Beginning in 1415, after the Portuguese established their foothold in
North Africa, Europeans introduced firearms in West Africa in exchange
for slaves. Therefore, with the beginning of the slave trade, the nature of
war in West Africa became Europeanized, although wrestling and stick-
fighting persisted in local festivals.
European influence was not, however, the only threat to the traditional
martial arts in Africa. Prior to the European incursions, most of sub-Saha-
ran Africa had been infiltrated by Islam, which spread along trade routes
both inland and on the coast. In exchange for gold, ivory, and slaves, the
African kingdoms received goods from North Africa, many of whose rulers
accepted Islam in order to improve trade relations with Muslim merchants.
At first Islam’s influence on sub-Saharan Africa was limited. The nineteenth
century, however, brought a wave of Islamic revitalization to non-Arab
Africa. Calling for reform, the establishment of Islamic states, and the
crushing of pagan practices through the agency of jihad (holy war against
heretics and unbelievers), these revitalization movements sought to crush
traditional martial arts such as wrestling and stickfighting, which were ele-
ments of the ceremonies of those religions the jihadists so vigorously op-
posed. These arts survived the movements that sought to crush them.
Ironically, the European colonialist policies that proved destructive to
many African peoples provided an agency for preserving and spreading at
least modified elements of African culture. During much of the sixteenth
century (1530–1600) the Portuguese, who were the major European slave
power at that time, transported over a thousand slaves from West Africa to
the Americas monthly. Captured Africans brought many of their native tra-
ditions with them as they were forcibly relocated to the New World. Some
of these traditions included martial arts, which were sometimes transported
in a disguised or hidden version. Because of this dispersion, some of the
martial traditions of Africa (particularly of sub-Saharan Africa, from which
many of the slaves were drawn) still survive and live in altered form.
Given the Portuguese role in the transport of Africans to the New
World, it should not be surprising that the Portuguese colony of Brazil be-
came a focal point of African fighting arts (as well as for many other
Africanisms, such as the religion of Candomblé) in the Americas.
Brazilian capoeira is undoubtedly the most well known and widely
disseminated of a complex of New World martial arts that rely primarily
on kicks and head-butts as weapons and that are usually practiced to mu-
sical accompaniment. The origins of capoeira are recorded only in the tra-
ditional legends of the art, which invariably focus on African influence.
Considerable debate exists among practitioners and historians as to
whether capoeira is the New World development of an African martial art
or a system originating in the New World with African influences ranging
Africa and African America 7