AHC/PC: Western Martial Arts (Hand to Hand) Traditions

[Errnge]

Now, as we probably all know, the East is famous for its long and surviving hand to hand combat traditions. Kung Fu, Muay Thai, Karate, Jujitsu, Thai Kwon Do, and hundreds of other styles evolved and flourished there.

However, in the West (Europe and the rest of the Mediterranean Basin), there has not been so much. All that we have nowadays is Boxing and Wrestling. Pankration used to be very popular in Ancient Greece, but so far as I know, this is the end of Western Martial Arts. Other styles of hand to hand combat in the West never evolved.

So, how can we create some martial arts in the West focusing on hand to hand combat? What areas would be best suited for them? How would they come about? What might they look like?

One scenario I was thinking of would be if after one of Ireland's many rebellions against the British, the British made it illegal for an Irishman to own weapons (kind of like what Japan did to Okinawa, leading to the rise of Karate).

So, what do y'all think, and what are some other possibilities?

[La Rouge Beret]

What about Savate you can punch and kick however no headbutts or elbows, Boxing is still a reasonable sport and at this time it would be bare knuckled as well. How about the Russian steppe wrestling that's fairly brutal?

[Errnge]

What about Savate you can punch and kick however no headbutts or elbows, Boxing is still a reasonable sport and at this time it would be bare knuckled as well. How about the Russian steppe wrestling that's fairly brutal?

I don't know much about Russian steppe wrestling. Is it a strong tradition in Russia even today? and if not, how can we make it such?

[Amedras]

Historically, Western Europe did have a lot of unarmed martial arts. They had two problems:
AFAICT, they were overwhelmingly the unarmed component of an armed style.
Those armed styles generally abandoned them when guns became more efficient ways of killing people than melee.

For Western martial arts, I nominate France, which kinda does have a surviving native martial arts tradition (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savate) from the "Before 1900" timeframe.

[Chengar Qordath]

Historically, Western Europe did have a lot of unarmed martial arts. They had two problems:
AFAICT, they were overwhelmingly the unarmed component of an armed style.
Those armed styles generally abandoned them when guns became more efficient ways of killing people than melee.

Indeed; the West had no shortage of martial arts in the past, but Western Martial Arts were never anything more than strictly practical, and thus died out once they no longer had enough military value to offset the training time. Eastern martial arts, by contrast, tended to acquire a spiritual and cultural components in addition to their strictly practical benefits, which allowed the Eastern Martial Arts tradition to survive.

So, your best chance at keeping Western Martial Arts alive is to give them enough spiritual/cultural significance that they survive despite not being practical from a military standpoint.

[Cryptic]

So, your best chance at keeping Western Martial Arts alive is to give them enough spiritual/cultural significance that they survive despite not being practical from a military standpoint.
Maybe Saint Ignatius of Loyola (former soldier and founder of the Jesuits) does not completely abandon his military training. Instead he incorperates western martial arts into his spiritual exercizes?

[Jello_Biafra]

Now, as we probably all know, the East is famous for its long and surviving hand to hand combat traditions. Kung Fu, Muay Thai, Karate, Jujitsu, Thai Kwon Do, and hundreds of other styles evolved and flourished there.

However, in the West (Europe and the rest of the Mediterranean Basin), there has not been so much. All that we have nowadays is Boxing and Wrestling. Pankration used to be very popular in Ancient Greece, but so far as I know, this is the end of Western Martial Arts. Other styles of hand to hand combat in the West never evolved.

So, how can we create some martial arts in the West focusing on hand to hand combat? What areas would be best suited for them? How would they come about? What might they look like?

One scenario I was thinking of would be if after one of Ireland's many rebellions against the British, the British made it illegal for an Irishman to own weapons (kind of like what Japan did to Okinawa, leading to the rise of Karate).

So, what do y'all think, and what are some other possibilities?
Basically, the first Olympic committees killed the revival of pankration, due to the correctly perceived danger and savagery of the sport.

[Scipio Terra Maria]

Basically, the first Olympic committees killed the revival of pankration, due to the correctly perceived danger and savagery of the sport.

I would would say that the Olympic committee was right. Historically that sport is brutal.

[Polish Eagle]

Maybe Saint Ignatius of Loyola (former soldier and founder of the Jesuits) does not completely abandon his military training. Instead he incorperates western martial arts into his spiritual exercizes?

Martial Artist Jesuits. I like this. Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "the Pope's Shock Troops." :D

Perhaps a tradition of hand-to-hand dueling can help? Duels by the sword kept fencing alive to the present day. If dueling is done with fist rather than blade, a form of Western martial arts can survive.

[Elfwine]

The problem is that fencing resembles Western martial arts from the days in which they had anything to do with actual combat in only the most superficial way.

Also, it seems the unarmed aspects of the age of melee's combat styles were a) "dirty" and b) not involving much in the way of striking. (see the ARMA website)

Not a good basis for a fighting style for unarmed duels that had anything to do with its predecessors. It might still be "Western martial arts", but...

[Scipio Terra Maria]

Maybe Saint Ignatius of Loyola (former soldier and founder of the Jesuits) does not completely abandon his military training. Instead he incorperates western martial arts into his spiritual exercizes?

This could also lead to other societies taking up martial arts, taking inspirations from the Jesuits.

This could lead to greater diversity of saved western martial arts.

[vitemajoren]

Do not forget glima, it is still practiced today in Iceland and
other parts of Scandinavia.

[SavoyTruffle]

Martial Artist Jesuits. I like this. Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "the Pope's Shock Troops." :D

Perhaps a tradition of hand-to-hand dueling can help? Duels by the sword kept fencing alive to the present day. If dueling is done with fist rather than blade, a form of Western martial arts can survive.

And with minimal butterflies, what if we have a martial art practising-Matteo Ricci meeting Shaolin monks? :D:D

[basileus]

Maybe Saint Ignatius of Loyola (former soldier and founder of the Jesuits) does not completely abandon his military training. Instead he incorperates western martial arts into his spiritual exercizes?

Shaolin Jesuits? :D
Jeremy Irons as Bruce Lee in "Mission?" :D

[Errnge]

Do not forget glima, it is still practiced today in Iceland and
other parts of Scandinavia.

What is Glima? do you have a link that can give some information?

and by the way, Bruce Lee in the Mission would have been crazy. Love that movie

[Burton K Wheeler]

Now, as we probably all know, the East is famous for its long and surviving hand to hand combat traditions. Kung Fu, Muay Thai, Karate, Jujitsu, Thai Kwon Do, and hundreds of other styles evolved and flourished there.

However, in the West (Europe and the rest of the Mediterranean Basin), there has not been so much. All that we have nowadays is Boxing and Wrestling. Pankration used to be very popular in Ancient Greece, but so far as I know, this is the end of Western Martial Arts. Other styles of hand to hand combat in the West never evolved.

So, how can we create some martial arts in the West focusing on hand to hand combat? What areas would be best suited for them? How would they come about? What might they look like?

One scenario I was thinking of would be if after one of Ireland's many rebellions against the British, the British made it illegal for an Irishman to own weapons (kind of like what Japan did to Okinawa, leading to the rise of Karate).

So, what do y'all think, and what are some other possibilities?

I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of the difference between Eastern and Western martial arts. Forms of boxing and wrestling remained viable in Europe from the medieval era on down and directly inspired Freestyle/Folkstyle/Grece-Roman wrestling of today as well as standard boxing and Savate (as well as more fringe things like that Russian one-handed boxing). Nearly every culture in the world has some form of competitive wrestling, and though the rules vary a bit, the techniques used usually wind up being the same. Same is true of boxing, though it's a bit less universal.

The best analogy to the history of martial arts in Europe is Japan, where jujitsu, the unarmed component of military fighting styles, was nearly dead by the late 1800's until codified into Judo by Jigaro Kano. Judo was just a method of training which included a certain philosophy and principles, but the techniques it collected were virtually identical to those you can see illustrated in European fechtbooks from the medieval and Renaissance eras. Western wrestling is different from judo more due to the various rulesets that were codified in the 1800's and the tendency to fight shirtless rather than with a gi.

Karate and its derivatives in other countries were just a Japanization of Chinese boxing. The current fractionization of Chinese martial arts and the existence of "internal" styles is worthy of some discussion, but fundamentally and historically most Chinese martial arts can be broken down into "boxing" and unarmed combat (I don't know a lot about wrestling in China). If you look at a Chinese boxing style like Wing Tsun, it looks quite a bit like old-school Western pugilism, to the point where Wing Tsun is used to simulate boxing fights in period movies.

Southeast Asia has a variety of full-contact boxing styles, of which Muay Thai is best known, but it's literally nothing but a full contact boxing ruleset which hybridizes effortlessly with Western boxing and some schools of Karate in modern competitive kickboxing.

So yeah, things have diverged a bit since the 1800's, but fundamentally the martial traditions of Asia and Europe aren't a bit different.

EDIT: Tae Kwon Do is literally nothing but Karate with a bit of kim chi flavoring and all the blather about how it's an ancient Korean tradition is just that, blather. Certainly Koreans in the past practiced boxing and wrestling, just like everyone else on Earth. There is nothing mystical or magical about martial arts and there are no techniques which are unique to any country or training style except as an artifact of training methodology and competition ruleset.

Pankration wasn't the "end of Western Martial arts", it was just one of the last rulesets in the West that mixed striking and grappling. There are very few Asian competitive styles that allow both, and one of the only continuous striking+grappling martial traditions I can think of is Senagalese wrestling.

[NothingNow]

The problem is that fencing resembles Western martial arts from the days in which they had anything to do with actual combat in only the most superficial way.

That's because it derives from the Comparatively pathetic French and Italian schools, with a continual development towards safety, and less practical thrusting attacks.

IIRC, the Spanish and German traditions were notably less civilized, and there are records floating around discussing the odd Duel to the death between English Fencing masters in the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras.

[Polish Eagle]

That's because it derives from the Comparatively pathetic French and Italian schools, with a continual development towards safety, and less practical thrusting attacks.


Perhaps Cardinal Richelieu is to blame for that. When he was in power, dueling was criminalized. It stands to reason that the French nobility then rewrote the laws of swordplay to make it into a sport.

[Errnge]

I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of the difference between Eastern and Western martial arts. Forms of boxing and wrestling remained viable in Europe from the medieval era on down and directly inspired Freestyle/Folkstyle/Grece-Roman wrestling of today as well as standard boxing and Savate (as well as more fringe things like that Russian one-handed boxing). Nearly every culture in the world has some form of competitive wrestling, and though the rules vary a bit, the techniques used usually wind up being the same. Same is true of boxing, though it's a bit less universal.

The best analogy to the history of martial arts in Europe is Japan, where jujitsu, the unarmed component of military fighting styles, was nearly dead by the late 1800's until codified into Judo by Jigaro Kano. Judo was just a method of training which included a certain philosophy and principles, but the techniques it collected were virtually identical to those you can see illustrated in European fechtbooks from the medieval and Renaissance eras. Western wrestling is different from judo more due to the various rulesets that were codified in the 1800's and the tendency to fight shirtless rather than with a gi.

Karate and its derivatives in other countries were just a Japanization of Chinese boxing. The current fractionization of Chinese martial arts and the existence of "internal" styles is worthy of some discussion, but fundamentally and historically most Chinese martial arts can be broken down into "boxing" and unarmed combat (I don't know a lot about wrestling in China). If you look at a Chinese boxing style like Wing Tsun, it looks quite a bit like old-school Western pugilism, to the point where Wing Tsun is used to simulate boxing fights in period movies.

Southeast Asia has a variety of full-contact boxing styles, of which Muay Thai is best known, but it's literally nothing but a full contact boxing ruleset which hybridizes effortlessly with Western boxing and some schools of Karate in modern competitive kickboxing.

So yeah, things have diverged a bit since the 1800's, but fundamentally the martial traditions of Asia and Europe aren't a bit different.

EDIT: Tae Kwon Do is literally nothing but Karate with a bit of kim chi flavoring and all the blather about how it's an ancient Korean tradition is just that, blather. Certainly Koreans in the past practiced boxing and wrestling, just like everyone else on Earth. There is nothing mystical or magical about martial arts and there are no techniques which are unique to any country or training style except as an artifact of training methodology and competition ruleset.

Pankration wasn't the "end of Western Martial arts", it was just one of the last rulesets in the West that mixed striking and grappling. There are very few Asian competitive styles that allow both, and one of the only continuous striking+grappling martial traditions I can think of is Senagalese wrestling.

ok, but even still, the east has a much stronger tradition of hand to hand combat.

And it seems overly simplistic to say that boxing is any combat where you strike, and wrestling is any combat where you grapple.

however, i am asking about how can the west acquire the same richness in martial-arts tradition that is present in the east? and what would some of these traditions look like?

i'd be very interested if someone came up with ideas for alternate martial arts styles

[Elfwine]

European martial arts existed - undoubtedly as rich as anywhere else in the world - but they fell into neglect as their relevance to what they were intended for faded.

Preserving them as traditional fighting styles didn't have the appeal it did in Asia.

[YLi]

As a note, most Asian martial arts styles around today are distinctly civilian styles, meant for use by civilians, for civilians, against civilians.

There are still civilian martial arts styles from the West floating around, like boxing or fencing.

[Burton K Wheeler]

ok, but even still, the east has a much stronger tradition of hand to hand combat.

And it seems overly simplistic to say that boxing is any combat where you strike, and wrestling is any combat where you grapple.

however, i am asking about how can the west acquire the same richness in martial-arts tradition that is present in the east? and what would some of these traditions look like?

i'd be very interested if someone came up with ideas for alternate martial arts styles

It isn't overly simplistic at all, and it is in fact literally true. There is a greater complexity to the names of throws in Judo than in folk wrestling styles, but that's just because they were written down in a book by Jigaro Kano. To give an example of how this works, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and SAMBO are both nothing but Judo with different training philosophies and competition rulesets. The roots and style are the same, but BJJ has a much richer repertory of named ground maneuvers and simplifies standing grappling and throws compared to Judo, and SAMBO likewise with its usage of strikes and leglocks.

If you look at Chin Na, despite different roots, it's the same thing as Judo. An armlock is an armlock and a hip throw is a hip throw. The way the body works, there are only a certain number of ways to hurt people. How you codify them and train them may be different, but the number of techniques are going to be limited.

What "richness of martial tradition" are you talking about? The history of martial arts in India, China, Japan, mainland Southeast Asia, and insular Southeast Asia are very different. There isn't really a common theme except for the Chinese concept of internal martial arts, which was imported to China from India at some point over a thousand years ago and spread to other parts of Asia much more recently, in most cases since the 1800s. If you can clarify exactly what you mean when you lump all these disparate things together, then maybe I can start to help you.

European martial arts existed - undoubtedly as rich as anywhere else in the world - but they fell into neglect as their relevance to what they were intended for faded.

Preserving them as traditional fighting styles didn't have the appeal it did in Asia.

Again, this is quite literally not true. Look at how popular wrestling based on folk styles from England and France is in America today, and look at western boxing. Those are no less martial arts than anything in Asia.

As a note, most Asian martial arts styles around today are distinctly civilian styles, meant for use by civilians, for civilians, against civilians.

There are still civilian martial arts styles from the West floating around, like boxing or fencing.

Well, yeah. Martial arts intended as training for soldiers and martial arts intended for competition are different things, but tend to have similar DNA, since there is no way to test technique except in competition.

[Elfwine]

Again, this is quite literally not true. Look at how popular wrestling based on folk styles from England and France is in America today, and look at western boxing. Those are no less martial arts than anything in Asia.


Certainly true on the issue of wrestling and boxing, but not the same thing as the bulk of Western martial arts of the pre-gun era surviving as still-practiced arts.

There isn't a surviving swordplay tradition from the days in which the long sword was a weapon, for instance.

[MNP]

I just think the OP is talking about the popular belief a Shaolin monk would obliterate even the best practitioners of boxing/wrestling in combat.

@Elfwine: Have you seen the revival societies? Those guys are brutal. I've done it once or twice myself and seems really practical.

[Burton K Wheeler]

Certainly true on the issue of wrestling and boxing, but not the same thing as the bulk of Western martial arts of the pre-gun era surviving as still-practiced arts.

There isn't a surviving swordplay tradition from the days in which the long sword was a weapon, for instance.

Well, seeing as that has nothing to do with the OP, I didn't address that point. The thread title even says "hand to hand".

[Elfwine]

Have you seen the revival societies? Those guys are brutal. I've done it once or twice myself and seems really practical.

Only via reading about them. But "revived" and "preserved to the present" are not the same thing.

Not to dismiss what they've done, mind, just noting the difference.

Well, seeing as that has nothing to do with the OP, I didn't address that point. The thread title even says "hand to hand".

Well since most of the lost Western martial arts are lost because the hand-to-hand was a component of (for instance) long sword fighting...

That's my reasoning for mentioning it.

[Valdemar II]

I just think the OP is talking about the popular belief a Shaolin monk would obliterate even the best practitioners of boxing/wrestling in combat.

I heard a interesting storyonce, that some middleage German wrestler travel to East Asiain the early part of last century, and tried fighting some of the master of different eastern martial arts. He more or less crushed everybody.

[MNP]

I heard a interesting storyonce, that some middleage German wrestler travel to East Asiain the early part of last century, and tried fighting some of the master of different eastern martial arts. He more or less crushed everybody.I have no idea if one is better than the other, my personal belief is it has a lot more to do with the individual's own skill and creativity in adapting their knowledge to the situation. I was just speculating as to where the OP was coming from.

[Valdemar II]

I have no idea if one is better than the other, my personal belief is it has a lot more to do with the individual's own skill and creativity in adapting their knowledge to the situation. I was just speculating as to where the OP was coming from.

I don't think it indicate anything about figthing style, it just indicate that a 120 kilo bloke with fighting experience crush 70 kilo blokes in no rules fights. The East Asian at that time had a lot less protein in their food than Europeans had.

[Burton K Wheeler]

Only via reading about them. But "revived" and "preserved to the present" are not the same thing.

Not to dismiss what they've done, mind, just noting the difference.



Well since most of the lost Western martial arts are lost because the hand-to-hand was a component of (for instance) long sword fighting...

That's my reasoning for mentioning it.

I see what you're saying. The difference between Japanese jujitsu/Judo and Western wrestling is that the jujitsu revivalists built their arts out of what had been the hand to hand techniques of the samurai and the Western wrestling built off of peasant recreational traditions while the nearly identical Euro techniques for swordfighters died out. That was a somewhat unique case, though. Other than the insular Southeast Asian tradition and some Chinese styles (the story of Chinese martial arts isn't my area of expertise, but the current state of a million fractured styles is a relatively recent one), commonly practiced martial arts techniques, armed or unarmed, aren't really focused on the science of hurting people as much as they are on competition. Obviously, this is because there isn't really a safe and effective way to teach the use of lethal force against resisting human beings in the same way as one can practice boxing and wrestling, though the art of Harm and fighting sports can cross-pollinate a lot.

I heard a interesting storyonce, that some middleage German wrestler travel to East Asiain the early part of last century, and tried fighting some of the master of different eastern martial arts. He more or less crushed everybody.

Indeed, there was a lot of cross-pollination between wrestlers and boxers from different countries in those days. The early judoka liked to test their techniques against Western and Indian wrestlers and learned a lot from them, also vice versa.