"Last war with melee weapons?" Topic

Which was the last war where one side predominantly used melee weapons in battle? I'm thinking Zulu War, anything later than that?

Boxer Rebellion and the War in the Sudan both come after the Zulu Wars. Depends if you consider them as true wars however. There are probably conflicts later still that I cant think of yet.

There's probably some incredibly obscure 'war' that none of us have ever heard of, like the 1950's Paraguayan government fighting a hyper-low intensity guerilla war with a bunch of infuriated machete wielding farmers, that sort of thing. Just make it up!

Good point, the Boxer Rebellion finished in 1901, can anyone add a later war?

Not wars per se, but what aboutthe rebellions in Africa in the 1940s and 50s. The Simba and Mau Mau used machetes along with modenr weapons.

I was thinking about the Mau Mau but didn't feel I knew enough to guess at the level of firearms they possessed.

The Moro Rebellion in the Philippines in the early part of the 1900s had insurgents armed mainly with swords.

I would suspect that the insurgents in Haiti were also armed mainly with swords against the American Marines.

Other examples of insurgents in the WW1 era would use a lot of swords with some firearms mixed in. I am thinking about the fights against the Ottomans by the Arabs, Armenians and Kurds.

I also thought about the Moro, but weren't they mainly bow and arrow users? If that's allowed then melee predominant fighting is going on right now between the last few tribes in the Amazon.

While not a war, the Rwanda genocide was largely carried out by Machete and other hand weapons

Lots of insurgents used melee weapons but I would agree that the last big conflict would be the Boxer Rebellion

In an odd way, you could add WW1 ! – When attacking trenches as the war went on, people tended not to use rifles, preferring sharpened spades, home made clubs and maces – and grenades, of course!

During the Mau Mau I was certainly attacked by a machete wielder but I don't think he was actually part of the rebels. The contact we had with actual rebels they had fire arms some improvised home made.

x42

Glad to hear you got out of that one in one piece x42!!!

So approx 1900 for the big divide of warfare between shoulder to shoulder and skirmish line. I guess it's determined by the point at which a skirmish line with rifles and or machine guns can reliably defeat a formed body of troops.

I read about armed mobs in the terrible clashes during the India-Pakistan split in 1947-48 attacking each other with spears and axes and swords, but this probably doesn't constitute a wholesale "war."

Other than that -- Chicago, Democratic Convention, 1968??

Carlo, the Moro were very effective with their mass blade charges. The US Army developed the .45 caliber pistol to use to stop the chargers since the .38 caliber service pistol was not stopping the charge.

There are always melee weapons, sometimes you run out of ammo. The last war to use them was …"the last war"!!

I think the OP means one side that predominantly used melee weapons. I would think it would one of the British or French colonial wars of the late 19th Cent. I would say the ZULU war. It seems other native peoples converted to firearms rather quickly.

Slightly OT, I think the last big battle in which BOTH sides were mostly melee fighters was Gallabat/Metemma,1889,between Madhists and Abyssinians:

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