Hello and thank you

[medar1]

M, The VOC must have taken hundreds of swords out to SE Asia and the Far East, so no doubt many fell into the hands of the local population. Very few survive so what you own is a very rare and precious object although I suspect more are still aroud but unrecognised. The Royal Armouries collection contains a spear from Malaya or the Phillipines the blade of which has been made out of a sword blade like yours. It still retains the VOC mark and 'A' for Amsterdam.

 

Another trick the VOC got up to was to acquire swords or knife blades of the type used in an area they traded in and have them copied by the hundreds in Europe, usually in Solingen in Germany. These then formed the perfect, desirable trade goods for that area. As Geraint pointed out, vast numbers of double edged straight blades were shipped to India bearing European markings thought to be Italian. The famous 'pata' or gauntlet swords of India all appear to have long European blades that were obviously specially made for that weapon. Whether the blades inspired the weapon or visa- versa is a matter of dispute.

Ian Bottomley

 

The sword (in my life at least) will never leave the family as I believe it belongs as an heirloom and I have always been big on keeping things that mean something to a bloodline. Out of curiosity though, just how rare and precious are swords with this clash of cultures would you gauge? To me it is priceless as nothing can ever replace something like this and the history I am currently hunting.

 

Your historic information is really interesting by the way and I appreciate it. Since my first post on this I have put a lot of time into this and surprisingly the information is not as easy to come by as you would think for something from 1756. It feels like I am looking for something from 1600 BC with the lack of solid information out there and you would think the VOC would have had detailed records of all their hardware but even in the manifests I have and the VOC - A - manifests it's very low end as far as detailed information.

[kusunokimasahige]

The sword to me looks like a Dutch East Indies Hartsvanger/Klewang from the 18th century. Indeed VOC and remounted.

 

I agree fully with IanB's assertions on the blade. Nice !

 

KM