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How could this society have been established in "about 1840" and "1850," as the current version of this article states? 173.88.246.138 (talk) 01:14, 17 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Especially when it was probably actually formed in 1853 according to most of Google Books' guys. — LlywelynII 09:58, 17 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The name ("Small Swords") refers to daggers used by warriors or martial artists in close combat. It is believed to be linked to [[Triad society|triads]].{{citation needed|date=June 2020}}
This already had a [fact] tag on it but I'll just remove it since it's almost certainly wrong. 'Small Knife Society' is just a mistranslation based on the Chinese 101 vocab list that equates 刀 with the things that Chinese chefs have and that Westerners use with their forks. Really the 劎/刀 distinction is entirely alien to English and has nothing to do with relative size: some swords are jian and some are dao, based on the number of cutting edges they have. A) These guys had short swords or very very long knives (along with their guns and anything else they could get their hands on). They didn't default or train with 'daggers in close combat'. B) The actual base membership sign was their cap, red badge, and blue jacket and not any standardized weaponry. C) There was a later group with the same name who specifically took it from being lesser/younger than the Big Sword (dadao) Society and had nothing to do with machetes or knives at all. That was in the warlord era, though, so likely a separate group. Point being, this is universally the Small Sword/s Society; to the extent they had bladed weapons, they weren't daggers; they certainly weren't specially trained in them; and none of that should be left in the article without specific sourcing about how all of the above is wrong after all based on new/Chinese research. — LlywelynII 09:58, 17 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
We should probably also move this to the grammatically correct Small Sword Society, too. Seems to be preferred by most of the scholars on the topic. — LlywelynII 10:01, 17 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
