South African Cricket, Imperial Cricketers and Imperial Expansion, 1850–1910 Dean Allen

The International Journal of the History of Sport Vol. 25, No. 4, March 2008, 443 – 471 South African Cricket, Imperial Cricketers and Imperial Expansion, 1850–1910 Dean Allen It has become an accepted fact, declared one South African observer in 1915, that where Englishmen are banded together, either by reason of duty, self-advancement or force of circumstances, there cricket will be played. [1] Indeed, throughout the British Empire cricket had followed on the heels of exploration, military might and political intervention in establishing a British code of civilization in foreign territories. This article will explore the early development of cricket in southern Africa and investigate its symbiotic link to British imperialism and colonialism. The origins of the game in South Africa will be examined as well as its development up to 1910 (the date of Union in South Africa) as a site of a burgeoning imperial brotherhood between Britain and its most contested colony. Introduction By the time the Anglo-Boer War had broken out in South Africa in 1899, the total global area under British control was the equivalent size of four Europes and had a population of around 400 million. [2] expansionist policies had accomplished control and influence throughout large areas of the modern world and now the focus was upon achieving the same effect within southern Africa. [3] The decision taken in 1807 to outlaw the slave trade had, after all, initiated a new era in long-standing relations with Africa. Thereafter, there began a campaign to the continent by promoting the values of commerce and Christianity. With its economic backwardness and moral degenera- tion Africa, to many, provided the ultimate test of the supremacy of Western culture and skills. By assisting emigration in 1819, it was expected that British settlers in the Dean Allen, School of Sports Studies, University of Ulster Jordanstown. Correspondence to: [email protected] or [email protected] ISSN 0952-3367 (print)/ISSN 1743-9035 (online DOI: 10.1080/09523360701814789 444 D. Allen Cape would serve in the diffusion of imperialist values and policy. Here strategy and commerce were closely entwined, both as means and ends, from the outset. A dependable colonial community was the best long-term defence of the route to India; a prosperous and progressive colony would remain dependable and would also promote trade, spread enlightened values and ultimately become self-supporting. As thousands of individuals chose to escape the confines of British society to seek fortunes in southern Africa, Britain continued to the colony by crossing the social values of the English gentlemen with the business ethic of the middle class. [4] As they had done elsewhere, cricket and English forms of sport and leisure would also perform an important role in the process. This article will explore the early development of cricket throughout the different regions and population groups of South Africa while investigating its link to British imperialism and colonialism. As this study will show, a variety of individuals were fundamental in this process of cultural transfer and assimilation, as were the strategies of the authorities in fostering social, economic and political ties between the and its dependants. Early cricket relations between England and South Africa will also be examined as sites of a purposeful imperial fellowship set against a South African society still developing its own hierarchies of power and order. The British had after all introduced cricket to South Africa during a period of intense conflict over land and political control. The game, alongside warfare and politics, was set to play its part. South Africa, Imperialism and Empire Writing in the 1905 South African Cricketers Annual, MCC supremo the - Lord Harris declared how cricket was merely a game, but ...a great educational and how he . that cricket has taken hold as firmly as it has done in South . [5] For Harris and fellow imperialists, the game was significant throughout the empire in providing a cultural and sporting bond that not only could transmit the important scriptures of British civility but also, in his words, had become strand in the elastic cord which unites the Colonies and the Mother . [6] It was hoped, and indeed expected, that through political, social and cultural coercion British control of Southern Africa could be established as effectively as had been done elsewhere. Within South Africa itself, however, many integral struggles were being fought. The region was set to provide the British Empire with its most defining challenge to date. Patrick Brantlinger has suggested that South Africa was affected by a new that began in the 1880s. [7] Intense rivalry had developed among the European powers during the scramble for parts of Africa, Asia and the South Pacific while the momentum of imperialist policies during the late 1800s had left some questioning the rational of new territories overseas. Not all politicians and taxpayers at home wanted more colonies to govern – even men on the , on imperial frontiers, may not have wanted them – but the exigencies of South African Cricket and Imperial Expansion, 1850–1910 445 the moment kept forcing hand. Brantlinger views the Transvaal in this bracket, but concedes that even the most reluctant imperialists were still imperialists, reluctantly opting to annex new territories because they believed that expansion was the best or at least the most expedient way to defend the empire that already existed. But what of imperialism itself? According to Koebner and Schmidt, the term was only used through the 1860s with reference to the French Second Empire and the autocratic policies of Napoleon III. [8] Between 1830 and the 1870s however, and were familiar terms, and throughout the period there was frequent discussion in the press and in Parliament about the condition of the . [9] For most Victorians, the British were inherently, by , a conquering, governing and civilizing race, with the majority of intellectuals and politicians believing in righteous mission, as the greatest nation, to civilize Africa as well as other dark corners of the globe. [10] The perceived racial superiority of white Europeans (and of the English over all other Europeans) justified the subsequent annexation of foreign land and the imposition of British laws and culture. The introduction of cricket came as part of this process. Traditionally associated with conservatism, the ideologies of imperialism were adaptable and could just as easily consort with more liberal attitudes towards domestic issues. British racial superiority was, after all, constitutionally accepted and agreed. Theories of racial superiority were prevalent well before the development of social Darwinism, and these theories were often used to explain industrial and imperial pre-eminence. [11] In The English and their Origin, Luke Owen Pike declared in 1866 how There are probably few educated Englishmen living who have not in their infancy been taught that the English nation is a nation of almost pure Teutonic blood, that its political constitution, its social custom, its internal prosperity, the success of its arms, and the number of its colonies have all followed necessarily upon the arrival, in three vessels, of certain German warriors under the command of Hengist and Horsa. [12] If, superficially, Teutonic ancestry legitimized duty to civilize , [13] then reality showed how imperial expansion was in fact driven by economic motives. The apologists for imperialism, however, continued to emphasize that the empire was an exercise in morality; that England was responding to a moral obligation to extend the benefits of British civilization throughout the world. Indeed Joseph Chamberlain began his spell as Colonial Secretary by declaring how is not enough to occupy certain great spaces of the surface unless you can make the best of them – unless you are willing to develop . [14] And by 1897, his thoughts were of imperialism and world peace: great Empire of ours, powerful as it is, is nothing to what it will become in the course of ages when it will be in permanence a guarantee for the peace and civilization of the . [15] 446 D. Allen Education, Cricket and Colonization Despite this, however, the struggle for control of South Africa came at a time when the maintenance of a demanding empire was beginning to tax an already burdened Britain. The military, the schools and the church became major tools in securing the foundations of hegemonic control in the colonies and were vital if British imperial influence was to be sustained. [16] The British were aware, according to Green, that if insurrection were to rear its ugly head at two or three outposts simultaneously, then their resources, already stretched to the limit, might snap altogether. The answer, they felt, lay in a combination of psychological warfare, discipline and decorum, good manners and plenty of churches, propaganda by polite pretext. [17] In South Africa, cricket increasingly played its part in this process – with the number of cricket tours around the time of the Boer War an indication. The relationship between cricket and the expanding empire was already well established by the 1890s, prompting the conservative Blackwoods Magazine to imperiously exclaim in 1892 how Englishman carries his cricket bat with him as naturally as his gun-case and his India-rubber . [18] Sport became an imperial bond of cultural encounters between the controlling British and subordinate groups in the colonies and nowhere was this typified more than on the cricket fields of empire. Encouraged by the ethos, middle-class colonials were steering their sons towards cricket in the hope of furnishing them with the same strength of character and upstanding morals that were being preached back in Britain. [19] As early as 1862, a writer in Temple Bar laid claims to cricket being healthy and manly sport; [which] trains and disciplines the noblest faculties of the body, and tends to make Englishmen what they are – the masters of the .

Load more