DRAFT: NO PERMISSION TO QUOTE Conference: “Newspapers and Transculturality: New Approaches to Working with Historical Newspapers” (Heidelberg) The Far Eastern Championship Games (1913-1934) in Newspapers: The Transnational Communication of ‘Modernization’ through Sport Stefan Hübner, M.A. Research Associate / Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter Bundeswehr University Munich Historical Institute Werner-Heisenberg-Weg 39 85579 Munich-Neubiberg (Germany) [email protected] DRAFT: NO PERMISSION TO QUOTE 1 In my PhD-thesis – ‘Building Asian Nations through Sports Events (1913-1974). The Far Eastern Championship Games, the Western Asiatic Games and the Early Asian Games’ – I used, based on the example of three regional sports events, new methodological approaches such as global history and the ‘multiple modernities’ to analyze entangled transfers of norms and values between Asia and the ‘West’. The spreading of ‘modern’ mega events such as world expositions and sports events since the late nineteenth century is a global phenomenon, which was initially caused by the rise of the ‘West’ and was characterized by power asymmetries due to colonialism, racism, and ‘Orientalism’. I was interested in gaining new insights into ‘Western’ and Asian perspectives on ‘modernization’, ‘civilization’, and feelings of regional and national ‘belonging’, as well as on the public orchestration of shifting power relations within Asia and between Asia and the ‘West’. In this presentation, however, I limit myself to an overview of the media coverage of the Far Eastern Championship Games (FECG; 1913-1934). I primarily deal with cartoons and photos depicted in newspapers published in East Asian countries, particularly in the Philippines. American newspapers and news magazines also covered the Games, but very often created a much more ‘Orientalist’ image of East Asians being in need of ‘Western’ tutelage. My main focus lies on four topics that served to communicate visions of ‘modernization’ to imagined national and supra-national communities (in the sense of Benedict Anderson) of newspaper readers: East Asian capability for sportive self-government, the amateur sports ideals of egalitarianism and internationalism, symbolic communication through trophies, and the emergence of ‘modern’ women. Quite obviously, not every single cartoon or photo on the Games can be discussed here (there are hundreds), meaning that each time several images I consider useful for illustration purposes were selected. The FECG were founded by the American branch of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) in Manila in 1913 to encourage a large-scale transfer of white American Protestant norms and values to East Asia. Due to the growing urbanization and industrialization that occurred following the American Civil War (1861-1865), American religious reformers increasingly supported amateur sport as a means to overcome a perceived ‘degeneration’ and ‘corruption’ of Americans. During the ‘Progressive Era’ (1890s-1920s), big cities were increasingly seen as hotbeds of vices and crime, whereas sports were regarded as a ‘clean’ leisure practice. Moreover, office work instead of more traditional hard physical labor on farms would lead to sickness, neurasthenia, and other physical and mental illnesses which were to be combated through physical exercise. Finally, amateur sports norms and values such as fair play (honesty), competition, belief in personal effort as the way to success 2 (instead of believing in luck or fate, as in the case of gambling), practical efficiency (choosing competent athletes for the team independent of skin color or social background instead of recruiting relatives), equality (non-discrimination), team spirit (the ability to cooperate with others), obedience of duly constituted authority (the ability to accept rules and orders), and especially self-control (the ability to lose without turning violent) were – if properly enforced by referees and by not paying athletes money to win – considered as useful for citizenship training, assimilation of immigrants, and for promoting ideals such as Christian egalitarianism, Christian internationalism, and a ‘Protestant Work Ethic’. The main justification for the American decision to conquer the Philippines following the defeat of Spain in the Spanish-American War (1898) had been the Filipinos’ alleged backwardness. Congressional debates, but also public discourse as reflected by newspapers, presented racial images of Filipinos as child-minded savages, American natives, or ‘negroes’, alongside Christian rhetoric. Uncle Sam was often displayed as a fatherly figure or as a teacher charged with finding a way in which to deal with the small Filipinos. The pro- imperialists suggested it was a duty to ‘elevate’ the Filipinos to superior white Protestant American standards and save them from Spanish oppression or from the outbreak of chaos due to their inability for self-government. Based on ideas like American Exceptionalism, Manifest Destiny, and the frontier, the United States would have to accept the ‘White Man’s Burden’ (Rudyard Kipling) of ‘benevolent imperialism’. Moreover, as Theodore Roosevelt argued in his ‘Strenuous Life’ speech in April 1899, the ‘young and virile’ United States would have to accept its new role in international affairs. Isolationism would mean a slow decay, with the United States eventually becoming a ‘China of the Western hemisphere’. American anti-imperialists rejected the idea of annexing the Philippines as contradicting the founding principles of the United States, but even their image of the Filipinos did not significantly differ from the pro-imperialists. Early American colonial administrations used a similar vocabulary as the pro- imperialists. Historian Paul Kramer has recently noted that they systematically used keywords like ‘progress’, ‘development’, ‘capacity’, and ‘possibility’ in order to create a discourse of racial inclusiveness to encourage Filipino elites to collaborate, but also to control them. The Filipinos were thus described as being able to learn self-government, but currently not yet ready for it, creating a justification for colonialist ‘training’. The images evoked during the American debate on annexation were supplemented by additional perceptions such as Christian Filipino elites being dishonest and immoral. The centuries-old ‘Black Legend’ of corrupt Spanish colonial practices promoting exploitation and feudalism experienced a 3 revival and was presented alongside the Filipinos’ supposed racial deficits as having had a disastrous influence on Christian Filipino elites. The broad masses, on the other hand, would remain ignorant, passive, superstitious, and lazy. Most of the non-Christians would still be savages and in need of even more American guidance. One of the most signal images was that of an Igorot headhunter depicted in 1908 in the Washington Post, who, according to Dean C. Worcester, an American zoologist and Secretary of the Interior for the Philippine Commission until 1913, had been turned into a ‘civilized’-looking constabulary sergeant within two years (1901-1903). ‘The Evolution of a Constabulary Sergeant from an Igorot Headhunter’ (Washington Post, 1908) Linked with this ‘American Civilizing Mission’, the American YMCA began to engage in missionary and education activities in East Asia. In 1910, Elwood Stanley Brown went to Manila as the YMCA’s physical education director. He started to collaborate with the American colonial administration in various ways. For example, during the annual Manila Carnival, whose athletic director he became in 1911, he organized an amateur championship for school teams and one open to everybody independent of ethnicity or skin color. He thereby attempted to overcome racial segregation in the American colony. At the same time he intended to serve Filipinos in American-style nation building by popularizing ‘civilized’ behavior based on spreading white American Protestant norms and values through school sport by designing a program for the newly established public school system. It did not take long for other East Asian peoples such as the Chinese and the Japanese to be added to the target group. These in particular belonged to those nations Brown and his colleagues perceived as needing American guidance due to their lack of American civilization. To come into contact with Asian politicians and government officials and to promote ‘Western’ amateur sports, Brown decided to found a regional sports event – the FECG – and used the YMCA’s networks in the Philippines, China, and Japan to recruit teams of athletes to participate in the first event (Manila 1913). His project resulted in a spectacular success and the creation of the biggest regional sports event until 1934, until 1927 taking 4 place biannually in one of the three countries. On the second day of the First FECG, the Philippines Free Press, written in both English and Spanish, and thus addressing both the American and Filipino elites, published an image of ‘The New Olympian’. Looking very similar to a white American athlete apart from the shape of his eyes, this image symbolized the celebrated American ideal of strong, proud, and totally Americanized Filipinos, Japanese, and Chinese, who had willingly embraced amateur sports and the corresponding norms and values to become ‘civilized’. As one might expect, some journals, particularly American ones, dramatized ‘civilizing successes’ even further by showing photos of Igorot and other head hunters who had been turned not into