Defendu

Defendu is a modern martial art developed by William E. Fairbairn and Eric A. Sykes prior to World War II. It is a hand-to-hand combat system based on practical experience mixed with jujutsu and boxing that was developed to train the Shanghai Municipal Police, and was later taught in expanded form to Office of Strategic Services and Special Operations Executive members during World War II.

Development

Based on his training in boxing, wrestling, savate, early Judo at the Kodokan in Tokyo, and fights he was involved in during his police work, Fairbairn began to develop his own system of hand to hand combat, calling it "Defendu". It was designed to be simple to learn and to provide effective results. Fairbairn published his book, Defendu, in 1926 (re-printed as Scientific Self Defence in 1931), illustrating this method and it is here that the term "Defendu" first appeared. This confused early readers of the book, who assumed that the techniques within had been based mainly in the Eastern martial arts that Fairbairn had learned. Thus, in an attempt to highlight the originality of Fairbairn's material, the term did not appear in the 1931 edition of the book.