Hi all,
few people are aware that an eclectic martial art and self defense system based on the concept of combat ranges and cross-training between Asian and European fighting styles was actually founded in merry old England in the year 1899.
Bartitsu was the brainchild of a former railway engineer named E.W. Barton-Wright, who was one of the first Europeans to have studied jujitsu. He later founded Bartitsu as a combination of Japanese wrestling, English boxing, French savate and a system of walking stick fighting that had been devised by a Swiss master-at-arms named Pierre Vigny.
Bartitsu was based on a series of combat ranges, defined as stick fighting, kicking, punching and "close combat" (wrestling and jujitsu).
Barton-Wright set up a full-time (but short-lived) Bartitsu training center in London, encouraging his students to master each of the various martial arts taught at the school to the point where they could use one against the other as required. He never established a formal Bartitsu curriculum, so the art remained open-ended, consisting of techniques, drills and concepts for countering boxing with jujitsu, using stick fighting against savate, etc. He
Unfortunately, Barton-Wright was not a great promoter and Bartitsu did not survive beyond the early 1900s, although it is now being revived as a "Jeet Kune Do" of pre-World War 1 hand to hand combat systems. If it had caught on back in the day, then the history of the martial arts in Europe and elsewhere might have been very different.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartitsu for more info.
My best,
Devon
few people are aware that an eclectic martial art and self defense system based on the concept of combat ranges and cross-training between Asian and European fighting styles was actually founded in merry old England in the year 1899.
Bartitsu was the brainchild of a former railway engineer named E.W. Barton-Wright, who was one of the first Europeans to have studied jujitsu. He later founded Bartitsu as a combination of Japanese wrestling, English boxing, French savate and a system of walking stick fighting that had been devised by a Swiss master-at-arms named Pierre Vigny.
Bartitsu was based on a series of combat ranges, defined as stick fighting, kicking, punching and "close combat" (wrestling and jujitsu).
Barton-Wright set up a full-time (but short-lived) Bartitsu training center in London, encouraging his students to master each of the various martial arts taught at the school to the point where they could use one against the other as required. He never established a formal Bartitsu curriculum, so the art remained open-ended, consisting of techniques, drills and concepts for countering boxing with jujitsu, using stick fighting against savate, etc. He
Unfortunately, Barton-Wright was not a great promoter and Bartitsu did not survive beyond the early 1900s, although it is now being revived as a "Jeet Kune Do" of pre-World War 1 hand to hand combat systems. If it had caught on back in the day, then the history of the martial arts in Europe and elsewhere might have been very different.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartitsu for more info.
My best,
Devon
