Ethnographic Arms & Armour - View Single Post

Ian · 30th December 2014, 07:39 PM

Hello Detlef:

Thank you for your factual response to my questioning the origin of those terms. I have visited both the web sites you mention, and each does provide some information about minasbar. Here is how I look at information on the web (and information in general) to satisfy myself if it is reliable or has a "sound basis."

First, I am skeptical of much of the information provided online about edged weapons and here are some of my reasons:

It is very difficult to know who actually wrote the material, where the pictures really came from and whether they have been Photoshopped or otherwise altered
We rarely know the credentials/background of the person(s) putting this material online
There is seldom any peer review of materials before they are published online (in contrast to publishers of scholarly articles and books, who have usually undertaken some vetting process of the author's work by obtaining second opinions from informed individuals)
Even the so-called "experts" are wrong--auction catalogs, for example, are an inconsistent reference source and make too many mistakes in the attribution of ethnographic edged weapons
Anyone can set up a website or blog, and make claims about edged weapons

The first link you provide is to the Baao Historical and Cultural Society site. The reference to minasbad is contained in an article entitled, The Minasbad: Utility and Artistry in a Bicolano blade, and this is attributed to an excerpt from Baao Vignettes by P.B. Robosa. I looked on Amazon and Abebooks for this work and found nothing. Then I googled "Baao Vignettes" and it sent me back to this same site as the only source for this material. Then I googled P.B. Robosa and found Paulix (Paulo Felix) B. Robosa of Baao, and here is how he describes himself on his blog (http://paulixrobosa.blogspot.com/):

"Paulo Felix Paulix B. Robosa, born 20, November 1965. Curator of the Museum of Baaoeno Memory, St. Monica Academy, Baao, Camarines sur. Faculty member, Universidad de Sta. Isabel College of Social Work and Arts and Sciences, teaching Chemistry and Biochemistry. Author of "A Guide to Arts, Crafts and Technology used in Teaching". Registered Medical Technologist, Diplomate in Science Teaching major in Biology."

This sounds impressive, but there is not much here to suggest he has any more than a passing knowledge of edged weapons. Also, we don't know who the members of the Baao Historical and Cultural Society may be--perhaps he is the sole member and is simply quoting himself through this web site! Who knows? (And that is a major problem with web-based materials--you just don't know). The St. Monica Academy and Universidad de Sta. Isabel College do exist in Baao, so he may well be legit.

So just what do we have here in terms of evidence. A local man from that culture publishes an essay about the local bolo which he calls a minasbar. One would think he should know what it is called, but objectively this is still hearsay evidence based on what he has been told in that place at that time and he is repeating it back to us. There are also some contemporary (?) pictures that appear to show the manufacture of these swords.

The second link you provided is a more scholarly and documented approach. The information cited by Perry Gil S. Mallari comes partly from a recently published book by Linda A. Newson, Conquest and Pestilence in the Early Spanish Philippines, (University of Hawaii Press, 2009). Here is the publisher's blurb about the book:

"Scholars have long assumed that Spanish colonial rule had only a limited demographic impact on the Philippines. Filipinos, they believed, had acquired immunity to Old World diseases prior to Spanish arrival; conquest was thought to have been more benign than what took place in the Americas because of more enlightened colonial policies introduced by Philip II. Conquest and Pestilence in the Early Spanish Philippines illuminates the demographic history of the Spanish Philippines in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and, in the process, challenges these assumptions. In this provocative new work, Linda Newson convincingly demonstrates that the Filipino population suffered a significant decline in the early colonial period. Newson argues that the sparse population of the islands meant that Old World diseases could not become endemic in pre-Spanish times. She also shows that the initial conquest of the Philippines was far bloodier than has often been supposed and that subsequent Spanish demands for tribute, labor, and land brought socioeconomic transformations and depopulation that were prolonged beyond the early conquest years. Comparisons are made with the impact of Spanish colonial rule in the Americas. Newson adopts a regional approach and examines critically each major area in Luzon and the Visayas in turn. Building on a wide range of primary and secondary sources, she proposes a new estimate for the population of the Visayas and Luzon of 1.57 million in 1565 - slightly higher than that suggested by previous studies - and calculates that by the mid-seventeenth century this figure may have fallen by about two-thirds."

Professor Newson is a noted academic and lives in the UK where she is the Director of the Institute of Latin American Studies, University of London. Her biography can be found here: http://research.sas.ac.uk/search/sta...-linda-newson/.

However, in Millari's paragraph relating to the minasbad, there is no direct attribution of the information to Newson's work. In fact, we don't know from where he draws this information because he does not tell us. If it was from Newson's research based on original Spanish documents, then that seems like pretty solid historical evidence that the term minasbad had been in use for several centuries. If not, then we have an unsubstantiated statement that is not much help to us.

Do either of these sources provide a "solid basis" for calling this particular sword a minasbad and attributing it to Bicol? Objectively, I think they do not. What we might reasonably conclude, IMO, is that the sword is likely found in Camarines sur, a part of the Bicol region, and there it may be called a minasbad. This does not exclude the sword being found more widely in the Bicol Region or elsewhere, nor does it exclude the sword being called something else in Camarines sur or elsewhere.

With regard to the other terms you mentioned, I will respond about those in another post since this one is already quite long.

Ian.

30th December 2014, 07:39 PM	#17
Ian Vikingsword Staff Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: The Aussie Bush Posts: 4,033	Terminology (Part 1) Hello Detlef: Thank you for your factual response to my questioning the origin of those terms. I have visited both the web sites you mention, and each does provide some information about minasbar. Here is how I look at information on the web (and information in general) to satisfy myself if it is reliable or has a "sound basis." First, I am skeptical of much of the information provided online about edged weapons and here are some of my reasons: It is very difficult to know who actually wrote the material, where the pictures really came from and whether they have been Photoshopped or otherwise altered We rarely know the credentials/background of the person(s) putting this material online There is seldom any peer review of materials before they are published online (in contrast to publishers of scholarly articles and books, who have usually undertaken some vetting process of the author's work by obtaining second opinions from informed individuals) Even the so-called "experts" are wrong--auction catalogs, for example, are an inconsistent reference source and make too many mistakes in the attribution of ethnographic edged weapons Anyone can set up a website or blog, and make claims about edged weapons The first link you provide is to the Baao Historical and Cultural Society site. The reference to minasbad is contained in an article entitled, The Minasbad: Utility and Artistry in a Bicolano blade, and this is attributed to an excerpt from Baao Vignettes by P.B. Robosa. I looked on Amazon and Abebooks for this work and found nothing. Then I googled "Baao Vignettes" and it sent me back to this same site as the only source for this material. Then I googled P.B. Robosa and found Paulix (Paulo Felix) B. Robosa of Baao, and here is how he describes himself on his blog (http://paulixrobosa.blogspot.com/): "Paulo Felix Paulix B. Robosa, born 20, November 1965. Curator of the Museum of Baaoeno Memory, St. Monica Academy, Baao, Camarines sur. Faculty member, Universidad de Sta. Isabel College of Social Work and Arts and Sciences, teaching Chemistry and Biochemistry. Author of "A Guide to Arts, Crafts and Technology used in Teaching". Registered Medical Technologist, Diplomate in Science Teaching major in Biology." This sounds impressive, but there is not much here to suggest he has any more than a passing knowledge of edged weapons. Also, we don't know who the members of the Baao Historical and Cultural Society may be--perhaps he is the sole member and is simply quoting himself through this web site! Who knows? (And that is a major problem with web-based materials--you just don't know). The St. Monica Academy and Universidad de Sta. Isabel College do exist in Baao, so he may well be legit. So just what do we have here in terms of evidence. A local man from that culture publishes an essay about the local bolo which he calls a minasbar. One would think he should know what it is called, but objectively this is still hearsay evidence based on what he has been told in that place at that time and he is repeating it back to us. There are also some contemporary (?) pictures that appear to show the manufacture of these swords. The second link you provided is a more scholarly and documented approach. The information cited by Perry Gil S. Mallari comes partly from a recently published book by Linda A. Newson, Conquest and Pestilence in the Early Spanish Philippines, (University of Hawaii Press, 2009). Here is the publisher's blurb about the book: "Scholars have long assumed that Spanish colonial rule had only a limited demographic impact on the Philippines. Filipinos, they believed, had acquired immunity to Old World diseases prior to Spanish arrival; conquest was thought to have been more benign than what took place in the Americas because of more enlightened colonial policies introduced by Philip II. Conquest and Pestilence in the Early Spanish Philippines illuminates the demographic history of the Spanish Philippines in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and, in the process, challenges these assumptions. In this provocative new work, Linda Newson convincingly demonstrates that the Filipino population suffered a significant decline in the early colonial period. Newson argues that the sparse population of the islands meant that Old World diseases could not become endemic in pre-Spanish times. She also shows that the initial conquest of the Philippines was far bloodier than has often been supposed and that subsequent Spanish demands for tribute, labor, and land brought socioeconomic transformations and depopulation that were prolonged beyond the early conquest years. Comparisons are made with the impact of Spanish colonial rule in the Americas. Newson adopts a regional approach and examines critically each major area in Luzon and the Visayas in turn. Building on a wide range of primary and secondary sources, she proposes a new estimate for the population of the Visayas and Luzon of 1.57 million in 1565 - slightly higher than that suggested by previous studies - and calculates that by the mid-seventeenth century this figure may have fallen by about two-thirds." Professor Newson is a noted academic and lives in the UK where she is the Director of the Institute of Latin American Studies, University of London. Her biography can be found here: http://research.sas.ac.uk/search/sta...-linda-newson/. However, in Millari's paragraph relating to the minasbad, there is no direct attribution of the information to Newson's work. In fact, we don't know from where he draws this information because he does not tell us. If it was from Newson's research based on original Spanish documents, then that seems like pretty solid historical evidence that the term minasbad had been in use for several centuries. If not, then we have an unsubstantiated statement that is not much help to us. Do either of these sources provide a "solid basis" for calling this particular sword a minasbad and attributing it to Bicol? Objectively, I think they do not. What we might reasonably conclude, IMO, is that the sword is likely found in Camarines sur, a part of the Bicol region, and there it may be called a minasbad. This does not exclude the sword being found more widely in the Bicol Region or elsewhere, nor does it exclude the sword being called something else in Camarines sur or elsewhere. With regard to the other terms you mentioned, I will respond about those in another post since this one is already quite long. Ian. Last edited by Ian; 31st December 2014 at 02:59 PM.