Sport, Colonialism, and United States Imperialismhhh.gavilan.edu/lhalper/hist2/documents/SportsColonialismUSImperialism.pdfSPORT, COLONIALISM, AND UNITED STATES IMPERIALISM Spring

SPORT, COLONIALISM, AND UNITED STATES IMPERIALISM

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FORUM

Sport, Colonialism, andUnited States Imperialism

GERALD R. GEMSDepartment of Health and Physical Education

North Central College

BY 1914 EUROPEAN POWERS, LED BY GREAT BRITAIN, France, and Germany, con-trolled 85 percent of the earth’s land surface. By that time the United States, itself a formercolony, had become a major player in the imperial process. Over the past century a num-ber of American historians have glorified such expansionism as a heroic struggle, a roman-tic adventure, a benevolent mission, and a Darwinian right or inevitability. In doing so,they constructed (some might say invented) national identities.1

Only more recently, since the 1960s, have scholars questioned imperialism and itspractices. Post-colonial scholars, such as C.L.R. James, and revisionist historians haveused a more critical lens, sometimes from the perspective of the conquered and colonized.James’s influential Beyond a Boundary (1964) assumed a Marxist paradigm in its investiga-tion of the role of cricket in the process of subjugation. Most other analyses have takensimilar theoretical perspectives. Over the past dozen years, British historians, led by J.A.Mangan, have conducted a thorough examination of the role of sports and education incultural imposition. American and European scholars, however, have not kept pace. AllenGuttmann’s Games and Empires (1994) remains the only comprehensive American study,while Joel Franks has published two recent inquiries into cross-cultural sporting experi-ences in Hawai‘i and the Pacific. Joseph Reaves’s Taking in a Game: A History of Baseball inAsia (2002) is a welcome addition to this short list. Murray Phillips offers a useful critiqueof newer work in his “Deconstructing Sport History: The Postmodern Challenge.”2

Historians and, more recently, sport historians have clearly identified particular ele-ments of the imperial process. Integral to this ideology is the concept of race, a nine-teenth-century construct that embedded social class, religious, and gender connotations

JOURNAL OF SPORT HISTORY

4 Volume 33, Number 1

and accorded certain rights and privileges. Scholars have coined the term “whiteness,” butthe concept goes beyond skin color to include intellectual and physical capabilities. As theDarwinian scientific revolution of the mid nineteenth century drifted into pseudosciences,such as physiognomy and phrenology, biological theories purported to rationalize ethnic“differences.” Already established stereotypes became rationalized, justified, and entrenched.British and American scientists who constructed such racial, ethnic, and religious pyra-mids inevitably placed white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant (WASP) males at the apex. InAmerica, as early as 1630, the Puritan founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony hadalready declared themselves to be “a chosen people.” That self-identification of superiorityinitiated an ongoing westward expansion and expropriation of native lands based on racialand religious arrogance.3

The imperial ventures of the United States began shortly after its birth as a nation in1776. In 1803 President Thomas Jefferson more than doubled the national territory withthe Louisiana Purchase. Thereafter, trappers, traders, and hunters invaded the territory,seeking furs for commercial purposes in an early capitalist economy. The migratory NativeAmerican tribes who inhabited the vast area had hunted for sustenance, following im-mense herds of bison across the Midwestern plains. The incursion of Anglos signaledwholesale changes for the land and its inhabitants. White hunters perceived bison huntingnot only as an economic activity but also as a sport, and by the end of the century they haddecimated the herds and destroyed the Plains Indians’ nomadic culture. Even before theculmination of that conquest, American WASPs embarked upon international ventures.4

Missionaries from the United States arrived in Hawai‘i in 1820, preaching a conser-vative Protestantism and Yankee capitalism. Communal sharing of food, wives, and chil-dren perplexed the Anglos, one of whom stated that “the ease with which the Hawai-ians . . . can secure their own food has undoubtedly interfered with their social and industrialadvancement. . . . [It] relieves the native from any struggle and unfits him for competitionwith men from other lands.”5 The missionaries consequently banned gambling and Ha-waiian sport forms such as surfing, boxing, and canoe racing as well as erotic hula dances.They introduced residential boarding schools in which conscripted children were indoc-trinated with WASP culture, including the game of baseball. Later in the century the U.S.government adopted the boarding-school approach to acculturate Native American youth.

By the 1840s missionaries to Hawai‘i enjoyed great influence as advisors to the mon-archy, instituting judicial, commercial, and capitalist systems unfamiliar to the native popu-lation. Despite indigenous protests, the Great Mahele of 1848 began the division of landinto lots for private ownership. By 1890 foreigners owned 75 percent of the islands’ acre-age, much of it in plantations where baseball served as a social-control mechanism for amultiethnic labor force.6

The United States further expanded its boundaries by conquest in the Mexican-Ameri-can War of 1846-1848, and by the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867. The U.S.Congress rebuffed President Ulysses Grant’s attempted annexation of the Dominican Re-public in 1870 but could not stop the cultural flow of baseball. Cuban boys, sent to schoolin the U.S., returned with bats and balls in the 1860s, and Cubans soon developed apassion for the game. They introduced it to the Dominicans and the Puerto Ricans in the1890s.


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American expatriates brought baseball to China as early as 1863, and teachers, mili-tary personnel, missionaries, and the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), a pros-elytizing Protestant organization, promoted modern Western games throughout the re-gion thereafter. With the formal abolition of the samurai class in Japan in 1876, sportsproved a practical alternative to the samurai code of discipline, self-sacrifice, and deferenceto authority. In 1896 the elite Ichiko prep school finally achieved a long sought game withthe Anglo Yokohama Athletic Club, which had banned the Japanese from its grounds. Astunning 29-4 Ichiko victory, accompanied by banzai chants and the singing of the Japa-nese national anthem, shamed the whites and engendered a long series of rematches. TheIchiko Baseball Club Annual Report of 1896 expressed the pain and redemption in thepolitical, cultural, and athletic confrontation:

The Americans are proud of baseball as their national game just as we have beenproud of judo and kendo. Now, however, in a place far removed from theirnative land, they have fought against a “little people” whom they ridicule aschildish, only to find themselves swept away like falling leaves. No words candescribe their disgraceful conduct. The aggressive character of our national spiritis a well-established fact, demonstrated first in the Sino-Japanese War and nowby our great victories in baseball.7

Buoyed with confidence after a series of victories over the expatriate and visiting Americanteams, the Japanese ventured on a ludic invasion of the United States. Intercollegiatecontests between Japanese and U.S. schools commenced in 1905 as Waseda Universitysent its team to barnstorm Hawai‘i and the West Coast of the United States. The Univer-sity of Washington sent its team to Japan in 1908, and the University of Wisconsin fol-lowed a year later. Such excursions were inevitably characterized as “invasions,” and Japa-nese collegians played accordingly, handily defeating the American contingents.8

In 1910 The University of Chicago stipulated particular conditions and took exten-sive precautions to ensure better results. Coach Amos Alonzo Stagg felt that the Washing-ton and Wisconsin players had compromised both their performance and their moralityby consorting with geisha girls, and he informed the Japanese hosts that his team would beunable to accept such “hospitality” due to their strict training. An accompanying facultymember assured the players’ compliance. Stagg also refused to play the best Japanese teamson successive days, and he received extensive scouting reports from Americans living inJapan, some of whom coached Japanese teams. Correspondence referred to both sides as“warriors” for the fall “invasion.” There was even a reference to meeting one’s “Waterloo.”Stagg’s team practiced with Chicago professionals, while Waseda prepped in the OahuBaseball League in Hawai‘i throughout the summer. Stagg’s diligence paid off as Chicago,playing before huge crowds, swept the Japanese in ten straight games and then proclaimeditself “champions of the Orient.”9

By that time the United States had perceived Japan as a political threat in the Pacific.Japan had already defeated Russia in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, promptingGeneral Leonard Wood to assert that “Japan is going ahead in a perfectly methodicalphilosophical way to dominate the Far East and as much of the Pacific and its trade as weand the rest of the world will permit. When she has a good excuse she will absorb thePhilippines unless we are strong enough to prevent it.”10 Thereafter surrogate athletic wars



in baseball, the Far East Games, and the Olympics fueled Japanese nationalism and substi-tuted for actual combat until the outbreak of World War II.

In 1893 historian Frederick Jackson Turner proclaimed the frontier experience as theformative influence on the American character. With the economic collapse of that year,commercial interests looked for new frontiers, and Americans deemed themselves ready toassume international leadership. An Anglo coup, aided by U.S. troops, overthrew theHawaiian monarchy, and Anglo fears of a growing Japanese presence in the islands led toannexation by the U. S. in 1898. Following the brief Spanish-American War that year, theUnited States found itself with a global empire as the resultant peace treaty awarded Cuba,Puerto Rico, and the entire Philippines archipelago to the victors.

Colonialism initially engendered much debate in American society, with anti-imperi-alists, such as philosopher William James, charging that the United States was forsaking itsdemocratic and egalitarian principles. The McKinley administration, however, sided withCongressman Albert Beveridge of Indiana, who stated:

We will not repudiate our duty in the Orient. We will not renounce our part inthe mission of our race, trustees under God, of the civilization of the world.And we will move forward to our work, not howling out regrets like slaveswhipped to their burdens, but with gratitude for a task worthy of our strength,and thanksgiving to Almighty God that He has marked us as His chosen people,henceforth to lead in the regeneration of the world.11

Protestant missionary groups rushed to the new lands despite the fact that the newterritories were already Christianized by Catholics. The Protestants, however, consideredtheir faith a purer form of Christianity, a higher stage of civilization.12

While religious leaders sought to save souls, and businessmen craved internationalmarkets, the military sought naval bases for their strategic value. The Philippines, Hawai‘i,and the Caribbean outposts provided refueling stations that would allow the U.S. to chal-lenge Great Britain and Germany for dominance on the seas in an era when TheodoreRoosevelt and many others believed that naval power was the key to global hegemony.

Under Spanish rule in the Philippines and in the newly-acquired Caribbean islands,mixed races had proliferated. A more virulent strain of racism emerged under the Ameri-cans, who adopted many of the long established colonial practices of the British. WASPsdenigrated subordinate groups in myriad forms of popular culture, such as newspapers,magazines, photography, art, and film in order to portray their superiority to themselvesand their subjugated peoples. The primary means of indoctrination, however, proved tobe education. Like the British, Americans attempted to impose the English language onthe colonized peoples. With a dearth of English speakers in the subject lands, however,physical education and sports became an alternative means of infusing the characteristicsnecessary for competition in the modern industrialized world. Sports also measured theinferiority of non-white bodies, rationalizing the superiority of the dominant group.Throughout the colonies comprehensive athletic programs in schools, parks, playgrounds,and settlement houses, often run in close alliance with the Young Men’s Christian Associa-tion, attempted, with varying degrees of success, to inculcate a particular racial and reli-gious ideology of whiteness.

Cuba endured a relatively brief occupation in which Protestant missionaries carvedup the island in jurisdictional tracts, attempting to convert the already thoroughly Chris-


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tian country. In Protestant eyes, Cuban Catholics seemed little better than heathens. Themissionaries found little success, but the YMCA persisted for decades in its attempt tomold proper moral character through sports and thus to avert the popular notion of Cubaas an exotic playground for men seeking sexual adventures.

Sports held great economic and social promise, particularly for the downtrodden. AU.S. professional team, the Philadelphia Athletics, traveled to Cuba for competition withthe natives in 1886, followed four years later by the New York Giants and a succession ofbarnstorming teams. Professional baseball fueled the aspirations of many who lacked thewealth and socioeconomic status to gain an education, a learned profession, and conse-quent respect. Professional athletes earned their salaries through physical prowess, inde-pendent of class affiliation or access to higher education. Widespread gambling on ballgames created a need for highly skilled athletes, regardless of class or color. Cuba offeredsuch opportunities on its professional and company teams, and civic rivalries fosteredcompetition for the best players. El Base-Ball, a Cuban publication, stated that “one canhardly find any Cuban town that does not already claim as its own a club, perfectly uni-formed and prepared to play.”14

The American declaration of war, occasioned by the explosion of an American war-ship in Havana harbor, had promised an independent Cuba. The new Cuban constitu-tion, however, required approval by the United States. The establishment of a U.S. protec-torate over the island guaranteed the Americans a now notorious naval base at GuantanamoBay and undue influence over the Cuban government, economy, and military. The hand-picked first president, Tomas Estrada Palma, spoke English, converted to the Quaker faith,and held U.S. citizenship. Secretary of War Elihu Root congratulated Governor-GeneralLeonard Wood for the “establishment of popular self-government, based on a limitedsuffrage, excluding so great a proportion of the elements which have brought ruin to Haitiand San Domingo.” The elements to whom Root referred were black Cubans, many ofwhom composed the Cuban liberation army that fought against the Spanish. By 1905 anAmerican visitor observed that “Negroes . . . are deprived of positions, ostracized andmade political outcasts. The Negro has done much for Cuba. Cuba has done nothing forthe Negro.”15 The early promise of baseball was similarly negated by American racial atti-tudes when American professional teams refused to hire any but light-skinned Cubanplayers.

American control of the educational system doomed blacks to an unequal role inCuban society. Protestant sects, aided by corporate sponsors, founded more than onehundred schools that advocated vocational training and WASP morality. James Wilson,the governor of the Matangas province, ordered English books for his charges because“unquestionably our literature will promote their knowledge, improve their morals andgive this people a new and better trend of thought.”16 Such ethnocentric views permeatedrelationships between the colonizers and the colonized.

After a brief period during which Cubans were relatively free, Americans resumedtheir occupation of the island in 1906. Cuban resentment led to open hostilities and asurge in nationalism over the next three years. In the meantime, athletes engaged in surro-gate wars as Cubans and Americans met in baseball, football, basketball, and track-and-field competition. Cubans, however, refused to adhere to Protestant admonitions aboutSunday play, and the Catholic Church vigorously opposed YMCA operations. Major league



teams continued to travel to Cuba, however, and baseball continued to foster a nationalis-tic spirit. Cuban teams won seven of eleven contests against the Cincinnati Reds in 1908,the same year that Cuban voters ousted the carefully selected Tomas Estrada from thepresidency. Cubans split eight games with the Philadelphia Athletics in 1909 but tookeight of twelve from the Detroit Tigers, defending champions of the American League. In1910 a Havana team defeated Tulane University of New Orleans in a football game. By1911 American League President Ban Johnson forbade travel to Cuba, where such lossesat the hands of racially mixed teams upset prevailing perceptions of white superiority.Similarly, authorities banned boxing in 1912, as such direct confrontations threatened toupset the hegemonic order.17

By 1918 U.S. domination of the Cuban economy accounted for 76 percent of Cuba’simports and 72 percent of its exports. American control of the economy and the conse-quent loss of land by poor peasants to wealthy interlopers precipitated a civil war alongracial and class lines in 1912, resulting in more than 6,000 Cuban deaths. In HavanaAmericans transformed the culture by their recreational practices and their imposition ofthe English language. The city became a playground for wealthy or adventurous foreign-ers. In the countryside American corporations, which owned more than a third of thesugar mills, established recreation programs aimed to serve as social control. More than ahundred mills fielded baseball teams. Many baseball players, however, refused to acceptthe lessons of docility. Baldomaro Acosta, formerly a pitcher for the Washington Senators,returned to his homeland to lead a native revolt in 1917 before support from the U.S.Navy and Marine Corps arrived to support the conservative government and protectAmerican businesses.19

While the U.S dominated the economy, Cubans managed to retain their pride andrespect on the baseball field. Despite political upheaval, the Cuban national team won theCentral American Games title in 1935. The following year, Cuba’s political factions unitedfor a series against the St. Louis Cardinals. By 1939 Cubans had won the World AmateurChampionship, a feat they repeated from 1942 to 1944. Such successes continued overthe next two decades. After Fidel Castro’s successful Communist revolution, sports be-came an explicit political weapon. Cuban Olympians excelled in track and boxing, whileits baseball teams repeatedly beat the Americans at their own game.20

Puerto Rico fared less well, as race and religion figured prominently in Americanmandates. Soon after the Spanish-American War, American administrators banned gam-bling, dueling, and cockfighting on the island and imposed the English language in theschools. WASP anthropologists from the mainland traveled to Puerto Rico to study thenatives, whose Spanish past they extolled, while denigrating their African heritage. After athree-year study, anthropologist Jesse Fewkes determined Puerto Ricans to be “primitive,illiterate, idolatrous, destitute, superstitious, and dark-skinned.”21 The Americans decidedthat such barbarous and immoral characteristics had to be eliminated and new ways learned.Schools added moral training to their curriculum and teachers were required to be familiarwith “American” methodology, which was taught in a newly established teacher-traininginstitute.22

Suffrage was granted only to literate adult males who voted for a non-voting represen-tative in the U.S. Congress. The U.S. president appointed the governor and the executivecouncil, and the U.S. Supreme Court adjudicated all final appeals. Whereas 93 percent of


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all farmers had owned their own land in 1898, new land taxes soon evicted them. Theywere replaced by wealthy investors and large corporations, most of them American.23

The entry of Americans brought a more varied and comprehensive sporting cultureto Puerto Rico. As in Cuba, baseball had preceded the arrival of Americans. Cubans hadexported the game to Puerto Rico, and by 1896 the Almendares and Borinquen clubsbattled each other in San Juan. Within four years, company and school teams engaged intournament competition, but one of the first postwar American requests to the newlyinstalled Adjutant General included “a modern athletic club for recreation with billiardrooms, bowling alleys, a library, outdoor field sports, running and wheel (cycling) tracks,ball grounds and beer sales to allow for proper recreation.”24

The YMCA soon inserted itself and began using sports to facilitate its proselytizingefforts. The “Y” introduced basketball, volleyball, fencing, tennis, handball, and track andfield meets with medals, trophies, banners, ribbons, and pennants to attract participants.A 1916 report stated that “through this Athletic Meet we gained access to many youngmen who had not been in touch with the Association.”25 The YMCA found temporarysuccess in organizing women’s basketball teams until men commandeered the gym space.Both gender and racial divisions hindered Protestant efforts. The director of the San JuanYMCA revealed that he had to turn away an applicant who was “too dark” and of Negroblood, though “the young man seemed to be a gentleman.” Blacks had contributed moneyto the construction costs of the building under the assumption that all were welcome; theYMCA, nonetheless, returned their membership applications. The YMCA also failed toconnect with Puerto Rican baseball players because the “Y” refused to play on Sundays,the primary day for island competitions.26

Despite race, class, gender, religious, linguistic, and cultural differences, Americanscontinued their attempts to assimilate the indigenous peoples. The U.S government grantedcitizenship to Puerto Ricans in 1917, though nationalist leaders on the island opposed themove. Despite mandatory English lessons in the schools, few outside the urban areasmastered the foreign tongue. By 1920 only one-third of Puerto Rican children even at-tended school. Despite government bans, cockfighting continued throughout the island.Indigenous residents saw little value in adopting the materialistic ambitions of capitalismwhen plantation workers earned no more than four dollars a day for ten to twelve hours oflabor. Women received only half as much. By 1930 U.S. corporations owned 60 percentof the sugar industry, 60 percent of the banks and public utilities, and 80 percent of thetobacco business. Puerto Rico still has commonwealth status but remains a poor stepchildwithin American polity.27

Race and racism permeated the American colonial experience. By 1911 the DillinghamCommission on Immigration into the United States concluded that there were forty-fiveseparate races. Professor Daniel Brinton, president of the American Association for theAdvancement of Science, declared that “the black, brown, and red races differ anatomi-cally so much from the white . . . that even with equal cerebral capacity they never couldrival its results by equal efforts.”28 General Leonard Wood, colonial warrior, governor, andpresidential candidate, also asserted that “[n]o one . . . can question the inadvisability ofthe introduction of any other alien race, of a black, brown, or yellow strain into thiscountry. We must make it a white nation.”29 While such racist beliefs had great supportwithin the United States, the Philippine Islands posed problems for assimilation.



The Philippines endured nearly a half century of U.S. governance, in what one histo-rian has termed a “laboratory for social reform.”30 Reforms introduced by the UnitedStates attempted wholesale changes in government, administration, education, culturalbeliefs and practices, and recreational forms. Characterizing the natives as heathen sav-ages, to the surprise of many Catholics, American Protestant missionaries and school teachersrushed to assume the white man’s burden. Dean Worcester, a zoologist at the University ofMichigan, had traveled to the islands for specimens in 1887 and during the early 1890s.With the eruption of the Spanish-American War, he assumed the mantle of an anthropo-logical expert, stereotyping all Filipinos with his descriptions of headhunters and primitivetribes. The U.S. government appointed him to the Philippines Commission, and he servedas Secretary of the Interior until 1913. Worcester recommended baseball as a means “tostrengthen muscles and wits.”31

The baseball campaign had already been long underway, introduced by the Americansoldiers shortly after their arrival in 1898. General Franklin Bell, commander of U.S.forces in Manila, stated that “baseball had done more to ‘civilize’ Filipinos than anythingelse.”32 The American-owned Manila Times declared that baseball “is more than a game, aregenerating influence, a power for good.”33 After their arrival in 1901, American teacherscontinued the practice of schooling Filipino children in baseball.

Like other colonizers, Americans tried to recreate their homeland in the Philippines.Protestant missionaries dispensed the King James Bible and tried to convert the natives totheir version of Christianity. Officials banned gambling, cockfighting, and lotteries inconformity with Protestant standards of morality. School officials introduced public edu-cation models from the states that emphasized vocational training and imposed Englishinstruction with the intention of replacing the multitude of tribal languages. Famed archi-tect Daniel Burnham arrived to reconstruct Manila and to design a summer capital in themore salubrious mountains. Burnham claimed that “Americans . . . are used to betterconditions of living. . . . [T]he two capitals of the Philippines, even in their physicalcharacteristics, will represent the power and dignity of this [U.S.] nation.”34 Streets as-sumed American names, the grand boulevard that skirted the bay honored the Americanwar hero Admiral George Dewey, and Americans claimed the best land for their militaryand commercial interests. Filipinos learned to celebrate American holidays and to playAmerican games.35

The YMCA established itself with close ties to the government and the public schoolssystem. YMCA workers prepared official recreation manuals, trained playground staff,and even assumed the role of acting director of public education. Combining their effortswith those of Episcopalian Bishop Charles H. Brent, who also served as president of thePhilippines Amateur Athletic Federation, Protestants assumed undue power and influ-ence in a nation composed mostly of Catholics and Muslims.36

The YMCA reached its apex under the governorship of W. Cameron Forbes, a BostonBrahmin, grandson of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and former Harvard football coach, whofully subscribed to the progressive powers of sports. Appointed to the Philippines Com-mission in 1904, Forbes assumed the governor-general’s position from 1909 to 1913.Formal interscholastic competition and required physical education classes for both boysand girls had already begun in 1905. A series of baseball games with Waseda University of


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Japan also enabled Americans to channel a growing Filipino nationalism into athleticrivalry. The Manila Carnival, organized in 1908, reinforced the nationalistic spirit byspurring town and regional rivalries into an athletic spectacle of national championships.Forbes awarded complete uniforms, trophies, and prizes to top teams. By 1913 more than1,500 baseball teams competed for the awards and 95 percent of the schools’ enrollmentparticipated in sports and games. Physical education accounted for more class time thanall other subjects except reading. The Bureau of Education stressed competitive athleticsso much that by 1916 its formal policy allowed students to supplement their grade-pointaverages and make up deficiencies by participating in provincial athletic contests. Thosewho competed in the national championships at the Manila Carnival gained even morebenefits.37

The comprehensive athletic plan, which included the playgrounds, settlement houses,and the YMCA, surpassed the efforts of contemporary progressive reformers in the UnitedStates. Under the directorship of Elwood Brown, the YMCA transformed the ManilaCarnival from a commercial exhibition to an athletic spectacle. The carnival achievedrecognition as the Far East Olympics with the inclusion of teams from Japan and China in1913. Participation in this event, which became the quadrennial Far Eastern Games, fos-tered a greater Filipino nationalism.

Despite the YMCA’s intentions of regional integration through sport, it practiced apolicy of racial segregation in Manila. It allowed for open competition between the racesbut maintained separate buildings for whites, Filipinos, and Chinese. Interracial competi-tion, however, did allow Filipinos to challenge white notions of Social Darwinist superior-ity. After Filipino clerks defeated their American bosses in the 1915 Philippine AmateurAthletic Federation volleyball tournament, WASPs promptly changed the rules to elimi-nate the natives’ “deceptive” strategy.38

In addition to the volleyball victory, Filipino baseball teams defeated both the Japa-nese and their American tutors on occasion. Boxing, too, offered opportunities for racialcomparison and retaliation for American slights. Introduced by American soldiers in 1898,boxing soon became a favorite of the Filipinos. By the 1920s Filipinos reveled in their ownchampions, including world flyweight title-holder Pancho Villa. American sportswritersracialized Villa’s abilities, characterizing him as a simian demon who moved too quicklyfor normal fighters. Like the African-American heavyweight champion, Jack Johnson,Villa offended white racial attitudes by consorting with white women during a two-yearsojourn to the United States. Similarly, his flamboyant lifestyle stood in stark contrast tothe abstemious WASP standards of middle-class aspirants. Yet, when he died of bloodpoisoning in 1925, Filipinos considered it a national tragedy. Manila streets were drapedin black as 100,000 attended his funeral.39

Numerous other Filipino boxers challenged the notions of white physical superiority.Welterweight Ceferino Garcia, inspired by Villa, later developed the “bolo punch,” sym-bolic of his Filipino identity. Garcia attracted a large following among Filipino laborers inthe United States as he pummeled his way to the championship. In such a context theracially superior attitudes espoused by whites were demonstrably invalid.40

Still, Americans claimed success and took credit for the improved health and physicalperformances of their colonial charges. As early as 1911 the director of education claimed



that the baseball diamond had replaced the cockpit and that the “new spirit of athleticinterest . . . is actually revolutionary, and with it came new standards, new ideals of charac-ter.”41 Six years later the health service claimed that sports had decreased the cases oftuberculosis. The Philippine Constabulary thought its recruits had increased their physi-cal stature over those of the previous decade, “due no doubt to athletic training . . . in the. . . schools of the Islands.”42 Students who failed physical education were not promoted tothe next grade because the Bureau of Education maintained that exercise was necessary tomake Filipinos larger and “that the stock of the race can be improved considerably.”43

Despite the grandiose assertions, the American crusade elicited mixed results. Geo-graphical features, such as jungles, mountain ranges, and the more than 7,000 islands thatcompose the archipelago and its polyglot population, thwarted American efforts for fullenculturation. The Americans’ appointment of elite, educated Filipinos to governmentalposts actually entrenched the Spanish caste system and did little to bring true democracyto the populace. Filipino nationalism increased as the U.S. government continually de-layed an independence date, and American control of the economy eventually produced areactionary Communist movement. The YMCA retained a measure of influence for de-cades but gained few converts to Protestantism. Catholic priests threatened YMCA mem-bers with excommunication. By 1934 even the Far East Games, organized by the “Y,”dissolved in discord. The YMCA’s most lasting imprint proved to be the adoption ofbasketball as the Filipinos’ national game.44

Hawai‘i endured a longer colonial administration before eventually becoming a state.The missionaries’ overriding influence in Hawai‘i enabled them to introduce baseball as apopular sport. By the 1870s Honolulu had a four-team league and thousands of enthusi-astic spectators. Polo, tennis, and track and field competition ensued in the followingdecade, but the transition in sporting culture was neither complete nor uncontested. Na-tives resurrected canoe racing in 1875 and the previously banned hula dancers entertainedKing Kalakaua at his fiftieth birthday jubilee in 1886. The nationalistic king opposed thecession of Pearl Harbor to the U.S., and he revived the native language and music. Indig-enous Hawaiians supported their sovereign in politicized chants and lyrics. Sensing theloss of their privileges and established hegemony, the all-white Hawaiian League imposedthe so-called Bayonet Constitution on the king in 1887, stripping him of his power. Inspite of this action, the anti-American National Reform Party won all seats in the Oahuelections of 1890. The king died the next year, but his successor, Queen Liliuokalani,proved as strident in her nationalism. Her intransigence resulted in an 1893 coup led byAmerican businessmen and supported by a U.S. diplomat and a contingent of marines.The “provisional” government and its new constitution disfranchised 14,000 voters, whilelimiting suffrage to only 2,800, most of them employees of the American-owned DoleCompany. Not surprisingly, Sanford Dole, son of missionaries and himself a wealthy plan-tation owner, assumed the presidency.45

Fearing a Japanese takeover, the Honolulu Star enflamed racial animosities by pro-claiming, “It is the white race against the yellow. . . . Nothing but annexation can save theislands.”46 Despite protests from native Hawaiians, the U.S. government complied withthe request for annexation, adding the islands as a territorial possession in 1898. A white,commercial oligarchy controlled almost all trade but not culture; sports became contestedterrain. Although baseball had served plantation owners as a social-control device, the


Spring 2006 13

game could not quell discontent. Workers began attacking overseers and managers andcommitted acts of arson. Insubordination, work slowdowns, and a rash of strikes limitedproduction and profits. Traditional sports such as Japanese sumo and Filipino sipe becamepopular in the multicultural labor force.47

In urban areas, engagement in Anglo sports offered opportunities for retaliation. In1903 the girls of the Kamehameha School, reserved for Hawaiians, defeated the YMCAteam in basketball, a game the “Y” had invented. In the wake of Chinese exclusionarypractices on the American mainland, a Chinese-Hawaiian baseball team began a tour ofthe U.S. in 1910, winning the majority of its games. By 1913 they had won fifty-four ofthe fifty-nine games played against American college teams, and in 1914 they allegedlydefeated the New York Giants.48

Sporting practices also served to stem and even reverse the cultural flow. Surfing andcanoe racing, banned by the missionaries due to associated gambling and scanty attire,continued clandestinely. By the turn of the century, white boys had become attracted tothese Hawaiian pastimes. By 1908 businessmen formed the Outrigger Canoe Club in thehope of spawning commercial opportunities at Waikiki Beach. Surfing clubs enjoyed similaraquatic facilities at the beach by 1911, and George Freeth, the product of a mixed mar-riage, introduced mainlanders to surfing and water polo when he traveled to California.49

Duke Kahanamoku promoted surfing in Australia in 1916, but he gained greaterfame as an Olympic swimmer, garnering six medals for the United States from 1912-1932. Hawaiian swimmers on both male and female swimming teams represented theUnited States on the international stage, winning a measure of respect and acceptancefrom the dominant culture. Kahanamoku married a white woman and parlayed his fameinto a movie career and political office, but his adherence to Hawaiian foods, language,and issues demonstrated a merger of cultures.50

The location of the Hawaiian Islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean made them acultural crossroads. The diversity of Hawaiian society and its sporting relationships of-fered experiments in racial integration long before most mainland communities. Closeties between Japanese residents of the islands and their homeland brought WasedaUniversity’s baseball team to Oahu in 1905. In 1910 it played in the Oahu summer league.The Honolulu League featured Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, and Portuguese athletes, butChinese and Japanese players also played the American game in ethnically-based separateassociations. Industrial teams also fielded ethnically mixed squads, so by 1919 baseballoffered some hope of conciliation. A plantation manager explained:

Every Sunday we have baseball games between the Filipino laborers and ouryoung Japanese and Portuguese boys in which our timekeepers and some of ouroverseers join. . . . In looking around at the universal unrest amongst labor andthinking of the absence of it upon these Islands, we feel an unremitting en-deavor should be made to keep our laborers contented and happy.51

Furthermore, the U.S. Army’s assignment of the African-American Twenty-Fifth Regi-ment to Hawai‘i in 1913 afforded additional opportunities for racial interaction. Thesoldiers proceeded to win the islands’ baseball and track championships.52

Hawaiians adapted Anglo sports to their own conditions. Volleyball, played on thebeach, eschewed six-man teams in favor of two or four competitors to better test speed,agility, and stamina. Barefoot football, also played on the beach, emphasized speed and



rugged play, working-class attributes considered more masculine than “white” styles ofplay. Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese, and native Hawaiian teams abounded in working-class neighborhoods by the 1920s. The University of Hawai‘i’s 1938 team reflected theheterogeneity of the local culture with fifteen different ethnicities represented on its twenty-four-man traveling roster.53

World War II interrupted the cultural negotiation transpiring in Hawai‘i, bringinglarge numbers of mainland military personnel to a multitude of combat bases and foreverchanging the geographic, social, and cultural landscapes of the islands. Tourism furtherincreased after the war, which intensified the trend toward commercialism. The Koreanand Vietnam Wars brought new martial legions to the island shores, many of whom re-turned as tourists. The tourist boom fueled the construction of so many high-rise hotels,shopping malls, and golf courses that Hawai‘i lost much of its uniqueness and exoticism.

Culture, however, remained a battleground as elements of the polyglot population ofHawai‘i, including middle-class whites, reacted to developers’ intrusions in the 1970s.Some natives-rights groups sought complete independence, others wanted separate-na-tion status, and still others demanded reparations. Native politicians, led by Japanese-Hawaiian Democrats, succeeded in overthrowing the Republican Party, which had domi-nated public affairs from annexation until World War II. Although tourism accounted fora third of jobs in Hawai‘i, demonstrators railed against the commodification of cultureand the loss of native traditions. They pointed angrily to the fact that many of the morethan one hundred albums of Hawaiian music released in 1978 characterized the natives as“lazy but happy.”54

Disparate groups successfully consolidated in a movement known as the Native Ha-waiian Renaissance. Four of the major companies that had prevailed over the Hawaiianeconomy during the past century were dismantled or sold. Lobbying efforts and boycotts

A basketball court stands as an aftermath of U.S. acculturation in Hawai‘i. COURTESY

OF GERALD R. GEMS.


Spring 2006 15

of the public schools led to the reinstatement of the Hawaiian language, banned since1896. The island of Kahoolawe, used as a military bombing site, reverted to the Hawaiianpeople in 1994 after a successful lawsuit. Schoolchildren began paddling their canoes tothe island for lessons about their ancestral culture. Legislation banned commercial trawl-ers from traditional fishing waters, and native swimming and surfing spots were desig-nated as state beaches to thwart hotel developers. In 1993 President Clinton finally offereda formal apology for the 1893 coup.55

The renaissance produced a resurgence in traditional sports as well. Many clubs, formedto compete in outrigger canoe racing and surfing, enjoyed international popularity. Americansporting forms had been imposed on Hawaiians as a form of social control, as a “civilizing”influence, and as a means to impart a particular ideology. Hawaiians resisted, adapted, andadopted them in recurring cycles for nearly two hundred years. During that time, thecultural crossroads of Hawai‘i received migrants from a multitude of countries. That racialand ethnic mix eventually resulted in integration and cooperation, especially noticeable insporting ventures, long before statehood and the contested legalization of civil rights inthe continental United States. Cultural imperialism, however, proved to be less than aunilateral process in Hawai‘i, as surfing migrated to the American mainland and otherinternational destinations. Hawaiians traveled to Japan to pursue professional athletic ca-reers as baseball stars and sumo wrestlers. Native Hawaiian sports survived or were reviveddespite WASP attempts to extirpate them.

During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the United States also engaged inimperial adventures throughout the Caribbean, though they were not of a permanentnature. Interest in a Caribbean naval station to safeguard a proposed canal across theCentral American isthmus brought U.S. forces to various islands. The American militaryseized control of Dominican customs in 1905 to pay off debts owed to American firms.They returned in 1911 to protect American interests and to supervise an election after theassassination of the Dominican president. American marines eventually established a mili-tary government that held power until 1924. As in Hawai‘i, baseball proved a splendidmeans of social control. As early as 1913 James Sullivan, the U.S. minister to the Domini-can Republic, wrote to Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan:

I deem it worthy of the Department’s notice that the American game of base-ball is being played and supported here with great enthusiasm. The remarkableeffect of this outlet for the animal spirits of the young men, is that they areleaving the plazas where they were in the habit of congregating and talkingrevolution and are resorting to the ball fields where they become wildly partizen[sic] each for his favorite team. The importance of this new interest . . . shouldnot be minimized. It satisfies a craving in the nature of the people for excitingconflict, and is a real substitute for the contest in the hill-sides with rifles, if itcould be fostered and made important by a league of teams . . . it well might beone factor in the salvation of the nation.56

Sullivan’s words proved prophetic, but not in the manner in which he envisioned.Thereafter, armed struggles between the Dominicans and American marines were matchedby confrontations in the ballparks, as baseball bolstered Dominican pride. Unlike theAmerican emphasis on power, Dominicans emphasized their own style of play. The nativesfavored flair, grace, speed, and hustle in what became known as beisbol romantico.57



Baseball provided pride when the Dominicans defeated the Americans or Cubans,their Caribbean rivals. Local professional leagues provided opportunities and hopefor those stuck in the dreary existence of work on sugarcane plantations. By the1950s Dominican players began appearing on American major league rosters, and bythe end of the twentieth century, baseball players became a major export for thecountry. At the beginning of the 2000 baseball season, Dominicans comprised 10percent of all Major League Baseball players. They had learned to evaluate their ownworth, requesting and receiving astronomical sums for their baseball talents. UnlikeCubans, who used baseball as a political and retaliatory weapon, or Puerto Ricans,who suffered an identity crisis along with exploitation through their long associationwith the United States, Dominicans learned well the lessons of capitalism. They man-aged to retain their local culture, benefit from their human resources, and generatenational pride through sports.58

Americans had shown an early interest in Nicaragua as well. William Walker, afreebooter, invaded the country during the mid nineteenth century in a failed at-tempt to establish a slave republic. Walker’s debacle did not deter American interestin building a canal across the country or commercial interests from following theUnited Fruit Company to Nicaragua soon after its founding in 1889. Such businessand political concerns brought American troops to the country in 1911-1912, 1926-1932, and for clandestine CIA-sponsored operations during the 1980s. Baseball ar-rived with the banana companies, and Managua sported a league by 1911. Americanintrusion in local political affairs and the American military presence over the nexttwo decades engendered animosity. Baseball and boxing provided some of the moreviable means for retaliation. In one such encounter, a local sportswriter touched uponthe political and racial connotations of the competition. With the Titan team fromNicaragua losing a baseball game to a U.S. Navy team, 15-9 in the last inning, hewrote:

A boys’ baseball game in Nicaragua. COURTESY OF GERALD R. GEMS.


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The huge crowd is sad; not a happy voice is heard. Titan seems defeated; butthe nine Nicaraguan boys, as if in a war between races, exalted by their Nicaraguanpride, as though influenced by powerful Indian blood, entered the bottom ofthe ninth with an enthusiasm spurred on by the screams of the crowd.

Titan responded with a 16-15 victory that thrilled the partisan crowd.59

The confrontations were even more personal in boxing matches, which in the 1920spreceded the baseball games as commercialized spectacles. Athletic triumphs fostered na-tionalism, and Nicaraguans soon sought regional competition. In 1923 Nicaragua enteredthe Central American Games at San Salvador. A year later, Nicaragua defeated Panama forthe regional baseball championship. Nicaraguan boxers carried the national mantle againsttheir Guatemalan and El Salvadorean counterparts as such ventures helped to build na-tionalist sentiments.60

Nicaraguan dictator Antonio Somoza recognized the power of sport. After assumingdictatorial powers in 1936, he built a baseball stadium in Managua. The Somoza familyenjoyed American support until the revolutionary Sandinista party overthrew his son in1979. The Sandinistas sponsored a team in the national baseball league, winning thechampionship in 1988. When Dennis Martinez, a Nicaraguan and star pitcher for a num-ber of American major league teams, retired in 1998, the citizens of Nicaragua renamedthe stadium after him. Martinez declined to run for the presidency, but the movement todraft him for such a role indicated the importance of baseball to this poverty strickennation.61

The Estadio Dennis Martinez in Managua isnamed after the Nicaraguan major league starpitcher. COURTESY OF GERALD R. GEMS.



Panama, too, felt the weight of American power. In fact, it owed its existence to theUnited States, which orchestrated its secession from Colombia in 1903. Backed by theAmerican military, Panamanian politicians declared their independence and quickly awardedthe U.S. with the rights to build and hold the Panama Canal. The United States employeda multinational labor force to build the canal with the usual lack of rights and privilegesaccorded to non-whites. In time the YMCA supplied a host of recreational facilities forwhite residents in the Canal Zone. A baseball league was formed by 1912. Sports providedone of the few outlets for Panamanian nationalism as the United States dominated affairsfor most of the century.62

“Panama Al” Brown stood over 5’10” and had a 76-inch reach as a flyweight boxer.Whites characterized him as a “freak,” yet Brown held the bantamweight title from 1929to 1935 in a career that spanned twenty-two years. Brown’s tenure coincided with theformation of a specifically Panamanian identity and the questioning of U.S. sovereignty inthe Canal Zone. One product of nascent Panamanian nationalism was a new treaty signedin 1939 that limited the role of the United States. As political squabbles continued through-out the latter half of the century, Panamanians found a new hero in boxer Roberto Duran.63

A street urchin who began fighting professionally in 1967 at the age of sixteen, Duranfought with a ferocious intensity and a toughness that overwhelmed his opponents. Cap-turing four world titles, he became a national icon, sharing his winnings with poor suppli-cants. “I understand the importance my life holds for people who are poor and havenothing,” he declared.64 Even as American troops invaded the country to overthrow thedictator, Manuel Noriega, Panamanians took comfort in their athletic stars. Duran keptfighting until a car crash at age fifty forced his retirement. By that time, more than twodozen Panamanian baseball players had made it to the major leagues in the United States.Through such athletes, Panamanians saw images of themselves—poor, but tough, gritty,and proud, able to compete with the Americans on a level playing field.65

Haitians never got such opportunities. The United States made repeated incursionsinto the technically independent country throughout the twentieth century. In 1910 ittook control of the Haitian national bank. Five years later the U.S. invaded and replacedthe president with a puppet government, effectively transforming the country into a pro-tectorate. Americans rationalized such incursions under the guise of the “white man’s bur-den.” The National Geographic magazine described this country as “a region where naturehas lavished its richest gifts, and where a simple population, under a firm yet gentle,beneficent guidance, may realize the blessings of tranquil abundance.”66 A rebellion ofblack Haitian patriots, known as Cacos, erupted into a guerrilla war, resulting in an occu-pation that lasted until 1934. Americans tried to impose the English language, their ownmoral codes, and vocational training. Haitians likened the impressment of labor gangs asa return to slavery. Sports and other recreational practices remained largely segregated, as avirulent racism clearly played an important role in the lack of integrated pastimes. TheHaitians proved to be too proud, too black, and too poor for assimilation, and the UnitedStates expressed little further interest between 1934 and the 1990s when the Clintonadministration intervened forcefully in Haitian politics.67

Military rather than economic needs motivated the accumulation of Pacific outpostsfor the American empire. Soon after an American expedition arrived in Samoa in 1839,


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Protestant missionaries followed. Their emphasis on individualism contrasted with thecommunal society of the Samoans. Americans initiated cultural changes. Beginning in the1880s, the United States, Germany, and Great Britain competed for ascendency over theSamoan Islands and its people, resulting in the eventual division of the island group be-tween Germany and the U.S. in 1899. The U.S Navy governed the residents until 1951,establishing schools that promoted the English language, moral education, and vocationaltraining. Interracial marriages required governmental consent. Samoans did not gain uni-versal suffrage until 1977, but little remained of their native culture by that time. Com-mercialization replaced traditional farming, English intruded upon the Samoan language,while American popular culture attracted youth. One new sporting form, American foot-ball, attracted the natives’ interests and allowed Samoan males to continue to display theirmasculinity through demonstrations of physical prowess.68 Samoans’ adoption of footballenabled many young males to earn athletic scholarships to universities in the United States.Toniu Fonoti, one of five Samoans on the 2001 University of Nebraska team, claimed thatSamoan physiques and cultural value were ideal for football. Many of his countrymen arelarge, powerful, and agile, and Samoans possess stoic toughness, discipline, and a competi-tive, aggressive nature well-suited to the game. 69

While sports provided some opportunity and brought disparate cultures closer to-gether, they have also forged a greater sense of national identity as Samoans embarked ontheir own paths. In 1981 the Samoan basketball team competed in the first Ocean Tour-nament, a regional competition held in Fiji. Four years later Samoans established theirown national Olympic committee, further enhancing their self-esteem and a separate cul-tural identity. In 2001 the territory conducted its first American Samoa Games, and itsbest basketball players joined regional all-stars from Fiji, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, andthe Solomon Islands for competition against Anglos in Australia. The regional alliancesignaled a growing sense of difference even as the globalization of sports brought distinctcultural groups together in a common purpose.70

Guam underwent similar cultural transformations after it fell to the United States as awar prize after 1898. American administrators replaced Spanish with English and sup-planted local festivals with American holidays. Village chiefs lost their power, and Catholicfriars were expelled from the island. The new U.S. naval government enforced its ownmoral standards by banning cockfights, whistling, serenading, and religious processions.Naval officers spent time regulating the length of women’s dresses. As in Samoa, the Ameri-can emphasis on individualism fragmented the local Chamorro communal culture, a pro-cess exacerbated by the navy’s segregationist policies. Natives had little recourse as theInsular Cases, adjudicated before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1900-1901, classified terri-tories as different from states and, therefore, residents did not have the same constitutionalrights as other Americans.71

Sports provided a less formal but clearly visible means of reclaiming lost honor. Thenavy initiated a sports program to serve as a prophylactic device against the suspectedphysical and moral degeneracy of the tropics. Much to the surprise and embarrassment ofthe naval personnel, the lone native team in the baseball league defeated the officers’ teamfor the championship. Labeled “the Great White Hopes,” the military brass supposedlyrepresented the cream of American manhood.72



The introduction of Filipino workers and the Japanese occupation during World War IIfurther disintegrated the local Chamorro culture. Then, the postwar influx of Japaneseand American tourists brought greater commercialization, a loss of native lands, and alocal backlash. A nationalist party emerged in the 1970s, pitting itself against the non-Chamorro Filipinos, Japanese, and Chinese residents. Adherents defied the ban on theirnative language, eventually winning its acceptance in the island’s schools.73

Sports allowed for some alleviation of local tensions by generating multiethnic unionsand pride in pluralistic triumphs. Team sports like baseball and football reinforced thetraditional communal habitus of the diverse Asian populations. Coaches served as fatherfigures in the team “family.” Football linked authority and discipline with the masculinityand physical performance important to adolescent boys. One team composed of Hawai-ian players won 125 consecutive games over a fifteen-year span. In 1999 another Guamfootball team defeated one from Russia, a former world political power, in an interna-tional tournament in the United States. The athletic successes of polyglot teams fromGuam restored the respect, dignity, and confidence of subordinate groups that had previ-ously labored under white Anglo domination.74

Both administrators and practitioners found many uses for sports in the cultural in-terplay that transpired in colonialism. Sports served as a mechanism for social control, butthey also provided an integrating force among disparate groups. In some cases sports al-lowed for a compensatory or retaliative response to oppression as subordinate or colonizedpeoples defeated the United States at its own games. Some of the colonized adapted sportsforms to their own cultural values and developed their own distinctive styles of play.

In all cases, race, religion, and time determined the extent of cultural transformation.Assimilation to American cultural values generally failed in occupations of less than two

American popular culture has spread well beyond thescope of this article as evidenced by the poster adver-tising an American football game between teams inPrague, Czech Republic, above, and the Pepsi ad foundin a park in Lima, Peru, right. COURTESY OF GERALD R.GEMS.


Spring 2006 21

generations. In almost all territories under its control, except in Hawai‘i, the United Statesproved unable to change religious values despite ardent efforts by Protestant missionariesand the YMCA. Americans provided an infrastructure of roads, schools, and civic services,but they could not instill democracy in Asia or the Caribbean, where dictators continuedto reign for decades after the departure of American troops. American governance, too,often catered to American businesses rather than promoting indigenous commerce; capi-talism did not automatically breed democracy.

Sporting forms and practices offered myriad responses in the negotiation of culture,ranging from acculturation to political and surrogate warfare. The only certainty was thatboth dominant and subordinate groups would be changed in the process.

1Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994), 8. See Frederick UphamAdams, Conquest of the Tropics (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1914) in the heroic genre aswell as the more contemporary works of Stephen Ambrose. See Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger,eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), on historical constructs.

2C.L.R. James, Beyond a Boundary (London: Sportmans Book Club, 1964; reprint ed., Durham,N.C.: Duke University Press, 1993). Among the more critical works are Marc Ferro, Colonization: AGlobal History (London: Routledge, 1997); David B. Abernethy, The Dynamics of Global Dominance:European Overseas Empires, 1415-1980 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000); and John A.Guidry, Michael D. Kennedy, and Mayer N. Zald, Globalization and Social Movements: Culture, Power,and the Transnational Public Sphere (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000). American treat-ments are offered by Patricia Nelson Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the AmericanWest (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1987); Deborah Wei and Rachael Kamel, eds., Resistance inParadise: Rethinking 100 Years of U.S. Involvement in the Caribbean and the Pacific (Philadelphia: Ameri-can Friends Service Committee, 1998); Amy Kaplan and Donald Pease, eds., Cultures of United StatesImperialism (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1993); and Jean Heffer, The United States and thePacific: History of a Frontier (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002).

J.A. Mangan’s works include The Games Ethic and Imperialism: Aspects of the Diffusion of an Ideal(Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin Books, 1986; reprint ed., London: Frank Cass, 1998); The ImperialCurriculum: Racial Images and Education in the British Colonial Experience (London: Routledge, 1993);The Cultural Bond: Sport, Empire, Society (London: Frank Cass, 1992); and Making Imperial MentalitiesSocialisation and British Imperialism (Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 1990). For thediffusion of sports globally, see Allen Guttmann, Games and Empires: Modern Sports and Cultural Imperi-alism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994).

For somewhat more limited studies, see Joel S. Franks, Hawaiian Sports in the Twentieth Century(Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2002); idem, Crossing Sidelines, Crossing Cultures: Sport and AsianPacific American Cultural Citizenship (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2000); and Joseph A.Reaves, Taking in a Game: A History of Baseball in Asia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002).

Murray G. Phillips, “Deconstructing Sport History: The Postmodern Challenge,” Journal of SportHistory 28 (2001): 327-343, provides a helpful critique.

3Among the numerous works on whiteness, see David R. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race andthe Making of the American Working Class (London: Verso, 1991); Lee D. Baker, From Savage to Negro:Anthropology and the Construction of Race, 1869-1954 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998);Reginald Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism (Cam-bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981); Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color:European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998); andStephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man (New York: W.W. Norton, 1981).

4Pekka Hamalainnen, “The Rise and Fall of Plains Indians Horse Cultures,” Journal of AmericanHistory 90 (2003): 833-862, indicates extermination of Eastern herds by 1825. Western herds providedsome sustenance for another fifty years.



5Cited in “Expansion in the Pacific,” <http://www.smplanet.com/imperialism/hawaii/html> [24September 1999].

6Michael Kioni Dudley and Keoni Kealoha Agard, “A History of Dispossessions,” in Pacific Diaspora:Island Peoples in the United States and Across the Pacific, eds. Paul Spickard, Joanne L. Rondilla, andDebbie Hippolyte Wright (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2002), 309-321.

7Donald Roden, “Baseball and the Quest for National Dignity in Japan,” in Baseball History fromOutside the Lines: A Reader, ed. John E. Dreifort (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001), 298.

8John B. Foster, ed., Spalding’s Official Baseball Guide, 1910 (New York: American Sports Publish-ing, 1910), 303; Francis C. Richter, ed., “Collegiate 1909 Invasion of Japan,” in The Reach OfficialAmerican League Baseball Guide for 1910 (Philadelphia: A.J. Reach Co., 1910), 481; Robert Obojski, TheRise of Japanese Baseball Power (Radnor, Pa.: Chilton Books, 1975), 4, 7-9, 10-14.

9Pat Page to Amos Alonzo Stagg, 6 October 1910, folder 3, box 63, Amos Alonzo Stagg Papers,University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois; Pat Page to Amos Alonzo Stagg, 14 October 1910, folder 3, box63, Stagg Papers.

10Leonard Wood to Bishop Brent, 24 March 1910, box 9, Charles H. Brent Papers, Library ofCongress, Washington, D.C [hereafter LC].

11Matthew Frye Jacobson, Barbarian Virtues: The United States Encounters Foreign Peoples at Homeand Abroad, 1876-1917 (New York: Hill and Wang, 2000), 226.

12Julius Pratt, Expansionists of 1898: The Acquisition of Hawaii and the Spanish Islands (Gloucester,Mass.: Peter Smith, 1936), 5, 301-329.

13Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria, The Pride of Havana: A History of Cuban Baseball (New York: Ox-ford University Press, 1999), 97-99, 105, 109, 114; Louis A. Perez, Jr., On Becoming Cuban: Identity,Nationality and Culture (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 75-77, 90.

14Cited in Perez, Jr., On Becoming Cuban, 76; El Base-Ball, 9 April 1893, p.3.15Perez, Jr., On Becoming Cuban, 322-323 [QUOTATIONS].16Box “Cuba” [1899-1902], Leonard Wood Papers, LC; Allan R. Millett, The Politics of Intervention:

The Military Occupation of Cuba, 1906-1909 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1968), 34-38;Charles E. Magoon, Republic of Cuba: Report of Provisional Administration (Havana: Rambla and Bouza,1908), 349-350; Louis A. Perez, Jr., Cuba and the United States: Ties of Singular Intimacy (Athens: Univer-sity of Georgia Press, 1997), 128 [QUOTATION].

17Perez, Jr., On Becoming Cuban, 260; Chicago Tribune, 2 January 1910, sec. 3, p.1.18Ivan Musicant, The Banana Wars: A History of United States Military Intervention in Latin America

from the Spanish-American War to the Invasion of Panama (New York: Macmillan, 1990), 67-71; DavidHealy, Drive to Hegemony: The United States in the Caribbean, 1898-1917 (Madison: University of Wis-consin Press, 1988), 210-216; Perez, Jr., Cuba and the United States, 137-140; idem, On Becoming Cu-ban, 177-198, 220-255; Gonzalez, Pride of Havana, 190-196.

19Musicant, Banana Wars, 71-78; Healy, Drive to Hegemony, 203-208.20Gonzalez, Pride of Havana, 48, 71, 225-251, 407n7; Perez, Jr., On Becoming Cuban, 274; idem,

Cuba and the United States, 209-214; Paula J. Pettavino and Geralyn Pye, Sport in Cuba: The Diamond inthe Rough (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994), 36-37.

21Box General Orders, Porto Rico, 1898-1900, volume 1, Leonard Wood Papers, LC; Jorge Duany,The Puerto Rican Nation on the Move (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 202), 65-121, 70 [QUOTATION].

22Military Orders Having Force of Law by Commanding General, Government of Porto Rico,1898-1900, Vol. II, pp. 76-115, Records of the Department and District of Puerto Rico Decimal Files395.15.1, Records of United States Army Overseas Operations and Commands, 1898-1942, RecordGroup 395, National Archives, Washington, D.C. (hereafter NARA); Peter C. Stuart, Isles of Empire: TheUnited States and Its Overseas Possessions (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1999), 361-362.

23Box General Orders, Porto Rico, 1898-1900, vol. 1, Wood Papers; Gervasio Luis Garcia, “‘I Amthe Other’: Puerto Rico in the Eyes of North Americans, 1898,” Journal of American History 87 (2000):39-64; Stuart, Isles of Empire, 28, 59n16.


Spring 2006 23

24Thomas E. Van Hyning, Puerto Rico’s Winter League: A History of Major League Baseball’s Launch-ing Pad (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., 1995), 1; A.C. Sharpe, Report to Adjutant General, 25 July1900, Records of the Department and District of Puerto Rico Decimal Files 395.15.1, Records of UnitedStates Army Overseas Operations and Commands, 1898-1942, Record Group 395, NARA.

25W.G. Coxhead, Report of the Physical Director of the YMCA, 1 October 1915-30 September 1916,p. 9, Young Men’s Christian Association Archives, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota(hereafter YMCAA).

26Dr. P.S. Spence to Sir, 23 September 1915, box 931, Records Relating to the Philippine Islands,1898-1939 Decimal Files 350.3, Records of the Bureau of Insular Affairs, 1868-1945, Record Group350, National Archives, College Park, Maryland (hereafter NARA II); W.G. Coxhead, Report for QuarterEnding 30 June 1915, YMCAA; idem, Report of the Physical Director of the YMCA, 1 October 1915-30September 1916, YMCAA; idem, Report Ending 30 September 1914, no page [QUOTATION], YMCAA.

27Porto Rican Interests: Hearings Before the Committee on Insular Affairs, House of Representatives (Wash-ington, D.C: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1919), 9-10; Healy, Drive to Hegemony, 267; Stuart, Islesof Empire, 99.

28Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color, 78; Brinton cited in Baker, From Savage to Negro, 27.29Leonard Wood to Bishop Brent, 4 March 1910, box 9, Brent Papers.30Paul Kramer, “Reflex Actions: Social Imperialism between the United States and the Philippines,

1898-1929,” paper presented at 117th Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association, Chicago,2-5 January 2003, notes in possession of author.

31Dean C. Worcester Papers, Bentley Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Forexamples, see Dean C. Worcester, “Field Sports Among the Wild Men of Luzon,” National Geographic,March 1911, pp. 215-267; idem, “The Non-Christian Peoples of the Philippine Islands,” National Geo-graphic, November 1913, pp. 1157-1256; idem, The Philippines: Past and Present, 2 vols. (New York:Macmillan, 1914), 2: 514 [QUOTATION].

32Harold Seymour, Baseball: The People’s Game (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 324-325.

33Lewis E. Gleeck, Jr., American Institutions in the Philippines (Manila: Historical ConservationSociety, 1976), 39.

34Charles Moore, ed., Plan of Chicago (Chicago: Commercial Club, 1909), 29 [QUOTATION]; NinthAnnual Report, 1910 (Manila: n.p., 1910), no page, box 3, Worcester Papers.

35Series 1, 165, 194-195, 356-357, 499, 579-580, 596-599, 629-630, 641, vol. 15, Daniel BurnhamPapers, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago; Thomas Hines, Burnham of Chicago: Architect and Planner(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 20, 206-213; Stanley Karnow, In Our Image: America’sEmpire in the Philippines (New York: Random House, 1989), 16-17, 211-215; Jan Beran, “Americans inthe Philippines: Imperialism or Progress Through Sports?” International Journal of the History of Sport 6(1989): 62-87.

36Philippines Correspondence Reports, 1911-1968, Administrative Reports file, YMCAA.37W.W. Marquart, Director of Education, Manila, 25 October 1916, box 931, Records Relating to

the Philippine Islands, NARA II; Celia Bocobo-Olivar, History of Physical Education in the Philippines(Quezon City, Philippines: University of the Philippines, 1972), 46-48, 54, 71; W.T. Ross, “Education inthe Philippines,” p. 17, folder 13, box 142, Fred Eggan Papers, University of Chicago, Chicago; ElwoodBrown, Annual Report, 1 October. 1912-1 October. 1913, YMCAA.

38Philippines, International division 167, local associations, 1906-1973, Manila file, YMCAA, onsegregation policies; Elwood Brown, Annual Report, 1 October. 1914-1 October. 1915, YMCAA; KentonJ. Clymer, Protestant Missionaries in the Philippines, 1898-1916: An Inquiry into the American ColonialMentality (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986), 66, 92.

39Pancho Villa file, Boxing Hall of Fame, Canastota, New York; T.S. Andrews, ed., Ring Battles ofCenturies and Sporting Almanac (n.c.: Tom Andrews Record Book Co., 1924), 29.

40Linda Nueva Espana-Maram, “Negotiating Identity: Youth, Gender, and Popular Culture in LosAngeles’s Little Manila, 1920s-1940s” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California at Los Angeles, 1996),



118-126; Roger Mooney, “Going Home a Hero: How Ceferino Garcia Finally Realized His Dreams,”Ring, April 1994, pp. 26-28, 60, in Ceferino Garcia file, Boxing Hall of Fame; School News Review, 1October 1935, p. 8, box 1187, Records Relating to the Philippine Islands, NARA II.

41Bocobo-Olivar, History of Physical Education in the Philippines, 49.42Ibid., 50.43Ibid., 48.44School News Review, 15 July 1934, p. 8, box 1187, Records Relating to the Philippine Islands,

NARA II ; J. Truitt Maxwell to Elwood S. Brown, 18 April 1922, 1920-1923 correspondence file, YMCAA;Earl Carroll, Sec. of Luzon, Annual Administrative Report, 1932, YMCAA; E. S. Turner to Frank V. Slack,7 August 1935, 1930-1936 correspondence file, YMCAA.

45Robert C. Schmitt, “Some Firsts in Island Leisure,” The Hawaiian Journal of History 12 (1978):99-119; The Islander, 6 August 1875, p. 145; The Islander, 20 August 1875, p. 160, both in Hawaii file,Baseball Hall of Fame, Cooperstown, New York. See Elizabeth Buck, Paradise Remade: The Politics ofCulture and History in Hawaii (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993); and Pratt, Expansionists of1898, 37-110 on political developments.

46Pratt, Expansionists of 1898, 217.47Ronald Takaki, Pau Hana: Plantation Life and Labor in Hawaii, 1835-1920 (Honolulu: Univer-

sity of Hawai‘i Press, 1983), 127-132.48Franks, Crossing Sidelines, Crossing Cultures, 58-61; idem, Hawaiian Sports in the Twentieth Cen-

tury, 24-32; idem, “Baseball and Racism’s Traveling Eye: The Asian Pacific Experience,” in The AmericanGame: Baseball and Ethnicity, eds. Lawrence Baldassaro and Richard A. Johnson (Carbondale: SouthernIllinois University Press, 2002), 177-196.

49Ben R. Finney, “The Development and Diffusion of Modern Hawaiian Surfing,” Journal of thePolynesian Society 69 (1960): 315-331; Harold H. Yost, Outrigger Canoe Club of Honolulu, Hawaii (Ho-nolulu: Outrigger Canoe Club, 1971).

50Franks, Hawaiian Sports, 40-44; Sandra Kimberley Hall and Greg Ambrose, Memories of Duke:The Legend Comes to Life (Honolulu: The Bess Press, 1995).

51Franks, Hawaiian Sports, 21, 54, 57, 60; T. Takasugi to A. Alonzo Stagg, 20 July 1910, folder 3,box 63, Stagg Papers; Takaki, Pau Hana, 104 [QUOTATION].

52John H. Nankivell, The History of the Twenty-Fifth Regiment United States Infantry, 1896-1926(Denver, Colo.: Smith-Brooks Printing, 1927; reprint ed., Ft. Collins, Colo.: The Old Army Press, 1972),163-165, 171, 173.

53Franks, Hawaiian Sports, 52-59, 66-68; A.A. Kempa, A Survey of Physical Education in the Territoryof Hawaii, 1930, pp. 26-28, Bishop Museum, Honolulu, Hawai‘i; Honolulu Recreation Commission, AHistory of Recreation in Hawaii (Honolulu, Hawai‘i: Honolulu Recreation Commission, 1936), 27, 47,65, 100.

54Mansel G. Blackford, Fragile Paradise: The Impact of Tourism on Maui, 1959-2000 (Lawrence:University Press of Kansas, 2001); Buck, Paradise Remade, 171-188, 177 [QUOTATION].

55Blackford, Fragile Paradise, 58-74, 95-110, 202-230; Buck, Paradise Remade, 180-188; KauanoeKamana and William H. Wilson, “The Tip of the Spear: Hawaiian Educators Reclaim a Cultural Legacy,”Teaching Tolerance 21 (2002): 20-24; Joe Kane, “Arrested Development,” Outside, May 2001, pp. 68-78.

56Alan M. Klein, Sugarball: The American Game, the Dominican Dream (New Haven, Conn.: YaleUniversity Press, 1991), 110.

57Ibid., 29; Alan M. Klein, “Culture, Politics, and Baseball in the Dominican Republic,” LatinAmerican Perspectives 22 (1995): 111-130.

58Michael Knisely, “Everybody Has the Dream,” Sporting News, 21 February 2001, <http://www.findarticles.com> [10 December 2001]; Don Le Batard, “Next Detour,” ESPN Magazine, 24 De-cember 2001, pp. 105-111.

59Lester D. Langley and Thomas Schoonover, The Banana Men: American Mercenaries and Entrepre-neurs in Central America, 1880-1930 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1995); Richard McGehee,


Spring 2006 25

“The King and His Court: Early Baseball and Other Sports in Nicaragua,” paper presented at the annualmeeting of the North American Society for Sport History, Auburn, Alabama, 24-27 May 1996, in pos-session of author; idem, “Sport in Nicaragua, 1888-1926,” in Sport in Latin America and the Caribbean,eds. Joseph L. Arbena and David G. La France (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 2002), 175-205,184 [QUOTATION].

60McGehee, “Sport in Nicaragua,” 175-205.61Musicant, Banana Wars, 286-333; Joel Zoss and John Bowman, Diamonds in the Rough: The

Untold History of Baseball (Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1996), 405-406; Randy Wayne White, “FarFrom Home Plate,” Outside, October 2001, p. 51.

62Healy, Drive to Hegemony, 27-28, 77-98; Musicant, Banana Wars, 79-136; Julie Greene, “Span-iards on the Silver Roll: The U.S. Government, Liminality, and Labor Troubles in the Panama CanalZone,” Newberry Library Labor History Seminar, Chicago, 21 September 2001, in possession of author.

63Healy, Drive to Hegemony, 227; Panama Al Brown file, Boxing Hall of Fame.64Jeremy Greenwood, “Roberto Duran . . . Latin Ambassador of Macho,” World Wide Boxing Digest,

pp. 4-5, clipping in Roberto Duran file, Boxing Hall of Fame.65Musicant, Banana Wars, 390-417; Peter C. Bjarkman, Baseball with a Latin Beat: A History of the

Latin Game (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1994) 347-384.66Anonymous, “Wards of the United States: Notes on What Our Country Is Doing for Santo

Domingo, Nicaragua, and Haiti,” National Geographic, August 1916, pp. 143-177, 162-163 [QUOTA-TION].

67Mary A. Renda, Taking Haiti: Military Occupation and the Culture of U.S. Imperialism, 1915-1940(Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2001).

68J.A.C. Gray, Amerika Samoa: A History of American Samoa and Its United States Naval Administra-tion (Annapolis, Md.: United States Naval Institute, 1960).

69Bruce Feldman, “Rock Star,” ESPN Magazine, 20 November 2001, pp. 50-54.70<http://basketball.sportingpulse.com/oceania/background.shtml> [2 April 2002]; <http://

www.oceaniasport.com/onoc/index.cgi?sID=3&intArticleID=37&det=1> [15 April 2007].71Stuart, Isles of Empire, 241, 243, 266, 331; Wei and Kamel, eds., Resistance in Paradise, 111-114,

117.72Vicente M. Diaz, “Fight Boys ‘til the Last . . .”: Island Football and the Remasculinization of

Indigeneity in the Militarized American Pacific Islands,” in Pacific Diaspora, eds. Spickard, Rondilla, andWright, eds., 169-194.

73Stuart, Isles of Empire, 46-54, 105-106, 116-117, 161, 172, 174n11; Hazel McFerson, The RacialDimension of American Overseas Colonial Policy (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1997), 112.

74Diaz, “Fight Boys ‘til the Last.”

Documents

Sport, Colonialism, and United States Imperialismhhh.gavilan.edu/lhalper/hist2/documents/SportsColonialismUSImperialism.pdfSPORT, COLONIALISM, AND UNITED STATES IMPERIALISM Spring