from culture to culture. For instance, many innovations in Europeon castle design came about when knights came home from the crusades and the innovations looked...rather like Muslim castles the knights saw on the crusades. Similarly, the Ottomans got much of their gun and naval technology by the copy and paste (or hire Europeon gunners and shipwrights) method. Take a look at Geofrey Parker's excellent The Military Revolution for a far better explanation than I can give. So we can't preclude the idea of cultural exchange taking place to some degree. I would be interested to see what primary sources anyone can produce of specific exchange in hand-to-hand/personal weapon techniques (a letter from some guy saying, "look at the arm lock I learned from a visitor from a far away land..." in 1500 or the like) but I am unaware of any such thing. Doesn't mean it doesn't exist, just that I am not a historian who can do the research to find it. OTOH, there is IMO a certain universality to all this. Odds are, a Chinese master in 1400 and Sigmund Ringeck never met. But amazingly enough, their spear techiques look awful similar. I don't find the is odd at all. There are only so many ways to move the human body and so many ways to move a pointed stick. It is logical that some very similar things would arise simultaneously in different places.

So, in short, I would suggest that BOTH thesis could exist simultaneously. It doesn't have to be one or the other.

[Mike Chidester]

if i were you i might go check out the historical artwork study link on the ARMA home page. Hopfully youll find some examples of distinguishible gaurds/stances from artwork that date before the european contact with asia and are consistant with the fight manuals of the later dates.

Actually, the oldest manual dates back to a few decades after the first European explorers reached east asia. That's what he based his theory on.

[JeffGentry]

Hey Mike

Actualy there was a link on here in another thread to some Egyptin wrestling hirglyph's that look similar to our unarmed and Asian Martial art's so did the Egyptian's steal Asian martial art's too, or go look at some ancient greek vase painting's they look similar to guess they stole the asian martial art's too.


Actualy i have a rule and it applies to me also people are stupid, what i mean by that is most people will believe what they want too and you will not change there mind's because they are afraid to be wrong or they would have to change some other beliefe's that they don't want too and so no matter how much evidence there is it will not matter, if your friend seem's open to changing his belief there is plenty of evidence out there as many have pointed out you can go back to ancient Greece for WMA and a system of teaching look at the Spartan's they had a very systematic way to train there warrior there are thing's all over to substantiate what we say, it is similar and very diffrent at the same time.

Jeff

[Mike Chidester]

Thanks for the responses. I didn't know about the Egyptian thing. But I'm not so much interested in answering the dumb question as I am in whether or not there was any contact between traditions. We know that European martial arts can meet Asian on equal footing, so my question is pretty much, did they ever?

[JeffGentry]

Hey Mike

know that European martial arts can meet Asian on equal footing, so my question is pretty much, did they ever?

My misunderstanding that is a horse of a diffrent color that i do not know.

Jeff

[JeanryChandler]

One point worth noting is that most of the Japanese fencing arts were perfected well AFTER the Fechtbuchs were written...

DB

[Jaron Bernstein]

"We know that European martial arts can meet Asian on equal footing, so my question is pretty much, did they ever?"

Well, the Spanish did take over the Phillipines. There is rich martial history there to be mined. Depends what you consider "Asian". There is a long history of Christian-Islamic warfare over good chunks of the globe if you consider the Turks to be asian. The mongols visited Russia (and damn near everywhere else) for some time. To this day the three mongolian national sports are wrestling, riding and archery. Japan was unified by a guy who got his guns from Portugese traders. One could speculate about what other technique and techology tranfers took place along with Portugese guns. I don't personally know, but I would wager that someone has examined that question in print somewhere.

I would suggest looking first into larger history of where the west and asia and met up. Then take that particular encounter that interests ye most and start digging in it for specific exchanges of martial techniques that may be documented.

A few personal favorite books on the larger encounters I like:
The Military Revolution - Geofrey Parker
Guns Germs and Steel - Jared Diamond
Carnage and Culture - Victor Davis Hanson

Regarding Asian things martial, anything by the now departed Donn Draeger.

Good luck. If you find anything interesting ("while in China in 1500 I learned this sword move" or "the Portugese captain whoever taught a technique to a samurai in 1600" sort of thing) I would love if you could post it here.

[Jay Vail]

Since the earliest manuals we have date from several decades after the first expeditions to China and east Asia, how do we know that the martial arts recorded in the manuals weren't just the European attempts to perform techniques brought back from Asia?

Possible but unlikely. Greek vase and statuary art from 2500 years ago depicts many of the same techniques found in Talhoffer and Fiore, which suggested a local European origin of many of these methods rather than Asian influence. If anything else, the influence could have run the other way, due Macedonian conquests and consequent cultural transmission in SW Asia.

because the European arts differ significantly from their asian counterparts in many resp

There are differences, surely, but to me, and I've studied Asian combat methods since 1964, there are more similarities than differences, particularly in the fundamentals. Chin na and Chinese fast wrestling, for instance, contain the same basic technique base as kampfringen, with the main exception that kampfringen does not use wrist locks.

Is there any evidence (direct or indirect) of this sort of exchange of knowledge?

To date there is no solid evidence, only speculation.

Did Asian and European martial arts in any way influence each other?

Ditto.

[Gene Tausk]

Hi Mike:

You wrote:
"An acquantance recently posed an interesting question to me. He's one of those types who's convinced of the absolute superiority of all things Asian, and obviously doesn't think much of European martial arts"

Welcome to our world.

You wrote:

"Since the earliest manuals we have date from several decades after the first expeditions to China and east Asia, how do we know that the martial arts recorded in the manuals weren't just the European attempts to perform techniques brought back from Asia?"

First of all, your friend is incorrect. The earliest known fechtbuch, I.33 was written hundreds of years before Talhoffer and thus before these expeditions.

Second, the lands of China and Korea were well-known to the Romans (the name "China" is from the rulers of that land from the time the Romans encountered the Chinese and means "people of the Chin" referring to the Chin dynasty. The Chinese call themselves "people of the Han" referring to another dynasty and one of which they are more proud) so the idea that exchanges between China and Europe occurred only in the late Middle Ages/early Renaissance is absurd.

Third, as already pointed out by Jay Vail, we have documentation of the fighting arts of the Greeks dating back to 2500 BCE, both on vases and written accounts of pankration, boxing, wrestling and armed combat.

Fourth, if you want to consider Egypt as part of the West, then we have documentation going back even further from the bas reliefs on the tomb of Beni-Hassan, showing advanced wrestling techniques.

Fifth, we have extensive documentation (alas, no fechtbuchs however) of Roman fighting techniques in both gladiatorial combat and mass army combat.

Your friend's theory, therefore, completely fails.

Actually, Jim Aravantis, founder of modern Pankration, suggests it was the other way around; that Alexander the Great brought Greek fighting techniques to Asia when he invaded India. I really don't want to speculate on that.

In any case, as stated earlier, your friend is wrong. You might want to tell him politely, but such people are generally unwilling to listen to the facts you present. They already know everything and you are either (a) wrong or (b) ignorant.

Incidentally, John C has pointed out that English sailors encountered Japanese pirates on many occassions in the 1600's. During these combats, the sailors were armed (besides firearms) with rapiers and cut-and-thrust swords and managed to do quite well against the Japanese. If the Japanese swords and sword arts were so superior, we might be expected to hear that the English were in awe of the Japanese swords. No such documentation, to my knowledge anyway, exists.

Good luck with your friend.


----------->>>>>>>>>gene

[JeanryChandler]

There was a guy from Portugal who posted about (IIRC) 12 documented incidents of "duels" fought between Portugese sailors or soldiers, and Japanese soldiers (presumably Samurai) in Japan. 11 of the 12 "duels" were won by the Portugese sailors, the one defeat allegedly due to excessive drunkeness, was avenged the next day by the mans officer, who fought a follow up duel and killed the Japanese soldier responsible.

The documents specified the duels were fought with swords but the poster did not say what kind. From what we know of the time though, the Portugese would have in all likelyhood been using cut and thrust swords, probably espada ropera types, or rapiers, and probably used them in conjunction with blocking daggers or bucklers.

Allegedly all these anecdotes are in the Portugese national archives, somebody is supposed to be translating them into English.

Jeanry

[Stacy Clifford]

I.33 was written by German monks/ex-soldiers and is given a date of approximately 1295. In order to have sufficient skill and knowledge to create such a work, the creators of the document would have to have been practicing the arts depicted for years prior to this.

Marco Polo returned to Italy from China in 1295, and his Travels was not published initially until at least 1298, after which it took several more years for translations in other languages to appear. While Polo was not necessarily the first European to travel to China and return, his tales were by far spread the most widely and spurred the most interest. I don't think Germans were too involved in the east-west exchange at that time either; Italy was the main center of far-flung trade.

[William Savage]

Yeah so your right Mike about the oldest fight manual which is from about 1295. However i was thinking just of artwork itself, like the mjowskie bible or the bayeux tapestry that date before 1275 (when Marco Polo went to china).
also whene i sugested you go look at the art here i didn't mean to sound like a snob, just trying to help.