Before John Keehan the rich history of martial are was firmly established in the United States. This time line examines that history to gain a sens e of the forces that shaped the persona of John Timothy Keehan aka Count Dante.
The stances and single wrapped fist of Hausa boxers bear visual resemblance to illustrations of Ancient Egyptian and Hellenistic boxers. This has caused speculation that Hausa boxing is directly related to Ancient Egyptian boxing[8] and who influenced whom is always a contentious topic, but the argument is supported by theories that the Hausa people used to live farther east, toward Sudan, than they do today. Dambe is a form of boxing associated with the Hausa people of West Africa. Historically, Dambe included a wrestling component, known as Kokawa, but today it is essentially a striking art. The tradition is dominated by Hausa butcher caste groups, and over the last century evolved from clans of butchers traveling to farm villages at harvest time, integrating a fighting challenge by the outsiders into local harvest festival entertainment. It was also traditionally practised as a way for men to get ready for war, and many of the techniques and terminology allude to warfare. Today, companies of boxers travel, performing outdoor matches accompanied by ceremony and drumming, throughout the traditional Hausa homelands of northern Nigeria, southern Niger and southwestern Chad.[1] The name "Dambe" derives from the Hausa word for "boxe", and appears in languages like Bole as Dembe.
Africa smelted iron already in ancient times, 500 BC or even earlier. In the regions of Tanzania inhabited by the Haya people, carbon dating has shown that blast furnaces were as old as 2000 years, whereas steel of this calibre did not appear in Europe until several centuries later.. The Hayas made their steel in a kiln shaped like a truncated upside-down cone about five feet high. They made both the cone and the bed below it from the clay of termite mounds. Termite clay makes a fine refractory material. The Hayas filled the bed of the kiln with charred swamp reeds. They packed a mixture of charcoal and iron ore above the charred reeds. Before they loaded iron ore into the kiln, they roasted it to raise its carbon content. The key to the Haya iron process was a high operating temperature. Eight men, seated around the base of the kiln, pumped air in with hand bellows. The air flowed through the fire in clay conduits. Then the heated air blasted into the charcoal fire itself. The result was a far hotter process than anything known in Europe before modern times. Anthropologist Peter Schmidt wanted to see a working kiln, but he had a problem. Cheap European steel products reached Africa early in the 20th century and put the Hayas out of business. When they could no longer compete, they'd quit making steel.
In Egyptian pictographs depicting the exploits of Ramses III, the pharaoh is shown wrestling with foreigners and subsequently vanquishing them. These images serve to buttress the reputation of Ramses and Egypt as a whole, but they may have been more propaganda than reality. Nubian wrestlers had a dynamic style of fighting similar to today’s freestyle wrestling, explains Steve Craig in Sports and Games of the Ancients. Egyptians seemed to defined any darker-skinned Africans as “Nubians,” although there is currently a group of people known as the Nuba in Sudan who continue to have their own sport of wrestling which includes regular competitions that are community events featuring food, dancing, and wrestling matches.
Palmares, or Quilombo dos Palmares, was a fugitive community of escaped slaves and others in colonial Brazil that developed from 1605 until its suppression in 1694. It was located in what is today the Brazilian state of Alagoas. No contemporary document calls Palmares a quilombo, instead the term mocambo is used. Palmares was home to not only escaped enslaved Africans, but also to mulattos, caboclos, Indians and poor whites, especially Portuguese soldiers trying to escape forced military service.
Palmares, or Quilombo dos Palmares, was a fugitive community of escaped slaves and others in colonial Brazil that developed from 1605 until its suppression in 1694. It was located in what is today the Brazilian state of Alagoas.
The earliest known historical record of Capoeira as a martial art is approximately 1770, long after early years of slavery. No further accounts of Capoeira are found until the early 1800's in the form of various police records from Rio de Janeiro.
Commodore Matthew C. Perry arrives opening up more trade with Japan in what was called the Bakumatsu. When Commodore Matthew C. Perry's four-ship squadron appeared in Edo Bay (Tokyo Bay) in July 1853, the bakufu (shogunate) was thrown into turmoil. Commodore Perry was fully prepared for hostilities if his negotiations with the Japanese failed, and threatened to open fire if the Japanese refused to negotiate. He remitted two white flags to them, telling them to hoist the flags when they wished a bombardment from his fleet to cease and to surrender.[9] To demonstrate his weapons Perry ordered his ships to attack several buildings around the harbor. The ships of Perry were equipped with new Paixhans shell guns, capable of bringing destruction everywhere a shell landed.[10][11]
In 1867/68, the Tokugawa era found an end in the Meiji Restoration. The emperor Meiji was moved from Kyoto to Tokyo which became the new capital; his imperial power was restored. The actual political power was transferred from the Tokugawa Bakufu into the hands of a small group of nobles and former samurai. Like other subjugated Asian nations, the Japanese were forced to sign unequal treaties with Western powers. These treaties granted the Westerners one-sided economical and legal advantages in Japan. In order to regain independence from the Europeans and Americans and establish herself as a respected nation in the world, Meiji Japan was determined to close the gap to the Western powers economically and militarily. Drastic reforms were carried out in practically all areas.
Gichin Funakoshi (November 10, 1868 – April 26, 1957) was the creator of Shotokan karate, perhaps the most widely known style of karate, and is attributed as being the 'father of modern karate.'[1] Following the teachings of Anko Itosu, he was one of the Okinawan karate masters who introduced karate to the Japanese mainland in 1921. He taught karate at various Japanese universities and became honorary head of the Japan Karate Association upon its establishment in 1949.
In 1879, President U.S Grant was in Japan on a state visit and observed a demonstration of judo techniques by 19-year-old Jigoro Kano.
