Asian martial arts began to be known in western countries, especially in Europe, from about the middle of the 19th century. By the late 19th century, largely due to trade and travel between the two continents, a number of Europeans had seen various forms of Asian unarmed combat, for a long time the foreign visitors tended to enjoy watching displays of combat just as a spectacle, not thinking about practising these arts themselves.

In 1898 a railway engineer called Edward William Barton-Wright started teaching a form of self-defence called bartitsu, which he created out of the jujitsu and judo styles he had learned while working in Japan. He also mixed it with some western combat forms such as boxing.

In the late 19th and early 20th century there was a growing worldwide interest in martial arts of all kinds, including ancient forms like Graeco-Roman wrestling, which became an Olympic sport from 1896.


Image source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartitsu