Another theoretical question: what are those Central African swords used for anyway?

[Conogre]

One common thread that keeps surfacing is the lack of a style of martial arts in Africa, and I strongly suspect this is grossly untrue.
Almost invariably, when you have a warrior caste and intertribal warfare that's gone on for long periods of time the warriors were extremely skilled with their own weapons and accoutrements, both offensively and defensively.
With so little known about the people themselves and their strange (to us, at any rate) weapons, I would say that the loss of knowledge in specific martial art styles is probably all but gone in many huge regions without it ever having been recognized at all beyond the most rudimentry observations.....in all the "ignorant savage" stereotype seems to be even more universal in Africa than it was in N. America.
As to the "urn/fan" shaped knife, I think almost all would agree that piece in particular is an excellent example of a weapon having evolved into another function altogether.
Speaking of that knife though, what about the widely seen African tendency to create huge, often gigantic knives and spears as currency, such as the Nkutshu?
I've seen functional appearing spears with the heads so exaggerated as to make them unusable, and even the same spearhead alone fully 5'-6' long!
Those obviously took a LOT of skill and effort to create, yet were quite common and widespread, even stranger when you consider that time is often at a premium in a subsistance level society.
Three uses seem obvious, 1) the visable prestige, 2) as a theft deterrent, and 3) a larger piece would be easier to keep from corroding, thus last longer for eventual reforging.
Many of the swords, in particular, inarguably end up inferior to the more traditional sword shapes with a much longer geneology in a direct, head to head comparison, yet were still highly effective against the weapons that they were designed to used against, with the real proof of this being that so much of the continent ended up as colonies, just as happened in N. and S. America where the only real resistances came about through vastly superior numbers, initially, then with "trade", captured and even traditional militia weapons later as native forces were incorporated into the often small governing occupation military.
In short, Fearn, yes, many WERE inferior to weapons of more advanced design in a direct one on one comparison.
Jeeeez....that WAS hard to admit! **grin**
Mike

[tom hyle]

Fearn, AFAIK that is a rank marker/rich (native) guy's art piece/religious item; I've seen that exact style (or that exact individual? Looking like a fat human, and some are the side view....interestingly, it is "upside down" in that regard, when compared to "legged" swords, etc.....) and others similar. The shape is similar to those Kuba ikulas without points, and also to an ancient Celtic (like the ikulas, much less wide) double-edged no-point sword I've seen. Given its likely heavy cultural/religious meaning in its original context......it seems due a certain respectful attitude.
Ariel, sorry to hear you don't know how to use a mambele; sorry to tell you that that has nothing to do with its effectiveness in knowing hands. It is a graceful and deadly sword, and particularly effective against sheilds. I don't find the short ones ineffective, either, BTW.
The quality of the metal as such is a playground for ethnocentrism/cross-cultural confusion. I don't know that it is relevant to this discussion, and I suggest we leave it aside; it's the metal they had; it's the metal they used.....
Freddy, I get into this with people from time to time; some of them "get" it, and some don't: Mambeli and mabele (still heard/read no justification for the concept that it's pronounced M'mambele, etc....). Mambeli and mambele seem very much like the same word. AFAIK it means "sickle", and is generally used for agricultural tools as well as weapons, with the distinction being contextual. Two very different types of sickle-sword, of course.......Ikula/iklwa is a fun thing to wonder about, too; more tenuous than mambeli/mambele, but still pretty likely, I would think.....theater and theatre are not different words.

[tom hyle]

I don't know; I think some of them (mambele sheild-walking throwers) ARE advanced designs. By and large, I do not believe that continents fall to swords, but to economics, tricks, germs, and guns (when they are on one side, or tremendously more numerous/advanced on one side, though IMHO far too much credit is given to guns, too, and as to Eurpean ships and sailing ability during the expansion? I don't mean to be rude, but it is to laugh; compare the Indian Ocean; compare polynesia.......).

[fearn]

Hi Tom,

Do you (or anyone else reading this) remember the "african martial arts" video instructions that popped up about a decade ago? There was someone teaching stick fighting and wrestling from somewhere in Africa. That tape's probably still available somewhere. I've also seen some work done in Nigeria that identified a number of martial traditions (including several apparent ancestors for Capoeira, which I used to practice). So, I'm definitely not one of those saying that the Africans didn't have their martial traditions.

Mostly, I'm trying to understand their weapons in context. As I posted earlier, I'm beginning to suspect that spears and bows were the primary weapons for some groups, and these funky swords that we know so much more about were primarily social tools (rank markers, ritual tools, and art) and secondarily weapons.

One thing that gets this list in trouble is that we tend to focus on the swords, knives, and axes, because of their artistic value and striking shapes. A boringly functional spear (especially if it's hard to classify) will get a lot less attention from collectors. Ditto with those boring bows, although there's one example of a hunter whose everyday hunting bow shot as far as the competition bow a European hunter had on safari (Traditional Bowyer's Bible, vol.1).

Fearn

[Tim Simmons]

Hi Fearn,I am really keen on boring plain spears and fighting sticks.Ssssh or they will all want one,if they can not see it, thats their problem.Tim

[Rivkin]

Originally Posted by tom hyle

Ariel, sorry to hear you don't know how to use a mambele; sorry to tell you that that has nothing to do with its effectiveness in knowing hands. It is a graceful and deadly sword, and particularly effective against sheilds. I don't find the short ones ineffective, either, BTW.

I think the biggest problem with martial arts today that you can say anything (like "japanese swords are the best in the world" or "mambeles are crap"), and there is no way to prove/disprove this, for most of the martial artists are not willing to spill the blood.

The only way to test how effective mambele is, is to start a match - Ariel with his favorite weapon (I would guess it's rapier or shashka ?) vs. mambele wielding Tom Hyle. I don't think that in this non-theoretical environment mambele will have much of a chanse.

[tom hyle]

Well, I'm not going to fight Ariel, but in light example:
A/ If we're choosing hand weapons, remember I get a shield; modern European swords and sword styles (rapier or sabre) are not very impressive against a sheild.
B/ If the oponant doesn't want one, too, that somewhat negates the greatest advantage/use of mambele (and any chance he has to live, if he's going to take just a modern European sword against sword and shield).......I might well would choose a sha'sh'qa or other sabre, though a nice machete is fine, too. Old, really curved sabres are good against sheilds, too, BTW, mostly for thrusting, although I assure you I do sharpen the false edge where there is one.
All kidding and examples aside, mambele is not actually the kind of sword I most like and enjoy; I most like and enjoy slashing swords, but the idea that mambele is not an effective form can only come out of a nonunderstanding of its use, IMHO; it is a deadly sword.
And Superman? Definitely faster than The Flash

[tom hyle]

I might add that a lot can be found out by attack tests/practice on plants, dead animals, unwanted furniture, etc. with either antiques or replicas or new blades of similar shape (Which I recommend, at least at first, as it is the unskilled/unpracticed/mis-aimed/off-angle/etc. attack that often harms the weapon, but also old wood, for instance, often gets weak and dry-rotted). And, of course, much can be gleaned from combining this with sparring with wooden/blunted/etc. weapons. Eventually, perhaps enough could be learned from such methods that the more skilled and able might be up to "playing" with live steel in limitted ways, without neccessarily cutting or stabbing each other, as is done when practicing many martial arts, much as with the revival of medieval European sword styles seen today in N America. Of course, they have texts to help a lot for that; would it be primarily Moslems who might have left a written record in Africa? I'd think so. Might some of their fighting techniques and weapons, as their language, etc. be Arab-derived/Arab-related? I think inevitably; thus the nimchas of the Swahili coast and the kaskara, with its Turko-Persic ( ) guard.......but there's surely still Bantu (etc.) influence, as well, so probably something useful could be learned there, as well as by investigating the possible African influence on machete, a thin, light-bladed sword developed primarily in the Caribean and the Americas, and primarily under the usage of primarily African slaves/captives. In Animist areas (especially) there may still be some traditional militia training; I know many rural "tribal" peoples maintain vestiges of such, often not so much for common defence now (which would likely be against a giant government or corporation, and thus largely impractical with traditional weapons), but as a matter of cultural memory and ethnic/ancestral pride. This brings me back to something I totally forgot that I was gonna say before I have this African sword. It was sold to me as a pygmy sword; I don't know what tribe it's from. It came in a Moro barong sheath (where I'd maybe have left it, but it was too long, and poked out the bottom or something like that, as I recall). It's a double-edged sword, wide and straight, and running down the center line of the blade are two jagged, toothy slots; first one, then solid metal for a while, then the other. I noticed that the spacing of the slots was such that the sword could be held before the eyes and peered through, like a mask. I noticed also that (though people have different size heads) the slots were spaced such that I couldn't look in the middle of my feild of vision, but would have to learn an unfocused gaze that thus sees all (as I did in my younger meditating days), and also learn to move the head about, so as to keep the blind spot in a different place; valuable lessons for war that could be learned in a dance that might be modernly classed as religious. I've since seen other similar swords, some with round holes, instead of slots. All speculation, but the kind of thing features can be for; learning-magic (a lot of traditional dances worldwide seem to have a martial training/display aspect), or whatever else, and that it'll just get harder and harder to find out about....

[Freddy]

I think it is difficult to compare the weapons of different cultures. Of course, a Japanese katana will be superior to a 'mambeli' or 'mambele ' . This not only by its construction (superior steel), but also by its use.

Central African tribesmen had little of no armor when going into battle. Weapons, how peculiar in shape these may be, were the result of a long evolution and particularly suitable for the conditions needed at that moment in time. Don't forget that large parts of Africa were uncharted areas not no more than 150 to 200 years ago. The isolated populations knew no better.
Even then there were differences. Some Central-African tribes conquered others due to the superiority of their weapons. Take the Zande who were feared over a vast territory as fierce warriors. They used a weird weapon : the multi-bladed throwing knife.
Were these weapons just for show ? I don't think so. Were they inefficient ? By all means, no ! Certainly not against an opponent in a loin cloth.

But compared to the Europeans, with their superior weapons technology (the rifle), these tribesmen were certainly no match. This doesn't mean that on certain occasions they weren't able to defeat the Western technology (take Karthoum and Isandlwana).

True, a lot of these 'weird' African weapons evolved into status symbols. Why not ? It's the same with a Japanese katana. Now, it's no longer a fighting sword. But is it ineffective when used........?

[Conogre]

Some of you seem intent with comparing African pieces to cultures that they had no contact with what so ever and making a pronouncement of "inferior", and while, if taken literally, you are correct, but to consider them "awkward" and impossible to use seems equally ridiculous.
When I got my first Potto knife, the fact that it wasn't much thicker than a 50 gal oil drum struck me immediately, but over time as I gradually figured out how to hold it in such a fashion that it became comfortable, the knife/sword won me over.
Swing into the end of a 2"X10" board so that it bites into the grain and the results are striking, to say the least.
Likewise, into meat or flesh, a la the "Cold Steel" demos and you find that you have a deadly piece of hardware whose lighter weight makes it VERY fast, and likewise the shorter length enables it to be swung, even in heavily grown areas, where as a long sword or such would end up tangled in the vines.
As to martial arts, if you're trying to use many of the African pieces in established forms from other, far removed parts of the world, I have no dobt that it would be awkward, but again, the point is what?
They weren't MADE to be used that way.
Even with martial arts themselves, it often ends up coming down to the skills and abilities of the fighter himself, for often the defenses are only truly effective against someone fighting in the same style.
I've seen Kung Fu masters laid out with a single punch from a professional boxer.
African weaponry as art, yes, beyond a doubt, but to discount the effectiveness in the society and terrain in which it originated seems to be nothing more than argumentative.
With enough ammo and the proper firearm, ALL bladed weapons are primitive and next to useless...same thing.
Mike

[tom hyle]

I do remember those videos, but I don't remember anything useful about them; I'd forgotten about that until re-reading this previous to bringing it to the top for locating reasons.

[Montino Bourbon]

I believe that the most functional weapons in Africa are;

A- The stick, in all its permutations, most especially the 'Knobkerrie' which was a stick carved from hardwood with the end like a knob; think "Golf club"

B- The spear, which was almost always QUITE functional, and was not always used for throwing.
The Zulu armies fielded by Chaka Zulu used a short stabbing-spear called an 'assegai' which was about a yard long. While previous conflict among the Zulus was more of a formal affair done with throwing-spears, and included the art of 'graceful dodging', Chaka went right in with the assegai and engaged at close quarters. His tactics were effective enough to give even the British a lot of trouble!

[tom hyle]

As to A/ there have been archaeological studies that claim to show (don't know how they account for looting, etc.) that the most common main offensive hand weapon on early medieval European battlefields were clubs. Daggers/shortswords (mostly dagger-knives; saxes used for work as well as fighting in civilian life), shortspears, and hatchets followed, and swert/spatha longswords followed distantly, being very expensive (the translated estimate I've read was about $20,000 1990ish US dollars as a floor.) and mostly restricted to professional soldiers (house Karls, etc.).

B/ First, I do not believe there is any meaningful evidence that Shaka Zulu had anything more to do with the iklwa than perhaps taking or being given credit for it, as famous and powerful men are wont to do. AFAIK assegei (and the Japanese Ashigaru) are derived from a Portuguese word for spear; that's what I've heard. The legend of the Iklwa is interesting. First, there is the cult of personality great man thing, which I start out by taking with a grain of salt (the name, supposedly given by a joyously vicious Shaka in imitation of the noise it makes in the enemy's body, which you can hear because you're close, is suspiciously similar to an old seeming Bantu word; Kuba is ikula and refers to a dagger or short sword; iklwa refers to a short spear often characterized as swordlike; hmmm......), as my historical studies and life experiece lead me to believe it is rarely if ever valid. Now, what we have here is a legend of the military superiority, often compared to ancient Latin tactics, of a short stabbing weapon over missile weapons. On the surface this does not seem usual, at the least (sensible or true at the most); the history of successful combat in war is a history of increasing your range. Particularly in open ground, it would be hard to even approach the enemy who is using missiles if you are not. I suspect the Zulus advanced under missile cover; I see an awful lot of Zulu (etc.) javelines and archery supplies. I suspect the organization (legendary stratification, rules, and discipline in traditional S African armies) and sheildwall (as well as disease vs. the Khoi/San, I am given to understand) are more responsible for the imperial/genocidal conquest of S Africa by the Zulus (etc.) than their supposed invention of the thrusting spear (and in addition to not believing Shaka did this personally, I'm not even sure it occured at all; one sees Congo region pommelled thrusting spears, for instance, and the thrusting spear is a pretty common phenomenon, worldwide. Likewise, though we might have recently read some characterized as unuseful, there are a lot of African spears with long, swordlike blades, and the Zulu iklwa rarely in my experience has so short a handle in reality as in legend.). I do note though that they had some success getting close enough on foot to kill gun armed European soldiers with handweapons, as did also some of the Madhi's army (Ashanti Osei Tutu on the other hand, had muskets and cannon, and hired European mercenaries to teach his army to use them.). It wasn't any magical power of their thrusting spears that got them close; that's for sure.
I've seen, BTW, (film of) modern Afars and Issas (estimate 1960; colour film) engaging in a ritualized rule-bound line-on-line javeline battle to settle a dispute; several injuries and one death. It was not and is not my impression that this is or ever was their only way of fighting, any more than N Plains people in N America settled all their disputes by lacrosse, or ancient Celts by hockey, or Philistines by single combat (especially not after that guy came out and shot someone in the head for a sword&spear fight), or tartars by (various forms of) polo; it's a traditionally available lesser option to "real" war. "The little brother of war" is Lacrosse's real name.

[fearn]

Hi Tom and Montino,

as to A), I'm not surprised about the club. Wood's generally cheap, even in places like England where all the forest land is owned and in production. The one thing I'd correct is the $20,000 sword. I think this came from the idea that a sword was worth a year's worth of wages to a peasant. In 1990's terms, a peasant earned $10-20,000 (they're called temps), and I think this is where the $20,000 idea came from. Personally, I think the better stand in for a medieval peasant is a third world peasant farmer, who gets by on $1/day. This means that swords cost about $365. If you look at what we're paying for swords these days, I'd say the cost hasn't changed much in a thousand years.

I'd also point out that, the more expensive metal is, the more of a status symbol a metal weapon such as a sword becomes.

So far as the spear goes, I'll simply agree with what was written above. I think most people have a bias against spears, and tend to ignore the diversity of these weapons.

Fearn

[tom hyle]

Actually, the estimate I read was based on the price of an automobile, and I think with a similar concentration of (expert) labour. The amount of wood alone that went into making charcoal for smelting and then for steeling iron was enormous, before the making of "coke" came in, and is, sometimes more than farming, creditted with deforesting much of Europe (and largely for weapons for war, no doubt; war drives technology; that it does, still.). The charcoal burners were very low-caste. Very very, actually probably outcaste would not be an inappropriate term for the view townspeople had of them. But the smiths were another matter; they were high end professionals; the mechanics or computer programmers of their day, and only the best of them specialized in longswords. In a way, there are these different worlds, though, as you say, so what's worth a year's wages in a poor country may be less than two weeks even for a semidisabled low-end craftsman/labourer like me in a rich country. But the cost of the steel is sooo different; AFAIK by now in India, PI, and China, to name a few we regularly see things from, they are now using industrial steel for cutlery, including swords (Some of the Phillipinos are working with sawsteel, and if it's recycled, it'd have to be folded "up" for the thicknesses I've seen, but I know it comes in round rods, too.....good stuff, sawsteel.....), and it is so very very much cheaper than handmade steel; if you had to buy 3 or 4 pounds of handmade steel now.....I don't even know what it'd cost; a lot, even if the craftsman paid himself poorly for his time (and many do). Even steel hand folded from industrial sheet/stock is very expensive to have produced in US. A few people make wootz; would it be OK for them or people who know about them to give a price idea? A guy in an iron age recreation science/tourist/museum-village in Scandinavia was making his own iron out of bog mud; maybe he still is; he was making knives from it and selling them etched; I don't know if or how many of them were/are steel. I'm sure there are others. The point is that it is a lot of work, and much of it expert, so while it certainly wasn't like only a very wealthy medieval German could own a sword, it was a thing for the professional class and the nobility, though poorer people did have saxes and later hangers and langenmessers, and sometimes longer swords made by blacksmiths who weren't swordsmiths per se, somewhat as we now have a Hyundai, or a beat up old '76 Ford.......fond memories there.....Holy Toledo; I'm getting something about pigs here........Pigs were part of the forest economy........I'm going to let that trail off and let it work on the back of my mind......

[fearn]

Hi Tom,

We're straying off topic, but I think that you might have a slightly different idea of medieval/third world economics than I do. Oliver Rackham's done a lot of work on european historical ecology, and a lot of what you said above isn't quite right, especially about charcoal production and its relationship.

Basically, to use the Medieval UK (Rackham's Ancient Woodlands is my guide here), their woodlands were the only source for fuel (charcoal and wood) and building materials. All of these were owned, and they were managed for sustainable production. For instance, a glass factory in England owned and managed a large woodland that supplied it with all the charcoal it needed, and they were very careful to keep the wood supply going.

This is a lot different than today, where people try to get around these obstacles by clearing land and investing the money somewhere else in the world. I agree that, if a modern smith wants to maintain a middle-class income, he's going to charge *a lot* of money for a sword that takes him that long. Thing is, most of our weapons were made under conditions where the cost of living was (or is) much cheaper, and that economy passes down or up the scale. That's why I'm still comfortable with my first statement. However, if we ever eliminate poverty from the globe, one of the casualities will be cheap hand-made blades. They will all be either manufactured or made at "art blade" prices.

This is an area I'm interested in, but it's straying way off topic. Feel free to PM me if you want more info.

Fearn

[tom hyle]

I don't think it's off topic at all, but then I've never felt there should be tight bonds of topicality. If nothing else it interferes with my thought process. We shouldn't need a new thread every time a discussion takes a little bend. It'd make searching the archives easier, I supose......
Europe used to pretty much be a forest.
The practices of sustainable forestry you speak of have existed but are hardly universal.
What I've read is that the main deforestation came with the early industrial/postmedieval age (16th/17th), after the population recovered from the great plagues, when the emptied lands were filling back in, when steel was becoming cheap, but "coke" from stone coal was not yet in use; charcoal from wood was the fuel and the alloying ingredient for making steel. As I've mentioned I don't remember how much charcoal it takes to produce a ton of steel under preindustrial conditions, but I just remember it is an impressive figure; it's a lot. An outcaste caste of charcoal burners came into existance to feed this need. They were landless, itinerate. I don't know how the economics, etc. worked as to who owned the forests they worked or whatever.
Africa has seen a lot of deforestation, too, usually blamed on Imperialistic foreign exploitation, goats, and market agriculture (Africa never invented steel; this may fit in there somehow).........interesting to see how this or that must be the main cause; let us content ourselves to say a significant factor in the deforestation of Europe may have been steel production. If anyone wants to look into it further, please let us know what you find out.

[fearn]

Hi Tom,

Let's break this down a bit. Part of the problem is that our terminology about "forest" has changed over the last 500 years, as have our thoughts about tree usage.

For instance, in the 16th century England, a "Forest" was a royal reserve. New Forest actually has far more grass than trees (that's why the New Forest Pony is just a pony, not some miraculous horse that lives on tree leaves). A park was a forest with a wall around it. A "Desert" was an uninhabited area (Shakespeare has people sitting under the trees in the middle of a desert in one play)--this is the origin of our term "deserted." And when you start translating from other languages, it gets worse. "Monte" in Spanish can mean both mountain and forest, for example.

Now, when you read many accounts of "deforestation," what are they talking about? If they are using modern translations of older terms, they can get well and truly screwed up. For instance, a region of Spain may have become "desert," in an old text. Aha! says the historical ecologist--deforestation! Actually, a town got sacked in a war, and as a result, the number of trees nearby actually *increased*. THAT is the level of evidence we're dealing with. In Grove and Rackham's excellent The Nature of Mediterranean Europe, there's an entire chapter devoted to how to read historical evidence for ecological purposes, and I recommend it (and the entire book) to anyone who's interested. A major purpose of the book is to discuss and correct the errors made in reconstructing the ecological history of the Mediterranean Basin, and it's a fascinating read.

Getting back to forests and woodlands: Woodlands (at least in the UK and probably elsewhere) were used to produce two things: wood and timber. Wood is the small stuff used for things like charcoal, fence posts, furniture, etc (think "firewood"). Timber are the tall trees used for major construction projects, like buildings and ships. In a woodland, most trees were deliberately pruned (coppiced or pollarded) for wood production, because that is what most people used in everyday life. Timber was a major source of wealth. Property owners deliberately planted and cared for timber trees, replanting immediately when they were cut down. Essentially, they were long-term trusts. A well-known example: when Oxford Cathedral was built, they planted a number of timber oaks, for the repairs that they knew it would need in a few centuries. Today, only the rich have investments that run on this time-scale, but in the old days when they couldn't get timber from the US, Norway, or Brazil, they had to make sure that the resources would be available when they needed them.

So...deforestation in Europe? It gets pretty complex. Certainly a lot of trees have been cut down in the last 150 years, especially with the introduction of American "Scientific Forestry" which drastically changed the way Europeans looked at their woodlands (for instance: woodlands were to only be used for growing trees for industry, not for raising pigs, firewood, etc). Prior to that...? Well, in the UK (where I've got the best evidence to hand), basically all the land was cleared and in use by around the 4th century BC. Deforested? Not really. There are lots of woodlands that have probably been in continuous use and harvest since that time. It's something to think about.

In Africa, we simply don't have the record. It's pretty obvious from aerial surveys and some archeological work that parts of the Congo basin that are now forest were densely settled at one time. What happened to those people is (to my knowledge) largely unknown. My guess is that, in Central Africa, we've got at least as complex a land use history as in Europe. I suspect that parts of central Africa have been as consciously and complexly managed as parts of England. Given the wars and colonialism of the last few centuries, much of the evidence is hidden. I'll note in passing that the same thing can be said for North and South America's precolumbian history.

To sum up: basically, I think that deforestation, and blaming steel production for it, is a radically over-simplified idea, to the point that I'd suggest that it's wrong. To start with, throw in harvesting timber for ships, switching to coal for industry and cutting down woodland for other industrial uses (such as farming or sheep-herding), and the switch in how forests were both understood and managed, from a local-scale sustainable use to global-scale resource extraction. In transferring the argument to Africa, you need to factor in all the history that have disappeared into the mists, since we don't have any records other than the griot's stories and similar myths. Personally, I don't this can be parsed very simply as increased steel production=> deforestation.

Fearn

[Jens Nordlunde]

Hi Fearn,

An interesting subject you bring up. I doubt that many, if any, of us had thought of it this way, although it should have been taken in consideration, as it is part of the whole thing. I know you could have added a lot of other countries where the same thing happened, but the countries you mentioned gives us an idea of what did happened.

Jens

[tom hyle]

Interesting. It seems the ships are fairly commonly mentioned, too; I've heard that before. I'm really not on some kind of swords wiped out forests crusade, but swords are the pinnacle of technology at the time, and I would not be the first to see them as drivers fo industrial technology. Certainly there are many factors; mostly all boil down to too many humans.
A bit more folklore about the charcoal burners in postmedieval Europe:
The charcoal burners worked in large wild forests; I don't know who owned or dominated them; perhaps they were "deserts" this is the impression I get. They did not replant that I know of. There is generally no need to replant a small semicleared area in a healthy forest. They did not make charcoal from small stuff, but from large straight trees. Perhaps forest giants so called were off limits to them in theory; in fact the story I've heard is they had little to no official oversight. I've seen in books the structure they built to cook the charcoal; it is a cylinder, about 10-15' tall, very wide proportionally; maybe 40' or something, and is made out of straight logs stacked in a very specific pattern. It is neccessary to use straight logs so as to limit and control the amount of airspace to make the thing work properly. It is then covered with dirt with just enough air let in to sustain fire; not enough to burn up the wood, which thus becomes charcoal.
I'll add also that the people of Europe also traditionally got a great deal of food from their forests, from which their overculture dominators have busily and insistantly seperated them for many years. This is where the whole pigs thing comes full circle, for instance. The traditional way to feed pigs was to drive them into the forest to eat nuts, roots, small animals, etc. Industrial use of the wood has largely outcompeted these uses in modern times, it seems.

[tom hyle]

Re the planned use of wood: I've seen where even now there are some functioning examples of special gardens/groves where growing wood is bent, etc. to form shapes it will be used for. I gather this is or was fairly common for tool handles, but also for a variety of architectural and probably maritime purposes. "Waste" pieces with interesting but not strong grain; ie. bird's eyes, burl, etc. was often used for knife handles, but daggers' and swords' are usually straight grain wood, AFAIK.