After identifying the several weapon martial art systems that exist, it becomes clear that there are many staff and some sword combat arts, but very few baton combat systems.
Additionally, over the years I’ve see many discussions amongst the martial arts’ community about the categorization of some arts as more traditional than others.
For the purpose of this text I’m going to consider that, when people refer to the degree that an art has within the traditional categorization, they are focusing on the amount of years (usually centuries) that the art has been practiced without interruption, hoping that this variable has a direct relationship with the art’s effectiveness.
From this assumption, my view is that there are no traditional baton combat systems, and here’s why.
As martial arts (meaning combat systems) have been developed over the centuries in order to allow for people to achieve higher combat effectiveness levels and thus be able conquer new lands as well as to protect themselves more successfully, there is a clear distinction between the period before firearms and after firearms.
Before firearms people were forced to develop weapon combat systems using fencing weapons and projectiles (rocks and arrows).
Since these were mostly times of rural environments, people lived in locations with a lot more space and much less limiting physical obstacles.
Thus, it is natural that being one’s reach a very important combat variable and, within this type of context, people focused on the development of combat skill using staffs over batons.
This was also reinforced by the fact that people needed to carry staffs on a daily basis, since most didn’t have access to horses and thus, had to walk as their main locomotion mean.
An exception to this situation can be found in countries with very dense forests, like Brasil and the Philippines. However, although the dense forests posed an obstacle for the use of staffs for combat, they also posed an obstacle for any type of travelling, forcing the development of short swords called katanas and not batons.
Hence, I consider that in Europe and Asian staff and long swords are the ancient and traditional combat systems, while in places such as the Philippines, Katanas are the eldest preferred weapon.
However, since wood breaks with some ease, I figure that the Philippines didn’t go to the effort of molding staffs to resemble a katana and, for training purposes, would simply cut small staffs (batons) in order to train more safely with an object that was meant to symbolize Katanas.
Obviously that, with the creation of modern societies, the need to equip security forces with batons and give them adequate training arose. Consequently, as people looked around to find a solution for this situation, they only saw some Philippine systems training with batons. I think that this, together with the fact that Bruce Lee also practiced it, explain the monopoly that Philippine arts have within the baton combat system community.
However, I consider that people should take the following points in consideration:
The Philippine systems have been widely accepted without having had to prove its effectiveness against other arts, which should make one question if they are the most effective way to fight with batons? Don’t take this the wrong way as it is meant in a constructive way since, even Philippine combat systems’ practitioners should question their own effectiveness so that their systems continue developing, if possible;
Since there is a very close and specific relationship between a weapon’s physical characteristics and its combat techniques and tactics, is the direct use of the baton with the principles developed for the katana the best way to develop baton combat skill?
Having the Portuguese Traditional Staff / Long sword combat system created Lusitan Fencing’s modern self defense tool: the baton, and being the batons used in this art much heavier than the very light Philippine katana symbolizing batons, thus this mean that there can be different types of batons, with distinct physical characteristics and specific combat techniques and tactics? (just like the different weapons and their respective combat logics seen in olympic fencing). This isn’t meant to serve as a comparison between the effectiveness of the Portuguese and Philippine systems (since both systems are possibly correct according to its weapon’s characteristics and an interaction between the two would be very dependent on the technical and strategy skill of both combatants), but only to serve as a reminder that baton arts are not only very recent, but also more complex than how they’ve been regarded so far, due to the specificity one’s weapon characteristics.
From one martial artist to another I hope you enjoyed this article, and I apologize for eventually raising more questions than answers, but it’s difficult to present clear unquestionable truths when reality is mostly grey and not black and white as some say, or would like to believe it is.
