Virtual Patriot Games: American Football in The Times of London, 1888–1910

Abstract

This study examines the American football press coverage in the Times of London from 1888 to November 1910. The time span covers the paper’s first mention of the game to the first game played in England. This period also coincides with increasing anxiety about the strength of the British Empire and unwanted American influences. During this time, athletic contests between the two nations turned into sites for the construction of national identities. Adapting the sport scholar Emma Poulton’s concept of ‘mediated patriot games’, the author argues that the American football coverage of the Times of London could be considered ‘virtual patriot games’, as the absence of domestic American football teams did not allow for direct competition. Two related narrative elements. The stories in the Times framed gridiron football as the pastime of the ‘other’, including translating rules and comparing the merits of rugby and American football. The reports also focused on the American game’s violence, confirming older traditions in British imaginations of America. Advancements in communication technologies, especially the telegraphic wire, were critical for the immediacy with which British readers consumed American sporting news. Contrary to current scholarship, British interpretations of American culture through gridiron football developed much earlier than the post-1970s information age.     

Sport as a medium of national resistance: Politics and baseball in Taiwan during Japanese colonialism, 1895–1945

This paper examines the manner in which the Japanese colonial government influenced the development of baseball in Taiwan during the period from 1895 to 1945. The paper seeks to explain the role that baseball played in the divided society of this period. It argues that baseball was a political vehicle used by the Japanese colonial government to promote social integration and it evaluates the responses of the Taiwanese to baseball utilized for this purpose.     

The new boys of summer: baseball’s radical transformation in the late sixties

Business historians have led the way in research into company paternalism and the origins and development of welfare provision. Their work has focused on large-scale enterprises and has generally located welfare (‘sports and social’) within the broader framework of company culture. Whilst much of welfare provision is related to sport and recreation, sports historians have perhaps neglected this area in recent years. This paper will begin to redress this imbalance by examining the origins and development of work-based sport and recreational provision at four major employers – Robinson & Sons (textile & packaging manufacturers, Chesterfield), Raleigh (cycle manufacturers, Nottingham), Lyons, (food processors and caterers based in West London), and the Bank of England. Among business historians the prevailing view is that such provision was a management strategy designed to encourage loyalty to the firm. It will be argued here that it was more of a ‘bottom-up’ process with workers initiating, organising and sustaining clubs and societies, albeit with a good deal of financial and logistical support from their employers.     

Girls and Women and the Role of Sport in Different Age Groups: Poland 1918–1939

Abstract

In this paper, the role of sport in the processes of creating the modern woman in the interwar Poland will be examined. The analysing of the women’s press shows how the publicists use the hygiene and the woman’s body in discourse of age and in building the new emancipated, strong woman. How they incorporated ideas young body, active lifestyle, and images of modern women – la Garçonne created in USA and West Europe and presented them to the Polish audience.     

The Introduction and Meaning of the Word Sport in the Netherlands, 1647–1910

In contrast with the Netherlands’ status as a sports nation, academic articles on Dutch sports history are scarce. In this paper, we would like to establish a ‘textual’ basis for further research. By means of a large-scale digital analysis, we have been able to depict important phases in the Dutch ‘sportification process’. Sport gradually infiltrated Dutch society: first it was mentioned as an English word in bilingual dictionaries, translated literature and ego documents. Then, English sports were described in recreational education books. Indeed, from 1845 onwards, English teachers at Dutch elite schools played an important role in the actual practising of English sports such as cricket, hockey and football. Together with the founding of sports clubs, specific sports manuals were published. Finally, via the introduction of sports sections in general newspapers, sport (as term) was widely diffused in society. Hence, in 1910, Luitje Van Der Wal was the first to translate the English word sport as ‘sport’ in K. Ten Bruggencate’s Engelsch Woordenboek. To be sure, this sportification process did not please everyone. There were warnings about the negative aspects that the adoption of English sports would create. Nonetheless, even traditional Dutch activities became sportified in a modern way.     

Sport,politics and the labour movement: the British workers' sports federation, 1923–1935

Reading articles about the Tarahumara Indians of Northern Mexico that have appeared in popular US magazines, I identify four interlocking themes that constitute the Tarahumaras as a ‘white man's Indian’: a) the Tarahumaras are primitive hunters; b) they eat a simple and healthy diet; c) they complete superhuman feats of endurance; and d) they lack the sense of time/work discipline that would make them successful athletes in Western-style endurance events. These themes constitute the Tarahumaras as noble savages whose supposedly primitive lifestyle offers US runners a solution for the diseases of overcivilization. They also serve the needs of a burgeoning sport/tourism industry that sells stereotypical images of ‘Indians’ to US runners and tourists.     

Playing baseball/playing ‘house’: the reproduction and naturalization of ‘separate spheres’ in Japanese high school baseball

Although Japanese schools are generally considered to be one of the most gender-equitable social institutions in Japan, they play an important role in helping to reproduce and naturalize the notion of sex-based separate spheres, through endorsing the maintenance of such separate spheres in extracurricular sports clubs, such as baseball, where female student ‘managers’ act as surrogate mothers to the male team members: cooking, cleaning and engaging in other support work. Furthermore, the Japan High School Baseball Federation (JHBF)'s rule prohibiting female teammates from participating in official games (due to the ‘danger’ of injury to smaller, weaker females) discourages more athletically capable females from joining baseball teams in the first place, so that female students who do join high school baseball teams as players tend to be less likely to be athletically competitive. This both reinforces the image of smaller, weaker females and justifies the JHBF's policy, further strengthening the notion of the appropriateness of separate spheres. Moreover, the mass media encourage this, both by applauding the efforts of the female managers, and by giving details on the physiques of female teammates, thus subtly supporting the argument that females cannot and should not compete with males in baseball (or, by implication, in other male-dominated fields). Thus, these practices help to normalize the idea of sex-based separate spheres at a very real experiential level for high school students, as well as at a symbolic/ideological level for society as a whole.