Thread: machete
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Old 11th January 2023, 10:55 PM   #13
Jim McDougall
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As always, there is history here, and as with most Latin American weapons they may well be mounted or in use in modern context, often blades can have much earlier origins and have been circulating for some time.

While indeed firms like Collins & Co. produced blades for machetes from 19th c. into 20th, it is very much the same context as trade blades which were naturally commercially produced for export into many ethnographic spheres, much as Ed has pointed out in which case the production was native. Solingen produced countless numbers of blades for ethnographic consumption....England produced blades for Abyssinia, as well as Africa (seme, Maasai).

Use of commercial or otherwise acquired blades (captured etc) in ethnographic weapons was so profound, this was much of the reason the European Armory was conceived, to discuss European forms often encountered in ethnographic context.

With the 'machete', the use of these heavy bladed swords (aka cutlasses) was well known in tropical settjngs used by sailors ashore in brushing through heavy vegetation. Many of the hangers off vessels in the Americas were likely the source for the heavy bladed swords that became known as espada anchas in Spanish colonial context by the latter 18th c.

These were never called espada anchas by the Spanish colonials, they were called locally MACHETE. Well into the 19th century, these were used by the horsemen in the frontera and the Spanish Southwest in place of the long Spanish bilbo swords for brushing trails.

The machete was a standard throughout the Caribbean and tropical Americas by the Spaniards from earlier historic periods into modern times in Latin America. It would be hard to pinpoint exactly which country this example is from, as it has the same type hilt and features as many over a long period in these countries.
A handsome example of a vital Spanish American implement IMO.

These are examples of late 18th early 19th Spanish colonial 'machetes' (as termed locally in those times, espada ancha is a modern term).
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