Aspects of Sport and American Imperialism Gerald R

Aspects of sport and american imperialism Gerald R. Gems North Central College Naperville, Il. USA The United States has been engaged in an imperialist venture since its early colonization by British settlers in the seventeenth century. White, Anglo-Saxon Protestants continually moved westward thereafter until they had conquered all the indigenous tribes and Mexican lands to control the North American continent. At the end of the nineteenth century the United States moved to extend its reach to global proportions with an overseas empire acquired through victory in the Spanish-American War. While religion, race, and commerce were primary factors in the United States' quest to fulfill its "Manifest Destiny," sport proved a more subtle means of inculcating American cultural values in subject populations in the Pacific and Caribbean regions. That process started in the 1820s in Hawaii when American missionaries forbade the popular recreations and gambling practices of the native residents. They housed native children in residential schools and taught them to play baseball. A similar procedure was followed to assimilate conquered Native American tribes and European immigrant groups throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The use of sport as a tool of acculturation reached its zenith in the colonial administration of the Philippines, where sport assumed a comprehensive and nationalistic role in combating the imperial ambitions of Japan in the Pacific. Throughout Asia and the Caribbean the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) endeavored to spread its religious message and the adoption of American games such as basketball and volleyball. The YMCA brought its racial segregation practices along with the American sport forms to the American colonies. The United States' motives initially derived from commercial interests to expand its international markets; but increasingly, and more importantly, they emanated from ethnocentric beliefs in a racial and religious superiority that continues to exhibit cultural impositions on Middle Eastern populations. Such historical factors carry great implications as United States popular culture assumes a global influence. References The Greatest of Exhibitions,1904,St. Louis: Louisiana Purchase Exposition Co. Adams, D., 1995, Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875-1928, Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. Gwenfreade, A. 1969, The YMCA in Hawaii, Honolulu: YMCA. Bocobo-Olivar, C., 1972, History of Physical Education in the Philippines Quezon City; University of the Philippines Press. Gleeck, L., Jr., 1976, American Institutions in the Philippines, Manila: Historical Conservation Society. Pettavino, P. and Pye, G., 1994, Sport in Cuba, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Reaves, J., 2002, Taking in a Game: A History of Baseball in Asia, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Archival Sources: Harvard University, W. Cameron Forbes Papers Library of Congress: Bishop Charles Brent Papers William Howard Taft Papers Leonard Wood Papers University of Michigan, Dean C. Worcester Papers University of Minnesota, YMCA Archives .

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