Ethnographic Arms & Armour - View Single Post

aiontay · 27th December 2009, 10:22 PM

I don't know how helpful this will be, but I'll throw out a few conjectures. As it turns out, I hope to see a friend who I went over to Taiwan with back in 1987. I came back after a year, but he's stayed. The last time I saw him was in Taiwan 15 years ago; he's in the US to see his parents.

I've always thought Koxinga was an extremely interesting historical figure. When I was living in Taiwan I went to a Koxinga museum in Tainan and the reconstruction of the Dutch fort he took with a Taiwanese friend whose family came over to Taiwan during his rule.

As for weapons, I believe I read the tiger fork really was for tiger hunting. The three points functioned something like the flanges on a boar spear and prevented the tiger from running up the pole and getting you I suspect if I had to face down a marauding tiger that was killing the villages livestock, I'd need at least three points since I'd be shaking so bad I'd likely miss if I only had one!

I'd say Fearn is on the right track regarding military weapons being dispersed. Koxinga had a large army, over 100,000 men at one point. A lot of these men ended up as being part of the Hoklo population, and probably Hakka as well, and undoubtedly took their weapons with them. Also, at that time the indeginous tribes still controlled most of the island, so the Chinese, both Hoklo and Hakka, were very much a "frontier" population and had much better reason to be armed than was standard on the mainland.

Koxinga's father was a pirate/merchant (those two occupations have frequently been merged throughout history) with connections in Japan (Koxinga's mother was Japanese) and probably SE Asia as well. Koxinga relied on trade as well for revenue for his force, so it is possible that there were some unorthodox weapons from SE Asia, Japan and Europe as well in Taiwan, especially since Koxinga's troops were basically insurgents, and therefore had to get their weapons where they could.

27th December 2009, 10:22 PM	#7
aiontay Member Join Date: Nov 2008 Posts: 88	I don't know how helpful this will be, but I'll throw out a few conjectures. As it turns out, I hope to see a friend who I went over to Taiwan with back in 1987. I came back after a year, but he's stayed. The last time I saw him was in Taiwan 15 years ago; he's in the US to see his parents. I've always thought Koxinga was an extremely interesting historical figure. When I was living in Taiwan I went to a Koxinga museum in Tainan and the reconstruction of the Dutch fort he took with a Taiwanese friend whose family came over to Taiwan during his rule. As for weapons, I believe I read the tiger fork really was for tiger hunting. The three points functioned something like the flanges on a boar spear and prevented the tiger from running up the pole and getting you I suspect if I had to face down a marauding tiger that was killing the villages livestock, I'd need at least three points since I'd be shaking so bad I'd likely miss if I only had one! I'd say Fearn is on the right track regarding military weapons being dispersed. Koxinga had a large army, over 100,000 men at one point. A lot of these men ended up as being part of the Hoklo population, and probably Hakka as well, and undoubtedly took their weapons with them. Also, at that time the indeginous tribes still controlled most of the island, so the Chinese, both Hoklo and Hakka, were very much a "frontier" population and had much better reason to be armed than was standard on the mainland. Koxinga's father was a pirate/merchant (those two occupations have frequently been merged throughout history) with connections in Japan (Koxinga's mother was Japanese) and probably SE Asia as well. Koxinga relied on trade as well for revenue for his force, so it is possible that there were some unorthodox weapons from SE Asia, Japan and Europe as well in Taiwan, especially since Koxinga's troops were basically insurgents, and therefore had to get their weapons where they could.