Has anyone heard anything about this paper or it's author in regard to the work by Thomas Page 'The Use of the Broadsword' - a true
method of the Highlanders
Louie...
British Society for Eighteenth–Century Studies Annual Conference 2006
Panel topic: Scotland and Ireland
Speaker Miss Bethan Mair Jenkins, Trinity College, Oxford
PaperTitle Thomas Page's 'The Use of the Broadsword' - a true
method of the Highlanders?
Abstract
During the 18th century, instructors in the martial arts experienced
an increase in their social status and were seen as more respectable
than they had been during previous centuries. This, combined with
greater degrees of literacy, has resulted in many books on the
subject being published during this period. Notable writers of the
period include Sir William Hope, Zachary Wylde, Captian Godfrey, and
many others. The prevalence of books from this period has proven of
great use to those interested in the study and reconstruction of the
fighting arts of that period. However, it is often naively assumed
by many in the martial arts research community that whatever is
written in these books is true and martially correct. A good example
of this is the swordmaster Thomas Page, who subtitled his major work
on the Use of the Broadsword "The True Method of Fighting with that
Weapon as it is now in Use among the Highlanders; deduc'd from the
Use of the Scymitar; with every Throw, Cut, Guard, and Disarm."
Published less than a year after the Jacobite uprising of 1745, the
work has since been taken and studied as an authentic manual of the
methods of fighting of the Highlanders at the time. I wish to argue
in the course of this paper, however, that what is presented to us
is a composite text, with early examples of both primitivist and
Orientalist discourse, influenced by methods other than those
potentially in use amongst the Highlanders of Page's day, as well as
uncovering some of Page's other motives in writing such a text and
presenting it to the public as the genuine fighting style of the
highland Scots.
