Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-8bljj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-27T12:04:40.509Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Playing to the ‘imaginary grandstand’: sport, the ‘British world’, and an Australian colonial identity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 June 2013

Jared van Duinen*
Affiliation:
School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, NSW 2678, Australia E-mail: jvanduinen@csu.edu.au

Abstract

This article argues for the importance of an exploration of sporting interactions in the British world. In addition, it presents the case for the adaptation of borderlands theory to the British world framework. Such study of British world borderlands is capable of more accurately capturing the spatial and regional variety of this British world and, in particular, the nascent national identities of dominions such as Australia. Sport is a particularly apt vehicle for the examination of such issues in an Australian context, since playing to the ‘imaginary grandstand’ of international spectators has always occupied a central role in the construction of an Australian national identity. This article uses three brief case studies – cricket, swimming, and Australian Rules football – to explore these theoretical claims.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Magee, Gary B. and Thompson, Andrew S., Empire and globalisation: networks of people, goods and capital in the British world, c. 1850–1914, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010, pp. 2425CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Bale, John and Cronin, Mike, Sport and postcolonialism, Oxford: Berg, 2003Google Scholar

MacLean, Malcolm, ‘Ambiguity within the boundary: re-reading C.L.R. James's Beyond a Boundary, Journal of Sport History, 37, 1, 2010, pp. 99117Google Scholar

Mangan, J. A., ed., The cultural bond: sport, empire, society, London: Frank Cass, 1992Google Scholar

Mangan, J. A., The games ethic and imperialism: aspects of the diffusion of an ideal, London: Frank Cass, 1998Google Scholar

McDevitt, Patrick F., May the best man win: sport, masculinity, and nationalism in Great Britain and the empire, 1880–1935, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Moore, Katharine, ‘ “The warmth of comradeship”: the first British empire games and imperial solidarity’, International Journal of the History of Sport, 6, 2, 1989, pp. 242251CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Nauright, John, ‘Sport and the image of colonial manhood in the British mind: British physical deterioration debates and colonial sporting tours, 1878–1906’, Canadian Journal of History of Sport, 23, 2, 1992, pp. 5472CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Stoddart, Brian and Sandiford, Keith A. P., eds., The imperial game: cricket, culture and society, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998Google Scholar

3 Bridge, Carl and Fedorowich, Kent, eds., The British world: diaspora, culture and identity, London: Frank Cass, 2003Google Scholar

Buckner, Phillip and Francis, R. Douglas, eds., Rediscovering the British world, Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2005Google Scholar

Darian-Smith, Kate, Grimshaw, Patricia, and Macintyre, Stuart, eds., Britishness abroad: transnational movements and imperial cultures, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2007Google Scholar

4 Buckner and Francis, ‘Introduction’, in Rediscovering the British world, p. 18Google Scholar

5 Ballantyne, Tony, Orientalism and race: Aryanism in the British empire, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Hopkins, A. G., ‘Back to the future: from national history to imperial history’, Past and Present, 164, 1999, pp. 198243CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Grant, Kevin, Levine, Philippa, and Trentmann, Frank, eds., Beyond sovereignty: Britain, empire and transnationalism, c.1880–1950, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, pp. 115CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Lester, Alan, ‘Imperial circuits and networks: geographies of the British empire’, History Compass, 4, 1, 2006, p. 133CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Ballantyne, Tony, ‘Rereading the archive and opening up the nation-state: colonial knowledge in South Asia (and beyond)’, in Antoinette Burton, ed., After the imperial turn: thinking with and through the nation, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003, pp. 102124CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Buckner and Francis, Rediscovering the British world, p. 16Google Scholar

Magee and Thompson, Empire and globalisation, pp. 15–21Google Scholar

Griffiths, John, ‘Were there municipal networks in the British world, c.1890–1939?’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 37, 4, 2009, pp. 575597CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Lester, Alan, Imperial networks: creating identities in nineteenth-century South Africa and Britain, London: Routledge, 2001Google Scholar

Pietsch, Tamson, ‘Wandering scholars? Academic mobility and the British world, 1850–1940’, Journal of Historical Geography, 36, 2010, pp. 377387CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Reid, Eliza, ‘Women, gender, and the promotion of empire: the Victoria League, 1901–1914’, Historical Journal, 45, 2002, pp. 569599Google Scholar

Potter, Simon J., ‘Webs, networks and systems: globalization and the mass media in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century British empire’, Journal of British Studies, 46, 3, 2007, pp. 621646CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Magee and Thompson, Empire and globalisation, in British Scholar, 3, 1, 2010, p. 142Google Scholar

10 Schwarz, Bill, ‘ “Shivering in the noonday sun”: the British world and the dynamics of “nativisation” ’, in Darian-Smith, Grimshaw, and Macintyre, Britishness abroad, p. 21Google Scholar

11 Potter, ‘Webs, networks, and systems’, p. 646Google Scholar

Bridge and Fedorowich, British world, p. 6Google Scholar

12 Parkes, Henry, ‘Our growing Australian empire’, Nineteenth Century, 15, 83, 1884, p. 147Google Scholar

13 Hancock, W. K., Australia, London: Ernest Benn, 1930, pp. 47Google Scholar

14 General William Booth, In darkest England and the way out, 1890, p. 127.

15 Alomes, Stephen, A nation at last? The changing character of Australian nationalism, 1880–1988, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1988Google Scholar

Day, David, The great betrayal, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1988Google Scholar

Day, David, The reluctant nation: Australia and the allied defeat of Japan, 1942–1945, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1992Google Scholar

Ward, Russel, A nation for a continent: the history of Australia, 1901–1975, Melbourne: Heinemann, 1977Google Scholar

16 Cole, Douglas, ‘ “The crimson thread of kinship”: ethnic ideas in Australia, 1870–1910’, Historical Studies, 14, 56, 1971, pp. 511525CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Cole, Douglas, ‘The problem of “nationalism” and “imperialism” in British settlement colonies’, Journal of British Studies, 10, 2, 1971, pp. 160182CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Meaney, Neville, ‘Britishness and Australian identity: the problem of nationalism in Australian history and historiography’, Australian Historical Studies, 32, 116, 2001, pp. 7690CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Ward, Stuart, Australia and the British embrace, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2001Google Scholar

Tsokhas, Kosmas, Making a nation state: cultural identity, economic nationalism and sexuality in Australian history, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2001Google Scholar

17 Dubow, Saul, ‘How British was the British world? The case of South Africa’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 37, 1, 2009, pp. 127CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 Hudson, W. J. and Sharp, M. P., Australian independence: colony to reluctant kingdom, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1988Google Scholar

Gare, Deborah, ‘Dating Australia's independence: national sovereignty and the 1986 Australia Acts’, Australian Historical Studies, 30, 1999, pp. 251266CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Curran, James and Ward, Stuart, The unknown nation: Australia after empire, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2010Google Scholar

19 Meaney, Neville, ‘Britishness and Australia: some reflections’, in Bridge and Fedorowich, British world, pp. 120–134Google Scholar

Ward, Stuart, ‘The “new nationalism” in Australia, Canada and New Zealand: civic culture in the wake of the British world’, in Darian-Smith, Grimshaw, and Macintyre, Britishness abroad, pp. 231–263Google Scholar

20 Dilke, Charles, Problems of Greater Britain, 2 vols., London: Macmillan, 1890, vol. 1, p. 414Google Scholar

Dubow, ‘How British?’, p. 5Google Scholar

21 Magee and Thompson, Empire and globalisation, 24Google Scholar

22 Darian-Smith, Grimshaw, and Macintyre, Britishness abroad, p. 10Google Scholar

Smith, Bernard, European vision and the South Pacific, 1768–1850: a study in the history of art and ideas, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960Google Scholar

Smith, Bernard, Imagining the Pacific: in the wake of the Cook voyages, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1992Google Scholar

23 Frederick Jackson Turner, ‘The significance of the frontier in American history’, Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1893, Washington, 1894, pp. 197227Google Scholar

Gutiérrez, Ramon A. and Young, Elliot, ‘Transnationalizing borderlands history’, Western Historical Quarterly, 41, 2010, p. 29Google Scholar

24 Bolton, Herbert Eugene, ‘Defensive Spanish expansion and the significance of the borderlands’, in Wider horizons of American history, New York: Appleton-Century, 1939, pp. 55106Google Scholar

25 Boeck, Brian J., Imperial boundaries: Cossack communities and empire-building in the age of Peter the Great, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Willem van Schendel, The Bengal borderland: beyond state and nation in South Asia, London: Anthem Press, 2004Google Scholar

Zartman, I. William, ed., Understanding life in the borderlands: boundaries in depth and motion, Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2010Google Scholar

26 Hämäläinen, Pekka and Truett, Samuel, ‘On borderlands’, Journal of American History, 98, 2, 2011, p. 338CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27 Howell, Colin and Leeworthy, Daryl, ‘Borderlands’, in S. W. Pope and John Nauright, eds., Routledge companion to sports history, London: Routledge, 2010, p. 72Google Scholar

28 Pietsch, Tamson, ‘Rethinking the British world’, Journal of British Studies, forthcoming 2013, p. 21Google Scholar

29 Belich, James, Replenishing the earth: the settler revolution and the rise of the Anglo-world, 1783–1939, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009, pp. 466467CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Meaney, Neville, ‘ “In history's page”: identity and myth’, in Deryck M. Schreuder, ed., Australia's empire, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, pp. 369373Google Scholar

30 Davison, Graeme, ‘The imaginary grandstand’, Meanjin, 61, 3, 2002, pp. 418Google Scholar

31 Ibid., pp. 5–6.

32 Cashman, Richard, Sport in the national imagination: Australian sport in the federation decades, Sydney: Walla Walla Press, 2002, p. 4Google Scholar

Cashman, Richard, ‘The Australian sporting obsession’, Sporting Traditions, 4, 1, 1987, pp. 4755Google Scholar

Dunstan, Keith, Sports, Melbourne: Sun Books, 1973Google Scholar

Stoddart, Brian, Saturday afternoon fever, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1986Google Scholar

33 Dunstan, Sports, p. 12Google Scholar

Trollope, Anthony, Australia, ed. P. D. Edwards and R. B. Joyce, Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1967, p. 233Google Scholar

34 Mandle, W. F., ‘Cricket and Australian nationalism in the nineteenth century’, Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, 59, 4, 1973, pp. 225246Google Scholar

35 Richard Cashman, John O'Hara, and Andrew Honey, eds., ‘Introduction’, in Sport, federation, nation, Sydney: Walla Walla Press, 2001, p. 9Google Scholar

36 Inglis, K. S., ‘Imperial cricket: Test matches between Australia and England, 1877–1900’, in Richard Cashman and Michael McKernan, eds., Sport in history: the making of modern sporting history, St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1979, pp. 148179Google Scholar

37 Vamplew, Wray, ‘Australians and sport’, in Wray Vamplew and Brian Stoddart, eds., Sport in Australia: a social history, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp. 1Google Scholar

38 Mangan, J. A., ‘Britain's chief spiritual export: imperial sport as moral metaphor, political symbol and cultural bond’, in Mangan, Cultural bond, pp. 1–10Google Scholar

O'Hara, John, ‘An approach to colonial sports history’, in Wray Vamplew, ed., Sport and colonialism in nineteenth-century Australasia, Australian Society for Sports History, 1986, pp. 3Google Scholar

Stoddart, Brian, ‘The hidden influence of sport’, in Verity Burgmann and Jenny Lee, eds., Constructing a culture: a people's history of Australia since 1788, Melbourne: McPhee Gribble, 1988, pp. 124135Google Scholar

39 Inglis, ‘Imperial cricket’, p. 166Google Scholar

40 Holt, Richard, Sport and the British, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989, p. 229Google Scholar

41 Sissons, Ric and Stoddart, Brian, Cricket and empire: the 1932–1933 bodyline tour of Australia, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1984, p. 29Google Scholar

42 Cashman, ‘Australia’, in Stoddart and Sandiford, The imperial game, p. 35Google Scholar

43 Ibid., p. 39.

44 Jardine, D. R., In quest of the Ashes, London: Hutchinson, 1933, p. 212Google Scholar

45 Bradley, James, ‘Inventing Australians and constructing Englishness: cricket and the creation of a national consciousness, 1860–1914’, Sporting Traditions, 11, 2, 1995, pp. 3560Google Scholar

46 Sandiford, Keith, ‘England’, in Stoddart and Sandiford, The imperial game, p. 13Google Scholar

47 Cashman, ‘Australia’, p. 45Google Scholar

48 Cashman, Richard, ‘Symbols of unity: Anglo-Australian cricketers, 1877–1900’, in Mangan, Cultural bond, p. 130Google Scholar

49 Cashman, Richard, The ‘demon’ Spofforth, Sydney: UNSW Press, 1990, pp. 193194Google Scholar

50 Warner, P. F., Cricket across the seas, being an account of the tour of Lord Hawke's team in New Zealand and Australia, London: Longmans, 1903, pp. 149152Google Scholar

51 Holt, Sport, p. 229Google Scholar

52 Cashman, ‘Australia’, p. 47Google Scholar

53 Bradley, ‘Inventing Australians’, pp. 46–50Google Scholar

54 Cashman, National imagination, pp. 20–30Google Scholar

55 Mandle, ‘Cricket’, p. 227Google Scholar

56 Stuart Macintyre, ‘Prologue: sport and past Australasian culture’, in J. A. Mangan and John Nauright, Sport in Australasian society: past and present, London: Frank Cass, 2000, pp. 67Google Scholar

57 Lyttelton, A., ‘Cricket reform’, National Review, 34, 1899–1900, p. 233Google Scholar

58 Cashman, The ‘demon’ Spofforth (emphasis added).

59 Davison, ‘Imaginary grandstand’, p. 8Google Scholar

60 Hughson, J., ‘The middle class, colonialism and the making of sport’, Sport in Society, 12, 1, 2009, p. 78Google Scholar

61 McDevitt, May the best man win, pp. 81–110Google Scholar

62 Ibid., p. 110.

63 Sissons and Stoddart, Cricket and empire, p. 10Google Scholar

64 Hess, Rob and Parker, Claire, ‘Against the tide: new work on Australasian aquatic cultures’, International Journal of the History of Sport, 26, 14, 2009, pp. 20602068CrossRefGoogle Scholar

65 Jeffery, Nicole, ‘Australia's Olympic swim team to be probed’, 12 September 2012Google Scholar

66 Cashman, Richard, Paradise of sport: A history of Australian sport, Sydney: Walla Walla Press, 2010, p. 39Google Scholar

67 Light, Richard and Rockwell, Tracy, ‘The cultural origins of competitive swimming in Australia’, Sporting Traditions, 22, 1, 2005, pp. 2137Google Scholar

Phillips, Murray, Swimming Australia: one hundred years, Sydney: UNSW Press, 2008, pp. 89Google Scholar

68 Light and Rockwell, ‘Cultural origins’, 31Google Scholar

Parker, Claire, ‘The rise of competitive swimming 1848 to 1870’, Sports Historian, 21, 2, 2001, pp. 5465CrossRefGoogle Scholar

69 Phillips, Swimming Australia, p. 5Google Scholar

70 It is interesting to note that these connections with the ‘home country’ were so pronounced that in 1900 Percy Cavill was mistakenly reported as the ‘English swimmer’ who defeated W. H. Smith in a race in America: see Fun, 14 August 1900, p. 55.

71 Cashman, National imagination, pp. 176–178Google Scholar

72 ‘Sketches of New South Wales, No. XVI’, Saturday Magazine, 10, 1837, p. 122.

73 Winterton, Rachel and Parker, Claire, ‘ “A utilitarian pursuit”: swimming education in nineteenth-century Australia and England’, International Journal of the History of Sport, 26, 14, 2009, pp. 21062125CrossRefGoogle Scholar

74 Carlile, Forbes, On swimming, London: Pelham Books, 1965, p. 127Google Scholar

75 Osmond, Gary and Phillips, Murray, ‘ “Look at that kid crawling”: race, myth and the “crawl” stroke’, Australian Historical Studies, 127, 2006, pp. 4362CrossRefGoogle Scholar

76 Manchester Guardian, 27 October 1902, p. 3.

77 Chicago Tribune, 29 December 1902, p. 11.

78 ‘New stroke for swimmers: an Australian wriggle called the crawl now in fashion’, Washington Post, 13 August 1905, p. SP4.

79 See also, ‘Dick Cavill: chat with the champion’, The Register, 14 February 1908, p. 3.

80 Sydney Morning Herald, 16 January 1913, p. 9.

81 Grow, Robin, ‘From gum trees to goalposts, 1858–1876’, in Rob Hess and Bob Stewart, eds., More than a game: an unauthorised history of Australian Rules football, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1998, p. 5Google Scholar

82 Collins, Tony, ‘The invention of sporting tradition: national myths, imperial pasts and the origins of Australian Rules football’, in Stephen Wagg, ed., Myths and milestones in the history of sport, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, p. 20Google Scholar

83 Grow, ‘Gum trees’, p. 11Google Scholar

84 Greg de Moore, Tom Wills: his spectacular rise and tragic fall, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2008Google Scholar

85 Collins, ‘Invention’, p. 20Google Scholar

86 Cashman, National imagination, p. 45Google Scholar

87 Hallinan, Chris and Judd, Barry, ‘Duelling paradigms: Australian aborigines, marn-grook and football histories’, Sport in Society, 15, 7, 2012, pp. 975986CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Poulter, Jim, ‘Marn-grook: original Australian Rules’, in Peter Burke and Leo Grogan, eds., This game of ours: supporters’ tales of the people's game, St Andrews: EATWARFLEMSD, 1993, pp. 6467Google Scholar

Blainey, Geoffrey, A game of our own: the origins of Australian Rules football, Melbourne: Black Inc., 2003, pp. 203205Google Scholar

Hibbins, Gillian, ‘Wills and the aboriginal game: a seductive myth’, in Geoff Slattery, ed., The Australian game of football since 1858, Melbourne: GSP Books, 2008Google Scholar

John Hirst, ‘Comment’, The Monthly, 38 (September), 2008, pp. 811Google Scholar

Cazaly, Ciannon, ‘Off the ball: football's history wars’, Meanjin, 67, 2008, pp. 8287Google Scholar

88 Blainey, Game of our own, p. 203Google Scholar

89 ‘Football: the garrison v. the Melbourne club’, The Australasian, 12 June 1869, n.p.

90 Dilke, Problems of Greater Britain, vol. 1, p. 253Google Scholar

Twopenny, R. E. N., Town life in Australia, London: Elliot Stock, 1883Google Scholar

91 Williamson, John, Football's forgotten tour: the story of the British Australian Rules venture of 1888, Applecross, Western Australia: John Williamson, 2003Google Scholar

92 ‘Cricket and football notes’.

93 Smith, S. Talbot, ‘Australian football’, Boy's Own Paper, 10 November 1888Google Scholar

94 ‘Observer’, ‘A Rugby critic on Australian football’, The Australasian, 9 June 1888, n.p.

95 Williamson, Football's forgotten tour.

96 Collins, ‘Invention’, p. 25Google Scholar

97 Talbot Smith, ‘Australian football’.

98 Pascoe, Robert, The winter game: the complete history of Australian football, Melbourne: The Text Publishing Company, 1995, p. 52Google Scholar

99 Cashman, O'Hara, and Honey, Sport, federation, nation, pp. 111–113Google Scholar