Hand-to-hand in combat

[Presley Cannady]

One last question, is there much in the way of comparative literature looking at both contemporary H2H and pre-modern systems? As best as I can tell, combatives, defendu, defendo, etc., claim lineage with and critique very recent--in fact 19th and 20th century--schools of unarmed combat. But by the time they emerged the rifle and pistol were already pretty ubiquitous even in East Asia. By my count, the Sengoku period in Japanese history and transition from Ming to Qing dynasties in China are the most recent examples of martial arts playing a significant role on the battlefield.