Martial Arts Of The World - Webs

and that King Shô Shin was actually stockpiling arms rather than
suppressing them (Sakihara 1987, 164–166, also 199, fn. 76).
About 1510 Matchlock harquebuses enter service throughout Europe.
1517 A Spanish expedition commanded by Hernán Cortés introduces
crossbows, cannons, iron armor, horses, and war dogs into Yucatán
and Mexico. Although the Spanish thus had superior
technology, the conquest of Mexico owed less to technology
than to the hatred that the coastal Indians had for the Mexica-
Tenochitlans, who raped coastal Indian women and boys, then
cut out their hearts and ate their arms and legs.
1517 The Bolognese fencing master Achille Marozzo writes a manuscript
he calls Opera Nova chiamata duello, or New Work of
Dueling. First published in 1536 and continuously reedited until
1568, this was probably the most important Italian fencing
manual of the Renaissance.
1521 On Cebu, in the Philippines, a band of Filipinos enraged over
Spanish sailors impregnating local women kills Ferdinand Magellan.
The hour of hard fighting it took the 1,100 Filipinos to
kill the capitán-general and chase his remaining forty or so men
back into their longboats suggests that the historic martial arts
of the Philippines may not have been as deadly as modern Filipino
nationalists sometimes claim.
1525 In the wake of the Peasants’ War in Swabia and Franconia,
German nobles suppress Carnival, trade fairs, and the pugilistic
entertainments featured in them.
1528 In India, the Timurid conqueror Babur holds a darbar (public
festival) to celebrate the circumcision of his son, Humayun.
Rajputs and Sikhs held similar initiation ceremonies for their
boys, and scheduled amusements included animal fights,
wrestling, dancing, and acrobatics.
About 1530 English tournament fighters are reported shaking one another’s
unarmored hands after completing their matches. A century
later Quakers adopt the courtesy as “more agreeable with
Christian simplicity” than either bowing or cheek kissing. The
practice of passing knives by the handle also dates to the midsixteenth
century. This was a matter of courtly etiquette rather
than common practice, and for the next three centuries, the European
practice of eating from the blades of foot-long knives
horrified most Asians.
About 1532 After learning five different ways of seizing an opponent from a
traveling wizard, a Japanese man named Takenouchi Hisamori
establishes a martial art school that teaches students to defeat
their opponents by tying them up. Although Takenouchi-ryû
teachers sometimes claim that theirs is Japan’s oldest jûjutsu
system, that has never been definitively proven.
1533 Francisco Pizarro and a few hundred Spanish cavalrymen and
harquebusiers, plus an equal number of Indian archers and
spearmen, conquer the Inca Empire. Although nineteenth-century
scholars said that the most important reasons for Pizarro’s
success were his unshakable faith in God and glory, twentiethcentury
historians give greater importance to a smallpox epidemic
that preceded Pizarro in the Andes.
Chronological History of the Martial Arts 805