Why no European Martial Arts?

[TheOneAndOnly]

I've often wondered why medieval Europe never produced any still-existent martial arts, like the far east.
I mean China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Thailand and probably others all produced a plethora of martial arts from medieval times to the modern day. Why didn't Europe?
Of course medieval Europeans did have martial arts in the sense they learned archery, swordfighting, chivalric codes, jousting and perhaps modern fencing is what remains of these. But to the best of my knowledge Europe never produced anything like karate or kung-fu or muay thai. I wonder why?

I had this discussion with a friend who thought the reason was due to the fundamental differences between western culture and eastern culture. In the east students are supposed to sit and listen to their masters and teachers and absorb their knowledge unquestioningly. So it was relatively easy to pass on a system of fighting from master to pupil, just teach him the moves and he'll emulate them. Whereas in the west, since medieval times men were supposed to find their own paths. It was a lot harder to pass on your knowledge when the person your teaching wants to go off and learn his own thing.
As evidence to back this up my friend mentioned the early grail romances (he's a big fan of the da vinci code), where each knight rather than follow their predecessor's path hunting for the grail, found their own path through uncharted woods etc. Apparently this is a defining characteristic of western civilization, individuality and noncomformity. People in the west are on their own missions, searching for that something (grail) that they will never find.
So with that in mind it was inevitable that western martial arts would fade and die as men were more interested in finding their own ways to wage war and fight.

Maybe that's a load of rubbish, but still, it's food for thought.

[spiritmech]

I would say it's an evolutionary adaptation. Certain people in the east were kept from having weapons so they figured out how to fight with their bare hands and feet. They were so intent on waging war that they invented martial arts. (I'm being sarcastic, here.)

For whatever reason, people in the west either didn't want to fight or found access to some sort of weapon.

Steve

[bar Jonah]

No European martial arts? What are you talking about?

Boxing? Fencing? Savate? That's not even the tip of the iceberg.

"Martial" means pertaining to fighting/combat. Fencing is most certainly a martial art, as are boxing and savate. There are others; I'm just too groggy from having just awakened, to think of any others. LOL

Almost every culture in the world has developed some kind of martial art, if not several. South American kapoeira. The Soviet military's art of sambo. And on and on. It's all martial arts.

[TheOneAndOnly]

No European martial arts? What are you talking about?

Boxing? Fencing? Savate? That's not even the tip of the iceberg.

True. I found it hard to word my thoughts. I meant we have no (or very very few) martial arts with punches, throws, locks, kicks, you know your standard martial arts movie.

All cultures are bound to develop sports relating to fighting, like boxing, bare knuckle fighting etc. But the orient seems to have more "technical" martial arts than other places, specifically Europe.

[Warcraft3]

No European martial arts? What are you talking about?

Boxing? Fencing? Savate? That's not even the tip of the iceberg.

"Martial" means pertaining to fighting/combat. Fencing is most certainly a martial art, as are boxing and savate. There are others; I'm just too groggy from having just awakened, to think of any others. LOL

Almost every culture in the world has developed some kind of martial art, if not several. South American kapoeira. The Soviet military's art of sambo. And on and on. It's all martial arts.


RightIdea is correct here......there are indeed Western style martial arts.

I find any one style to be quite restrictive though.....and I guess I agree with Bruce Lee on this issue.

I have studied/practised the striking arts for several years and I find alot of it to simply be BS. Sometimes a good boxing class for a few months is worth more than years of certain styles of "karate" or "kung fu".

I plan on getting involved in Mixed Martial Arts when I get back home.....Id like to compete in some amateur "no rules" matches. But this means I have to learn some ground fighting....so that should be fun and interesting.

I think the best thing to do is learn a few different styles of striking/groundfighting and go forward from there.

Just some thoughts.........




Russ

[bar Jonah]

True. I found it hard to word my thoughts. I meant we have no (or very very few) martial arts with punches, throws, locks, kicks, you know your standard martial arts movie.

All cultures are bound to develop sports relating to fighting, like boxing, bare knuckle fighting etc. But the orient seems to have more "technical" martial arts than other places, specifically Europe.
More technical?

Savate. Greco-Roman wrestling. I know there are others. It's just that Asian unarmed martial arts have gotten more press over the last three decades because they became fadish, creating a kind of racial stereotype. Also, the Western/European cultures did create many unarmed martial arts, but as societies progressed, they tended to start to focus widespread on just a few of these, such that when it came to this specific aspect of culture, European/western cultures tended to be very consistent and unified. A few arts became very popular throughout the west. Whereas, in eastern cultures, these arts were created in much more fractious sub-cultures, but continued to today due to their very deep sense of tradition.

European cultures do have a strong sense of tradition, but to a significant extent, the West tends to be progress-driven, more so than eastern cultures. This is neither better nor worse in any moral sense. It's just different. Both progress and tradition have some kind of value. But the Europeans created a great many arts, and then picked the ones that seemed to work the best (boxing and Greco-Roman wrestling, most of all) and saw many throughout the West focusing on these few.


That wasn't worded nearly as well as it could be, but I'm having a very off day. I hope I was able to get my thoughts across. I'm just feeling very frambled today. Thanks for bearing with me. :rilol:

[nomad]

just in a quick web search, i found this:

http://www.geocities.com/cinaet/price.html

an 1867 guide to 'the science of self-defense', written in england. interesting in that it also has a diet guide at the end :)

[anthrogirl]

There is a long tradition of martial arts in Russia:

http://www.counseling.mtu.edu/SystemaHistory.htm

ag

[Durthorin]

One thing to note is that in the West, it was not a Martial Art so much as Martial Science that was created.. technical, efficient and brutal in many ways while eastern martial arts were almost without exception also spirtual paths tied in with both religion and philosphy. Thus in we had no emotional attachment to those Martial Sciences when a more efficiant way of killing/fighting was introduced. It could be one reason that the West has excelled at the art of war.

[TheOneAndOnly]

I still don't think I made myself very clear. I kind of muddled up all my thoughts.

What I was getting at was... in Medieval/Feudal China, Japan etc serfs and peaents, outcasts, hermits and what not created martial practices to protect themselves from well equipped armies of warlords etc. That's the jist of my understanding. Kung fu originated from Shaolin monks blending spiritual exercises with practical fighting to defend themselves, or something. I'm not sure how karate started, but I hear it was brought over by chinese monks and it was a peasent's martial art, hence the empty-handedness. Or something.
I think ninjitsu also began with chinese monks and outcast warriors who developed a martial practice to defeat heavily armoured samurai and use stealth to do, well, ninja stuff.
Muay Thai may have similar origins to karate to from what I know.
My point is, where are all the martial arts from European peasents? Why didn't outcast knights form anything remotely like ninja clans? Of course there were numerous mercenary brotherhoods of knights and probably knights turned pirates, but that's not really what ninjas were, I don't think.
I don't know much about savate or Russian martial arts, were they peasent originated or were they developed by soldiers or sportsmen? Fencing certainly seems like an upper class martial art.

So the question is why did oriental feudal peasents and "outcasts" develop still existent martial arts, while they're European counterparts didn't seem to?