Is It the Typical Javanese Musket? | Try to Find Out the Clues of Javanese Musket | Indonesian Musket

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Intro

Actually the animation of Javanese muskets has started to be prepared but when I dig deeper, I found something that is blocking me from making the animation for “Java arquebus”. Because I found that there were seemingly some details I should figure out at first. So what things stopped me? Meanwhile, this video/article is also the clues that I found about the Javenese muskets.

The Photo in Wikipedia

At the earliest time, I knew the Javanese musket from the wikipedia page. And also there is a very iconic photo. It’s seemingly a typical Javanese musket. But when I read the title of this photo, I found it’s probably that we can be sure that this is an Indonesian matchlock but here’s another half part title, “this weapon is smaller and shorter than the Java arquebus.” Plus, as we know that Indonesia is a multi-ethnic country so it seems we may not judge and get the conclusion, this is surely a Java arquebus, too rapidly. 

Speaking of this wikipedia page, there is a photo about the gun dance performance in Bali, Indonesia. So it should mean that there is also a unique and traditional firearm culture in Bali. So there may be a kind of Balinese traditional firearm as well.

At the same time, when I saw it, I suddenly realized the gun dance in the Arabic world. But here the majority religion of Balinese is Hinduism, the people of Arabic world are muslim. Although both ethnic of people have different religions and cultures, both also have their own firearm cultures and a part of firearm culture has been mixed into their traditional dance. 

Hard Points

Now I think the hardest part is not having enough photos. Nowadays most of the existing Southeast Asian musket collections probably are the Malay muskets, vietnamese muskets or Hmong muskets on the Internet. We can recognize the 3 kinds of muskets by their own typical and different style. Back to the Javanese musket side, if the collections are too few, it will make it hard for us to find the same style points and finally it’s hard to recognize whether this is really a Javanese musket. 

History Clues

Then, Javanese (probably) started to use the gunpowder-weapons from the 16th century at least. 

Additionally, in history, Muslim merchants dominated trade in Southeast Asia by the 9th century or earlier. In the 12th or 13th century Islam spread in southeast Asia and in the 15th century the spreading speed got faster. Java Island probably became a part of the Islamic world in the years. During that time the European explorer’s ships didn’t arrive here. Therefore the firearms which were seen by the first group of European explorers in the 16th century might be the firearms with Islamic techniques. 

But a confusing point appeared. Why today most of the firearm collections of Southeast Asia are the snap-matchlock or we can call them “istinggar”.

My Speculations

So here’s 2 speculations. 

One, there were trades with Muslim merchants in Southeast Asia but the firearm and the firearm tech didn’t come with the trading goods and merchants. 

Second, the Islamic firearms had reached Southeast Asia at first. However, with more and more western explorers reaching Southeast Asia in the 16th century, more and more trading forts or colonies appeared. The Europeans also (probably) built the gun-workshop here in order to repair and build the weapons and even the weapons could be the trading goods between Europeans and the people who lived in Southeast Asia in that era. So Maybe this made the Southeast Asian musket transform into the snap-European-matchlock from the pressure-Islamic-matchlock and obtaining the European matchlock got easier during the time. 

I Hope…

In the end, I think if we want to continue researching the Javanese muskets, we might really need to visit military or history museums in Indonesia one day in the future to explore further. Meanwhile, if you know some details about the Javanese musket, especially the photos, you can keep your thoughts in the comments. Let’s make the classical firearms reappear today. 

So this is today’s video/article and thank you for watching. Hope you can like this video/article. Have a good day. See you next time. Bye!