Japanese ultranationalists, and the quotation “The Way of the
Samurai is found in death” was especially popular.
1719 Prince Phra Chao Seua institutionalizes high-stakes prizefight-
ing at Ayudhya, a Thai royal city 53 miles north of modern
Bangkok. This may represent the beginnings of Muay Thai
(Thai boxing).
About 1720 Despite the Chinese laws prohibiting nonmilitary personnel
from owning bows, swords, or firearms, an official named Lan
Ding Yuan argues that the crews of merchant ships should be
allowed to carry arms to protect themselves from pirates. After
considerable deliberation, his government agreed, and in 1728,
new laws were passed allowing junks sailing to Japan, the
Ryûkyûs, Siam, or Indonesia to carry eight muskets, ten sets of
bows and arrows, and twenty-five pounds of powder.
1727 After his army takes heavy casualties during a slave-raiding ex-
pedition against Ouidah, King Agaja of Dahomey creates a fe-
male palace guard and arms it with Danish trade muskets. By
the nineteenth century this female bodyguard had 5,000 mem-
bers.
1733 In Charleston, the South Carolina Gazetteposts a reward for
the return of a runaway slave named Thomas Butler. Butler was
said to be a “famousPushing and Dancing Master,” which sug-
gests a practitioner of an African combative akin to capoeira
(Rath 2000).
1734 Jack Broughton introduces new rules to English pugilism, pro-
hibiting hitting below the waist or after the opponent is down,
introducing rounds and rest periods, and designating the start-
ing mark as “a square of a yard chalked in the middle of a
stage.” However, they say nothing about hip throws or slashing
the opponent’s legs with spiked shoes, and they allow seconds
to bring their man up to the mark, whether conscious or not.
1740 A Confucian memorialist writes that if the people of Henan
province “are not studying boxing and cudgels, prizing bravery
and fierce fighting, [then] they believe in heterodox sects, wor-
shipping Buddhas and calling on gods.” In other words, to this
eighteenth-century scholar, quanfaand religion were not re-
lated, but were instead separate paths through a world filled
with poverty and injustice (Esherick 1987, fn. 25, 357).
1743 Jack Broughton introduces “mufflers,” or leather gloves
padded with ten ounces of horsehair or lamb’s wool, to boxing.
About 1755 Japanese school fencers begin using face and body armor. Ac-
cording to the Shigei enkakuoof 1831, masks designed to pro-
tect the eyes came first. Next came padded helmets and arm
protectors. Finally bamboo breast protectors were developed.
These in turn developed into what are now helmets (men),
breast protectors (dô),and gauntlets (kote). About the same
time, bamboo swords (fukuro-shinai) also came into use. The
latter development probably came as the result of peasant par-
ticipation in fairground battles, but it could also have been mo-
tivated by merchants’ sons wanting to make their swordplay as
visually exciting as the swordplay seen in Bunraku (Japanese
puppet theater).
Chronological History of the Martial Arts 813