Strengthening the British Empire via ...sport!

Sport was a key branch of British Cultural Imper­ialism, like trade, English and Protestantism. The most popular sports, including cricket, football and ten­n­is, were org­an­ised & codified in C19th Brit­ain, but the motiv­ations behind a sport programme across the vast British Empire were unclear.

 

With colonial ex­pan­sion, Cricket came to In­dia with the East India Trading Co. Their first cricket match was played between sail­ors and then the Calcutta Cricket Club est­ablished in an Imperial outpost in 1792. Some Indians were actively involved in making the foreign sport their own. The Par­s­is of Bombay, an ethnic minority peop­le in trade, copied their boss­es in both business and sport. Parsi sons used free time to play the cricket they’d learned by watch­ing Englishmen on Army parade grounds. The Parsi boys founded their first cricket club in 1848, Orient­al Cricket Club.

Older British sports such as cricket, horse racing and rowing were quickly established; in fact New Zealand was only slightly behind Britain in taking up newly organised sports such as rugby and tennis.  The earliest recorded game of cricket, which involved the children of English settlers and Māori players, was in the Bay of Islands in Dec 1832. The earliest organised horse racing was held in the Bay of Islands in 1835, with the first race meeting in Auckland in 1840 under the Lieut-Gov William Hobson. The Wellington Cricket Club for prominent colonists and an Albion Cricket Club for working men opened in 1842.

The Aboriginal XI  Cricket Team left Sydney in Feb 1868, the first time an organised sporting group had travelled to England as Australian representatives. English pride was only dented when the national cricket team lost to Aust­ralia in 1877, in the first international Test Match in Melbourne. And Eng­land’s first cricketing loss to Aust­ral­ia in London in 1882 was hurtful blow to the British imperial psyche; they burned the stumps!

Another Australia national cricket team toured England 

1884, Wiki.

British paternalism suggested games grew ch­ar­acter, so players could show leadership, loyalty, sacrifice and self-cont­rol. Thus the use of sport as a moral­is­ing ag­ent was imp­ortant for the British, as they cl­assed many nat­iv­es as “sav­age”. Snobby Vic­t­or­ian class ideals onto the colon­ies. Maint­aining the Bri­t­ish Emp­ire meant the Empire had a moral dimension, help­ing re­af­f­irm class and rac­ial divisions that were cen­t­ral to Vict­orian life. 

Especially in white settler col­on­ies like South Africa. James Logan (b1857) left Scotland for South Africa as a rail­way worker in 1877. His business flair helped estab­lish his cat­er­ing est­ablish­ments along South Africa’s railways; as he became weal­­th­ier he exten­d­ed his influen­ce by joining the Legis­lative As­sembly in 1894. And he built a 1st class cricket ground in South Africa.

As the Empire expanded, young men were needed to travel to isolated sites, to live in grim conditions. These young, middle-class men had been instilled with imperial values at public school. Headmaster Thom­as Ar­n­old at Rugby and headmasters at Winch­est­er, Har­row and Eton sub­scribed to Imperialist imperatives and devoted their schools to those who’d be soldiers or administrat­ors. The development of this muscul­ar el­ite via sp­ort dev­el­oped fitness, self cont­rol, health, team­work, solidarity and especially duty.

But not just sport; British imperial school­ing relied on heavy Chris­t­ian ev­an­gelic­alism. Miss­ion­aries who travelled out to the colonies had been ins­t­illed with the imperial ethic at public school, to spread the mes­s­­age of Christ­ianity. Like sport, Christianity encour­aged a level of obedience and conform­ism, curing the colonies of savagery.

Crick­et provided comfort to homesick Eng­lish­men, a means to rec­reate memories of home. And these leisure activities allowed dif­f­er­ent col­on­ial classes to assemble and to promote social mobility. The noble, manly game of cricket was brought to Canada, by Vancouver Island's first settler, Capt William Grant in 1849. Many fur-traders that pop­ulated Fort Victoria, before settle­ment began, were British but it was the later set­t­lers who brought “civilisation” to Britain's North Amer­ican out­post.

From 1870 political imperialism changed; educat­ed classes saw the British Empire having to meet the threat posed by grow­ing Europ­ean po­w­­ers eg Fr­ance, Ger­many and Italy. These nations exp­anded as they saw that their own Empires could help their ailing economies. Brit­­ain claim­ed her colonies mainly had a moral dim­ension, a Mis­sion to Civ­ilise, to just­ify the conquest of Asian & Af­rican countries. [Nonetheless the British colonies still had strategic and trading value!]

In the ear­lier C19th, Britain relied on nat­ive sold­iers in war­, especially in In­dia. And in administration. In India 1000 Bri­tish civil servants gov­er­ned 280 million people but the British civil servants respons­ible for the Raj could not have done so alone. Mill­ions of Ind­ians cooperated and fill­ed the ranks of the army, bureau­cracy and pol­ice. Britain had to make the Indian elite feel part of the Raj, and keep them fit. The 1857 Ind­ian Up­ris­ing showed what happened otherwise.

Indian Cricket Team in the UK
1911. BBC

Rugby wasn’t play­ed much in the public schools where future admin­is­t­rators of the Emp­ire were educated. Nor was it suited to the hot clim­­ates in the Emp­ire. However in many col­on­ies rugby devel­oped a sense of fair play, nationhood and man­hood; victories against Bri­t­ain became evidence of the maturing of colonies. Rugby, and box­­ing, promoted the British de­sire to be seen as strong and mascul­ine

Tennis was another game played over the Empire, provid­ing times for so­cial contact, and many imperial administrators built ten­nis courts in their houses or civil buildings. Golf and tennis bore the historic­al imprint of the middle-class. Horse racing was pop­ular, all­owing all classes to meet. In India polo and hunt­ing bec­ame pop­ular am­ongst the officer class, where the elite could socialise. Snook­er be­came popular among the elite, ent­ert­ainment on long winter evenings.

 

Colonial administrators and their families

Socialising at the tennis courts

 

So, did sports bind the Empire together? It was cricket that became the symbol of solid­arity that exemp­lif­ied imperial amb­ition and ach­ieve­ment. As the cul­tural exp­er­ience of cricket differed from one colony to the next, of the coloured crick­eting nat­ions of Empire, the West Indies did the best. The first Test series to be played in the West Indies against Eng­land in 1929–30, and the West Indies was first victorious in the 1934–5 series. This experience changed the view that crick­et was forced down on a compliant, colonised people.

Before India’s independence in 1947, fierce debates raged over British influen­ce. Yet in 1971 the Indian cricket team def­eated the former colonisers at their own game, on their own turf. And in 1983, Ind­ia won the cricket World Cup at Lord’s Cr­icket Ground.  Additionally, India turned cricket into a huge industry.

In the early Empire, Britain had of course more skilled and more civ­il­­ised. So if the introduction of sports was to help colonisers affirm their cultural superiority and justify their rule upon the Emp­ire, it was ironic that sports empow­er­ed the colonies, not supressed them. Was colonial success a justification for being granted self govern­ment?

Thanks to  Brian Stoddart  & Thomas Fletcher.