This open access book is the first publication to provide a comparative framework for the study
of martial culture and historical martial arts in Europe and Asia in particular in Italy and
China. Due to the interdisciplinary nature of martial studies contributors to this volume
include historians archeologists art historians scholars of fencing literature
metallurgists as well as contemporary master swordsmiths and masters-of-arms in historical
martial arts. Assembling researchers from these diverse fields this book offers a
multi-perspectival and dynamic view of martial culture across time and space. The
cross-cultural and interdisciplinary significance of this book cannot be overemphasized.
Whereas a number of contributors are internationally recognized and indeed leading
authorities in their respective fields for example Jeffrey Shaw has been a world-leading new
media artist and scholar since the 1970s while Ma Mingda is a well-known historian and the
contemporary founder of Chinese martial studies and while there are significant overlaps in
their research interests this book brings their research within a single volume for the first
time. Equally significant the book is structured in such a way to reflect the various core
aspects of martial studies particularly in relation to the study of historic sword culture
including history culture philosophy literature and knowledge transmission material culture
as well as the technical aspects of historical fencing. As one of the first titles on martial
studies this book becomes a reference not only for scholars taking an interest in this subject
but also for historians scholars with interest in Chinese and or Italian history (particularly
of the Medieval or early modern periods) the history of international relations in Asia Far
East anthropologists scholars of martial (arts) studies and researchers in sword-making and
or historic metallurgy.
