Imperialism, the Native New Zealand Rugby Tour of 1888-89, and English Identity Formation

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University of Nevada, Reno

“An English Game Against English Players”: Imperialism, the Native New Zealand Rugby Tour of 1888-89, and English Identity Formation

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in History

Megan E. Wurm

Dr. Emily Hobson/Thesis Advisor

May, 2018

THE GRADUATE SCHOOL

We recommend that the thesis prepared under our supervision by

MEGAN E. WURM

Entitled

"An English Game Against English Players": Imperialism, The Native New Zealand Rugby Tour Of 1888-89, And English Identity Formation

be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

Emily Hobson, Phd, Advisor

Meredith Oda, Phd, Committee Member

Dennis Dworkin, Phd, Committee Member

Jennifer Hill, Phd, Graduate School Representative

David W. Zeh, Ph.D., Dean, Graduate School

May, 2018

Abstract

English newspaper coverage of the Native New Zealand rugby tour of 1888-89 provides insight into the tensions, inherent ambivalence, and instability involved in English identity formation of the late nineteenth century. Namely, this coverage exposes the contradictions inherent to the civilizing mission of the late nineteenth century British

Empire. As the English pursued their imperial mission they sought to imbue those countries and their indigenous populations with English characteristics. Sport was used as a tool in imbuing men in the colonies with self-discipline, the ability to work well with fellow players, and loyalty to both the team and, by extension, the Empire as a whole – qualities that were considered distinctly English. For nonwhite men in particular, sport was one of the most realistic ways to prove one’s ability to conform to English standards of behavior and “civilize,” thus allowing them to earn societal inclusion and socio- economic mobility in the Empire. However, the way imperialism functioned ensured this process could never be complete: if indigenous populations were able to achieve civilization, and the civilizing mission succeeded, English white racial superiority would be threatened, as would the very existence of the Empire. Thus, in order to ensure the maintenance of the Empire, the civilizing mission always had to be presented as a goal that could never be completed. The Native New Zealand Tour of 1888-89 serves as a lens through which these ideologies and processes can be observed.

Table of Contents

Abstract ………………………………………………………………………………...... i Table of Contents …………………………………………………………………...... ii List of Figures ………………………………………………………………………….. iii Introduction ………………………………………………………………...…………… 1 Chapter One: English to the Backbone ……………….....……...…....………....…...... 16 Chapter Two: The Grown-Up Game of Rugby ………………………………………... 39 Chapter Three: Friendly Combat ………………………………………………………. 61 Conclusion …………………………………………………………………………...... 84 Bibliography …………………………………………………………………………… 93 iii

List of Figures

Figure One: “The Maori Football Team.” Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News (London, England), 6 October 1888. ………………………………………………. page 5

Figure Two: Hall, Catherine, Keith McClelland, and Jane Rendall. Defining the Victorian Nation: Class, Race, Gender and the British Reform Act of 1867. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. …………………………………………………………… page 36

Figure Three: White, David. “Masculinity, Public Schools and British Imperial Rule.” Open History Society, accessed 2 April 2018, https://www.openhistorysociety.org/ members-articles/masculinity-and-british-imperial-rule. ………………………… page 44

Figure Four: “Joseph Warbrick, New Zealand Natives' rugby player.” New Zealand History, accessed 2 April 2018, https://nzhistory.govt.nz/media/photo/joseph-warbrick- rugby-player. ……………………………………………………………………... page 71

Figure Five: Bech, Duncan. “England to face New Zealand for first time in four years as Eddie Jones looks to develop 'bulletproof' side.” Independent, 13 September 2017, https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/rugby/rugby-union/international/england-vs-new- zealand-twickenham-2018-tickets-schedule-when-where-a7944326.html. ……… page 87 1

Introduction

In 1888, a Maori rugby player named Joe Warbrick and a New Zealand native of

European descent named Thomas Eyton organized a rugby tour of New Zealand,

Australia, Britain, and Ireland. The two men wanted to develop a team of Maori rugby players to represent New Zealand in international competition. Eventually a team of 26 men, 21 of Maori descent and 5 of European descent, was compiled, and their tour began.

They played eleven games in New Zealand and Australia before setting sail for Britain, arriving on the twenty sixth of September and playing their first match in the metropole against Surrey on the third of October. The team played seventy four games in Britain – sixty six in England, four in Wales, three in Ireland, and one in Scotland. Eyton noted that part of his rationale for wanting to tour an all-Maori team was their exotic appeal – the Maoris’ brown skin and unfamiliar customs would draw crowds of British men and women eager to catch a glimpse of the indigenous New Zealanders. Indeed, Britons came in droves to watch their local and national teams play the Native New Zealand team. A wealth of newspaper coverage reveals consistent coverage of the tour and deep interest in information about the Maori people.

In their coverage of the tour, many newspaper articles evaluated the Maori team’s ability to play rugby – not only their general skill, but also their ability to play a particular kind of English rugby. Indeed, the ability of indigenous populations of England’s colonies to play English sports became an important litmus test of the success of the imperial mission. English newspaper coverage of the Native New Zealand rugby tour provides insight into the tensions, inherent ambivalence, and instability involved in

English identity formation of the late nineteenth century. The Maori tour developed at

2 the intersection of Empire, race, and sport.1 Given how important these three things were in helping to define English identity, English reactions to the tour can help determine the extent to which the English considered their imperial mission successful. These reactions show that, while sport was used as an element of the civilizing mission meant to spread

Englishness to the colonies, the ideology of English white supremacy meant that the civilizing mission could never be complete.

Ann Laura Stoler and Frederick Cooper’s ideas about ambivalence and empire are valuable. In Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World, Stoler and

Cooper note that colonialism’s effects were not one-sided. Indeed, according to them,

“Europe was made by its imperial projects as much as colonial encounters were shaped by conflicts within Europe itself.”2 Rather than conflict and contradiction being characteristic of certain crisis points in imperial history, they were in fact “at the center of the colonial state’s operatic mode,” which impacted both colonizer and colonized.3

Stoler and Cooper argue that the rhetoric of empire was opportunistic – “harnessed and mobilized for particular political projects by colonial elites” as they saw fit, especially with regards to race.4 As a result, the colonial experience for both colonizer and colonized was, at its heart, “ambivalent.”5 The idea that ambivalence was not the exception but the rule with regards to imperial ideology is crucial to this project.

1 Throughout this thesis, “Empire” will be capitalized when referring to the British Empire specifically. 2 Ann Laura Stoler and Frederick Cooper, “Between Metropole and Colony: Rethinking a Research Agenda,” in Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World, ed. Ann Laura Stoler and Frederick Cooper (University of California Press, 1997), 1. 3 Stoler and Cooper 20. 4 Stoler and Cooper 12-13. 5 Stoler and Cooper 34.

The timeline of the tour was significant in that the late nineteenth century was a period of particularly heightened imperial anxiety for the English. Though the British

Empire was expanding, the late 1800s also saw the expansion (or attempted expansion) of the empires of the United States, Germany, and France. In some cases, these countries’ empires threatened to unseat or destabilize parts of the British Empire. The British relied on the Empire both materially, to provide goods such as sugar and tea, and ideologically.

Key to the justification of imperial expansion was the idea of the civilizing mission – the notion that the British were meant to go forth into the world and spread their culture, ideology, and religion to uncivilized indigenous populations in the areas they colonized.

This created an ideology that relied on circular logic but was nonetheless crucial in defining English racial identity: they spread English values to other populations because

Englishness was the pinnacle of civilization; Englishness was the pinnacle of civilization because it had been adopted by so many other populations. Paradoxically, the civilizing mission was meant to be forever incomplete. If colonized populations actually achieved

English levels of civilization, this would question English racial supremacy and thus their ability to maintain an Empire. Thus, the English were ambivalent with regards to the civilizing mission, forever “moving the goal posts” – as soon as indigenous populations looked to be successful, the standards changed to ensure they fell short.6

One area that served as a microcosm for the imperial project was sport. Sport was used as a sort of multi-purpose tool for English identity making. For the English middle class, it was an avenue through which British boys were turned into British men.

6 Patrick Miller used this phrase in Patrick B. Miller, “The Anatomy of Scientific Racism: Racialist Responses to Black Athletic Achievement,” Journal of Sport History 25, no. 1 (Spring 1998): 129.

Participation in team sports at public schools was meant to teach them the values of hard work, esprit de corps, and the ability to prove one’s capacity for self-control by following the rules of the games. For the English working class, especially in the north of England, it was used to develop a sense of local identity, an avenue through which a city or town could prove itself to other cities in England. Sport was used in a similar way in the

Empire – not only did boys in the colonies learn all of the lessons mentioned above, they also learned a sense of shared community and loyalty to the British Empire. For nonwhite people in the colonies, there was the added dimension of giving them an opportunity to prove their Anglicization. If one could play an English sport like an

Englishmen, one might be able to gain acceptance and social status in (white) colonial society. In addition, sport was used as a litmus test to measure the success of cultural imperialism. When colonial sporting tours travelled to England, they were subject to evaluation, most often by the press, of their ability to play the sport the way the English expected them to. This informal evaluation was a reflection not only on the team, but on the English as well – how successful were they at spreading English ideas and values?

This is true of the Native New Zealand tour as well. When the press reported on the team, they were critical – and often hypercritical – of the Maori team’s ability to play the game, and to play it in the way that the English expected them to. In this way,

English reports of the Maori team’s tour offer evidence of English standards, and English identity formation, by which they were measured. Newspaper editors had a limited amount of space for their reports on the team’s matches; thus, every aspect of every report was a deliberate inclusion. Looking at what they chose to include or exclude and how they reported on the tour provides insight into which elements of rugby the English

5 considered important for the Maoris to demonstrate, as well as which elements the

English thought were impossible for the Maoris to achieve. English papers expected the performance of the Maori team to be at once proof of the civilizing mission’s success and justification for the continued need of the civilizing mission.

Figure One, for example, is indicative of some of these contradictions. In this photo taken at the beginning of their tour, the Maori team are pictured sitting in front of a

New Zealand flag and a British flag, indicating colonial unity and emphasizing the idea that New Zealanders and Brits were connected. However, the photo was taken in the brush, which was unusual for posed team photos – most were taken in studios or on well- manicured rugby pitches. This choice of setting is indicative of a desire to maintain the image of the 1888-89 Maoris as a team of “noble savages,” who, while able to imitate tenets of English civility, were nonetheless savage by nature. While the flags and the team’s posture and clothing indicate that the Maori team have conformed to Western ideals of civility, the brush around them overrides the sentiment with a resounding image of “less than” despite their best efforts to the contrary. No matter how much the English worked to conform the Maori to their standards of civilized society, they still set the team up for failure and a constant state of “other”, separate and unknowable. Content such as this provides insight into some of the key components of English identity-making.

A rich historiography shows Britain’s imperial project as central to British identity. This places prime importance on the nineteenth century. For the most part historians place the formative period of British identity formation in the mid to late nineteenth century – or at least note that this was the period in which a conscious process of identity making is most clear. Also related to Britain’s imperial project, historians concur that British identity formation was contingent upon certain racial and gender attributes, and that though the specifics of what these attributes were varies from historian to historian. Some are more concerned with the ways in which Scottishness, Welshness, and Englishness have been included in ideas of Britishness; others take “British” for granted as an identity category. Social class was central. Members of the lower classes were required to conform to certain middle-class standards of respectability in order to be considered truly British. Still, race, and the cross-class consolidation of whiteness, was more important to the imperial project than maintaining class distinctions.7

The work that most clearly demonstrates the connection between the imperial project and British identity making is Defining the Victorian Nation: Class, Race, Gender and the British Reform Act of 1867, a collaborative monograph by Catherine Hall, Keith

McClelland, and Jane Rendall.8 These authors discuss how debates about gender, class, and race in the wake of suffrage reform in the 1860s shed light on British identity formation by examining who was considered worthy of inclusion in the democratic process and who was not. Hall’s chapter is particularly informative. She looks at

7 See, for example Dennis Grube, At the Margins of Victorian Britain: Politics, Immorality, and Britishness in the Nineteenth Century (London: I.B. Tauris, 2013) and Catherine Hall, Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination, 1830-1867 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), as well as the other works discussed below. 8 Catherine Hall, Keith McClelland, and Jane Rendall, Defining the Victorian Nation: Class, Race, Gender and the British Reform Act of 1867 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

7 colonial crises in Ireland and Jamaica, as well as British reactions to these crises, to argue that native Irish and Black Jamaicans were considered unfit for self-rule and in need of paternalistic British guidance, which ruled them out as worthy of receiving voting rights, and thus clearly defined them as non-British. These crises outlined relatively specific characteristics that were associated with being British. Similarly, studying the Maori tour through the lens of imperial sport can provide insight into the components of Englishness.

While there are a multitude of histories about British identity and imperialism as they relate to gender, class, and race, there are not many that focus on sports – in fact, there are not many that include sports in their analysis at all, despite the fact that many late nineteenth century imperialists themselves defined sports as an important aspect of

Britain’s imperial project. Exceptions include Richard Holt’s analysis of sports as crucial to Britain’s civilizing mission in its colonies.9 Holt argues that indigenous rulers saw team sports as a kind of service provided by the British, while for white settlers, sports promoted loyalty to the metropole. Paul Rouse too discusses the impact of sport on

Britain’s colonies, arguing that in Ireland, it served as a crucial venue for the battle between British imperialism and Irish political and cultural identity.10 As with other colonies, the British introduced sports such as rugby, cricket, and soccer to Ireland in an effort to Anglicize the population. The reaction among the Irish was varied – some bought into the Anglicization process completely, while some participated in these

British sports but infused their participation with particular Irish qualities. Still others took their rejection of British sport to the extreme, founding the Gaelic Athletic

9 Richard Holt, Sport and the British: A Modern History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989). 10 Paul Rouse, Sport and Ireland: A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).

Association, which promoted traditionally Irish sports such as hurling and explicitly rejected the very presence of British sports in the country.

Within New Zealand history, discussion of rugby’s importance is common.

Indeed, many historians identify two key events in defining New Zealand identity: the

Battle of Gallipoli in 1915 and the first tour of the All Blacks national rugby team in

1905. Greg Ryan and Brendan Hokowhitu are alone citing the 1888-89 rugby tour as pivotal.11 Meanwhile, other New Zealand scholars are beginning to question the supreme importance placed on rugby within New Zealand’s national mythology.12 For example,

Brendan Hokowhitu, a Maori sociologist, identifies contemporary notions of natural

Maori male physicality as an artificial British construction. He argues that sports played a crucial role in this process, describing sport “as a site of ‘positive’ racism that acts as a contemporary conduit to channel tāne [Maori men] into the physical realm.”13 In the early colonial period, New Zealand produced just as many Maori intellectuals as it did white intellectuals. However, as British colonial transplants in the country “realized the need for a manual workforce” to develop their new colony, Maori men were encouraged to participate in the colonial project in specific ways.14 Hokowhitu notes, “The Māori male… had limited, conditional access to the white man’s world;” most notably, “as warriors in the service of the British army or in rugby.”15 This has had far reaching

11 Greg Ryan, Forerunners of the All Blacks: the 1888-89 New Zealand Native Football Team in Britain, Australia and New Zealand (Canterbury: Canterbury University Press, 1993) and Brendan Hokowhitu, “Rugby and Tino Rangatiratanga: Early Maori Rugby and the Formation of Traditional Maori Masculinity,” Sporting Traditions 21, no. 2 (May 2005). 12 For example, see Malcolm K. Maclean, “New Zealand (Aotearoa),” in Routledge Companion to Sports History, eds. S.W. Pope and John Nauright (Routledge: 2013), 511-512. 13 Brandan Hokowhitu, “Tackling Māori Masculinity: A Colonial Geneaology of Savagery and Sport,” Contemporary Pacific 12, no. 2 (Fall 2004): 262. 14 Hokowhitu, “Tackling Maori Masculinity,” 267. 15 Hokowhitu, “Tackling Maori Masculinity,” 269.

9 effects, says Hokowhitu, and the idea of the Maori man as physical and firmly anti- intellectual is one that is still present in twenty-first century New Zealand society. While these analyses are useful and important, they leave gaps regarding how colonial participation in sport impacted the metropole. This is surprising, given the importance

Britons in the late nineteenth century placed on sports in their imperial project.

Much of the primary source material related to the 1888-89 tour survives in newspapers. The way in which match reports are worded, as well as the content the articles’ authors chose to include, provides insight into how the English viewed the Maori people, and further what qualities were valuable to English identity. In addition to articles about rugby matches, newspapers also published other articles that featured

Maori people as their subject, including satire and jokes, news from New Zealand about

Maoris, and informational articles about Maori history, culture, and character. These articles are not sources of objectivity or truth, but rather of processes of social construction of identities.16

Other documents published in the late nineteenth century reveal general ideas that

Victorian Britons held about Maori people, and provide context for newspaper accounts of the 1888-89 rugby tour. An organization called the Royal Colonial Institute, a group

“for all men connected to the Colonies and British India,” met annually with the aim of teaching each other about the British colonies.17 Many British people also published travel guides/memoirs as well as general studies. All of these works were published and distributed in London. This indicates that British people were not only interested in

16 Jeffrey Hill, “Anecdotal Evidence: Sport, the Newspaper Press, and History,” in Deconstructing Sport History: A Postmodern Analysis, ed. Murray G. Phillips (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006). 17 Proceedings of the Royal Colonial Institute 26 (1894-95), ix.

10 learning about these topics, they were consuming the information these authors presented, which then shaped newspaper coverage of the Maori rugby team’s tour.

Taken together, this indicates an attempt to facilitate the creation of a somewhat unified

English identity, even across class and region, at least partially based on the racialization of New Zealand’s indigenous population.

Key to any study of national identity is Benedict Anderson. In his work Imagined

Communities, Anderson identifies several “historical forces,” such as the standardization of language, republican and democratic movements, and the creation of nationally-used tools such as clocks and train schedules, as being key components of national identity formation.18 Anderson also identifies the proliferation of print capitalism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as important. According to Anderson, nations need narration to exist, and so “the novel and the newspaper,” as products that were available and consumed on a national level, helped to instill certain ideas and narratives about nations which created a sense of unification.19 Anderson’s ideas about an imagined community are useful not only because of his general concepts about identity construction, but also because of the specific role print writing played in that process.

Given that the bulk of the primary source base available for the Native New Zealand tour and nineteenth century ideology about Maori people is print material, understanding the role this type of media played in helping to form an English national identity is crucial.

Mary MacDonald and Susan Birrell also provide incredibly useful ideas on how to study sport. In their article, “Reading Sport Critically: A Methodology for

18 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (New York: Verso, 1983), 4. 19 Anderson 25.

Interrogating Power,” they argue for the study of sport as a form of political resistance.

They state that they “advocate focusing on a particular incident or sport as the site for exploring the complex interrelated and fluid character of power relations as they are constituted along the axes of ability, class, gender, and nationality.”20 They rely on a postmodern idea of “truth;” namely, that there is no singular truth but rather “versions of the truth presented as narratives,” and call for scholars to pursue “counter-narratives” which “provide interventions into the dynamics of power” surrounding certain events.21

This methodology can be applied to the study of English identity through the Maori tour.

The 1888-89 New Zealand Native Team rugby tour is a “text,” whose power dynamics are those between the colonizer and the colonized, offering particular insights into how that relationship impacted the colonizer.

A few notes on terminology are needed for this project. In this thesis, “Maori refers to the Native New Zealand Team as well as the indigenous people of New Zealand more generally. This term is, admittedly, problematic. As Hokowhitu has noted,

“Maori” is not a word that indigenous New Zealanders chose to represent themselves, but is instead a British imposition. Indigenous New Zealanders, who compose forty-odd tribes, would not have seen themselves as a unified group, and so thus would not have chosen a single unifying word or phrase by which to refer to themselves.22 Nonetheless, the term “Maori” is useful because it reflects the 1888-89 tour coverage, and reveals

British perceptions as well as British and English identities. As this project argues that

20 Mary G. MacDonald and Susan Birrell, “Reading Sport Critically: A Methodology for Interrogating Power,” Sociology of Sport Journal 16 (1999): 284. 21 MacDonald and Birell 292, 293, 296. 22 Hokowhitu, “Tackling Maori Masculinity,” 278.

12 the racial aspects of this particular colonial connection impacted English identity, it makes sense to take the British/English on their own terms.

Another contested set of terms pertaining to this project is “British”/“English.”

Most historians take these terms for granted, often using “British” as a catchall term for anything that refers to Great Britain, even if their subject matter is, for example, exclusively set in London. Linda Colley’s Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837 was one of the first influential studies that interrogated the idea of Britishess as something distinct from Englishness, Scottishness, or Welshness. She identifies three factors that allowed Britishness to be “superimposed over an array of internal differences”:

Protestantism, war with France, and the combined English and Scottish effort of early empire building.23 Protestantism “permitted a sense of British national identity to emerge alongside of, and not necessarily in competition with older, more organic attachments.”24

War with France unified English, Welsh, and Scottish people not only by simple virtue of armed struggle, but also because France was “the haunting embodiment of the Catholic

Other which Britons had been taught to fear.”25 Furthermore, while Scottish men could not usually find well-paying, stable jobs in Britain itself, they found numerous career opportunities with potential for advancement in the ever-expanding colonial outposts.26

In this way, Colley argues, English, Welsh, and Scottish people were able to find enough

23 Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 6. 24 Colley 18. 25 Colley 376. 26 Colley 128.

13 commonality to overcome their national and regional identities in favor of taking up the label of “British.”27

This study uses both “British” and “English,” but does so in specific ways. As mentioned before, while the Native New Zealand Team played 118 games total on their tour, seventy four of these games were played in Britain and Ireland. Of these, only four were played in Wales, three were played in Ireland, and one was played in Scotland, while the remaining 66 were played in England. Therefore, this study is focused on the construction of English identity, as opposed to British, because most of the British sources available about the tour were produced in England. However, when referring to things related to the imperial project as a whole and the imperial relationship with New

Zealand, I will be using “British.” While the imperial project was certainly dominated by

English people, Scottish and Welsh people were crucial to its success. For example, as

Colley argues, Scottish men relied upon their ability to join the British army and participate in the imperial project for practical, economic purposes – although “their chances of dying in battle soared,” so too did their chances for material success and career advancement.28 Thus, as it would be inaccurate and disingenuous to use either

“English” or “British” exclusively, the best course of action is to be deliberate and transparent in the ways that these terms are engaged.

Given that the Native New Zealand rugby tour of 1888-89 operates at the intersection of the English concerns with empire and sport, a close analysis of these two

27 While Colley presents some important ideas, by ending her study in 1837 she misses a chance to analyze the role of imperial expansion in the late nineteenth century. Indeed, Tom Nairn argues that the proliferation of English, Welsh, and Scottish nationalisms were borne in the 1970s out of the ongoing process of decolonization, and that this will one day lead to the breakup of Britain. See Tom Nairn, The Break-Up of Britain (Altona: Common Ground Publishing, 2003). 28 Colley 126.

14 systems is important. Chapter One will discuss the functions of imperialism for the

English, especially as it pertained to the establishment of a white English racial superiority, and the ambivalence at the heart of the imperial mission – which, if fully successful, would make British presence in the colonies no longer necessary. Also key to the civilizing mission was the “othering” of indigenous colonial populations, including the Maori. By presenting Maori people as “savages” and not fully human, the British were able to justify their continued presence in New Zealand.

In order for the Empire to be maintained, a sense of unified Englishness was necessary. One of the ways in which this Englishness was fostered, in boys and men in particular, was through sport. Chapter Two discusses how sport instilled English boys and men with many qualities that were deemed crucial to running an empire, including an esprit de corps and a sense of loyalty to both one’s team and one’s country. In the

Empire, one of the reasons the ideology of the civilizing mission held for so long was because it gave the indigenous populations of the colonized countries a sense of agency.

If they managed to become fully Anglicized, they would be allowed a place in the socio- political fabric of the Empire. In New Zealand, rugby quickly caught the national imagination, and so it was through participation in that sport that Maori men sought inclusion.

Chapter Three offers a close analysis of the Native New Zealand Tour of 1888-89.

The ambivalences of the civilizing mission and the extent to which it could be successful are evident in English press reports of the tour. These reports were rife with contradictions – the Maori team adapted well to the English style of play, but elements of their inherent “savagery” were still clear in their tendency towards roughness; their

15 appearance was variously praised and criticized for being either perfectly Maori or not

Maori enough. While there may have been regional conflicts within England about rugby and how it was played, the country was united in their sense of superiority over the Maori team, and their ambivalence surrounding the civilizing mission.

Chapter 1: English to the Backbone

Imperialism was a system of power, control, and profit, justified by the rhetoric of the civilizing mission. The Empire was mostly an economic venture; however, it was one that relied on the exploitation of indigenous populations in colonized countries. In order to justify this exploitation, which was crucial to maintaining the imperial system and all its benefits, this civilizing mission could never be fully realized, or else it would need to end. This produced a dilemma, and meant that English people were ambivalent about the extent to which indigenous populations in colonized countries were successful at achieving civilization. This was true even of the Maori people, who, while considered good imitators of English customs and habits, were also seen as “noble savages.” The presumption of this inherent savagery helped to ensure that Britain’s presence in New

Zealand would always be necessary.

Imperialism had many functions for the British. In describing New Zealand in its first fifty or so years as a colony, Colonial Treasurer J.G. Ward illustrates some of the components that indicated a colony’s success. Chief among these was industry and the ability to generate trade, and, thus, wealth. Ward noted that a little less than half of New

Zealand’s twenty eight million pounds of income was generated through agriculture and mining, and that business interests in these and other industries were steadily increasing.29 He also noted that the average wealth per person in New Zealand was £232, right on par with Britian’s £247.30 In addition to material wealth, Ward posited that one could find in New Zealand “all the elements on which the prosperity of a Colony can be

29 J.G. Ward, “New Zealand in 1895,” Proceedings of the Royal Colonial Institute 26 (1894-95), 299. 30 Ward 301.

17 founded,” including a loyalty to England and the Empire more broadly, the popularity of

Christianity, and a population not prone to drinking.31

Most middle- and working-class English people would not directly have seen the profits of the British Empire’s economic success. However, they would nonetheless have had a stake in it insofar as it provided them with cheap staples that were imported from the colonies, such as sugar or tea. Matthew Frye Jacobson argues that this economic dependence became “entangled with a web of myths and stereotypes regarding the diverse peoples of the new global marketplace.”32 The rhetorics of economics and civilization that were the most important components in justifying British imperialism created a feedback loop of sorts – the need for resource extraction from the colonies helped to justify the ongoing civilizing mission, and the civilizing mission made the process of resource extraction more efficient by promoting the necessity of hard work as a key British value among indigenous populations. Indeed, an article from a Newcastle newspaper mentioned, “English commerce is so closely bound up with her Colonial

Empire that the destruction of one is the ruin of the other.”33 In this way, the maintenance of the British Empire was not only a point of pride, it was a matter of survival, one that was facilitated by the exploitation of indigenous populations in colonized countries.

Indeed, while the material benefits of imperialism were acknowledged and identified as important, writers often emphasized the cultural and ideological aspects of imperialism as being paramount. Jacobson, writing about American expansion in the late

31 Ward 299-300. 32 Matthew Frye Jacobson, Barbarian Virtues: The United States Encounters Foreign Peoples at Home and Abroad, 1876-1917 (New York: Hill and Wang, 2000), 17. 33 “War Relics,” The Newcastle Weekly Courant (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England), 6 January 1888.

18 nineteenth century, notes that pro-imperialists in the United States helped to make the country’s economic imperialism in Latin America and the Caribbean palatable for everyday Americans by presenting it as an altruistic civilizing mission, spreading

American ideals and values to “barbaric” indigenous people.34 The same was the case in late nineteenth century Britain. Pro-imperialists repeatedly portrayed Britain’s Empire as idealized “Brighter Britains,” places that embodied all the best aspects of the metropole and none of the downfalls. The Empire was, for example, presented as a place of homogeneity and equality, a presentation that was essential to the “web of myth and stereotypes” that helped to maintain the imperial mission. In “At Home with History:

Macaulay and the History of England,” Catherine Hall analyzes Thomas Babington

Macaulay’s mid-nineteenth century History of England. She shows that this book “told the story of an imperial race,” one in which regional, country, and cultural distinctions were erased (to a certain extent) in favor of forming “the great English people.”35

However, she notes that this vision of Britons was “idealised” and dependent upon “a series of exclusions, excisions and silences.”36 Macaulay manufactured homogeneity by essentially pretending that white, English people were representative of the people of

Great Britain. In Macaulay’s book, Hall notes, “Oppression and exploitation had been banished, faultlines papered over, the nation made whole through its history.”37

Macaulay’s idealization of Empire was not the exception, but the rule. In a paper read to the Royal Colonial Institute in 1886, Sir Graham Berry noted that if Britain had

34 See Jacobson. 35 Catherine Hall and Sonya O. Rose, “Introduction: Being at Home with the Empire,” in At Home With the Empire: Metropolitan Culture and the Imperial World, eds Catherine Hall and Sonya O. Rose (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 34. 36 Hall and Rose 36. 37 Hall and Rose 52.

19 colonized all the islands in the Western Pacific, “the foundations [would have been] laid of an Empire which, unchecked by foreign wars and homogenous in its government and people, would have illustrated… the possible development of the human race in the arts of peace.”38 Berry ignored the wars with and conquest of indigenous people in those colonies in order to paint the British Empire as a benevolent one in contrast to other empires, such as that of the French. Other imperialists took the same approach. In his travelogue, Hay noted, “Class prejudices have certainly been imported from Europe… but there is… a nearer approach to true liberty, equality, and fraternity” in the colonists living in New Zealand.39 “Only,” said Hay, “if he be a loafer, or dishonest, or positively objectionable” would a man not be treated with the utmost respect, and New Zealand

“society” was “not a mere set of wealthy exclusives banded together against the rest of the world,” but rather a group which “comprehends everybody.”40 New Zealand, as with other British colonies, was presented as peaceful, civilized, and free from prejudice – a façade that largely ignored or dismissed the plight of indigenous populations. When accounts such as this did mention indigenous people, they were dismissed as savages, an unfortunate blight on an otherwise perfectly good colonial landscape; or their attempts at imitating civilized mannerisms were regarded as noble but always unsuccessful, conveying the idea that this aspect of the civilizing mission may never be fully achieved.

In presenting all white Europeans as a homogenous group in contrast to indigenous populations, the rhetoric of Empire helped to ensure the cross-class and cross-

38 Sir Graham Berry, “The Colonies in Relation to the Empire,” Proceedings of the Royal Colonial Institute 18 (1886-1887), 12. 39 William Delisle Hay, Brighter Britain! Or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand (London: Richard Bentley and Son, 1882), 26. 40 Hay 34.

20 colony consolidation of whiteness. Placing importance on the racial aspects of Empire and identifying whiteness as particularly significant ensured that those who were not directly involved in activities related to the Empire were still invested in its success. This was accomplished at several different levels. For instance, Stephen J. Heathorn analyzes the way simple books meant to teach literacy, called “readers,” helped create a national identity among English working class elementary school children. He argues that

“instruction in basic literacy” during these years was “the means by which an understanding of the ‘nation’, and one’s ‘place’ within it, as well as one’s place in the world, was discursively formed.”41 Heathorn notes that the need for imparting ideas about national identity to working class people was especially acute at the turn of the century because of “the perceived arrival of economic depression and successive extensions of the franchise.”42 In addition, education reformists saw a clear link between instructing students in a national identity and “the health and wealth of the state and […] the future retention of the empire.”43 The readers that students used included messages about how English boys and girls were meant to behave, both in their families and in their “imagined national community,” as well as information about “strange looking people” English children might encounter if they traveled the world.44 In this way,

Heathorn argues, English classrooms were used as “workshops of a reformulated English nationalism.”45

41 Stephen Heathorn, For Home, Country and Race: Constructing Gender, Class and Englishness in the Elementary School Classroom, 1880-1914 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), 22-23. 42 Heathorn 4. 43 Heathorn 4. 44 Heathorn 12. 45 Heathorn 1.

Given the importance of imperialism to the very fabric of Britain, the state of the

Empire was a topic of constant discussion and anxiety for Britons. Increased imperial competition from the United States, Russia, Germany, and France made concerns about the Empire particularly acute in the late nineteenth century. In a speech read to the Royal

Colonial Institute in 1887, Walter Hazell claimed that while the British Empire had existed for hundreds of years, “at no period of our national life was the question of our relation to this continued expansion of more consequence than at the present moment.”46

Catherine Hall and Sonya Rose credit this shift in thinking to a shift in imperial ambition,

“from an empire of commerce and the seas to an empire of conquest.”47 At this point, the meaning of empire itself shifted – not only was Britain’s economy reliant on the Empire, so too was Britain’s status as a country to be reckoned with in the world; and so Britons began to concern themselves with the imperial project out of a sense of national pride.

Hall and Rose point out that while the particulars of how Britain was being an imperial power were debated, “there were few if any voices arguing the Empire should be disbanded.”48 People might have argued about the way Britain presented itself in the colonies, in other words, but no one argued that Britain shouldn’t have a presence. In this way, according to Hall and Rose, “empire was… taken-for-granted as a natural aspect of

Britain’s place in the world and its history.”49 In this way too did Empire become a defining component of England as a world power, and so a stake in the country’s imperial success became important to English identity.

46 Walter Hazell, “Practical Means of Extending Emigration,” Proceedings of the Royal Colonial Institute 19 (1887-1888), 49. 47 Hall and Rose 1. 48 Hall and Rose 2. 49 Hall and Rose 2.

An article from a Newcastle newspaper, describing an exhibit for weapons used in imperial conflicts, is informative in showing how English people thought about empire.

In the first place, despite the important role Scottish and Welsh men played in helping to spread and maintain the Empire, it was still primarily thought of as an English creation.

The author consistently describes England and Englishmen’s success in imperial endeavors, noting that “English firmness and courage” were the key tools in empire building, and describing unfortunate sacrifices that were nonetheless “the price England has had to pay for her great Empire.”50 This exclusion of Britain’s other countries is not accidental – he also identifies a particular kind of bow from the early modern era as one

“which English bands learned to bend with such dreadful effect against Frenchman and

Scot.”51 By identifying Scottish people as distinct and separate from English people, even nearly two hundred years after the union which created Great Britain, the author reveals an important connection between Englishness and empire, for while the imperial project may in reality have been a group effort, it was thought of as a particularly English one.

The author also describes the history of the Empire as a story of competition, paranoia, and jealousy among other imperial powers. He notes that “nations have envied it” and describes the ways in which those nations have tried to take parts of the empire for themselves, forcing the English to constantly be on the defense in protection of it.52

He pinpoints the cause of the French and Indian War and the American Revolution in

50 “War Relics.” 51 “War Relics.” 52 “War Relics.”

North America as “the jealousy of France.”53 He also describes Russia as aggressive and

“a grave menace” in its pursuit of Turkey and Afghanistan, neither of which were ever part of the Empire, but which still had to be kept out of Russian hands in defense of “the prosperity of our Indian Empire.”54 Despite the fact that he is describing an exhibit on

“war relics” of the Empire’s long and conflicted history, he nonetheless maintains that the imperial mission is, at its core, altruistic. For this author, the key benefit which “Greater

Britain confers upon the world” is that wherever the Empire goes, “the spirit of freedom is brought into contact with the spirit of tyranny, and through it the oppressed are enabled to go free.”55 However, while this rhetoric was popular among British people, it carried limited weight among indigenous populations or other imperial powers who wished to challenge Britain’s supremacy.

Indeed, imperial crises in the latter half of the nineteenth century showed that

Britain’s Empire was not infallible and was constantly under threat both internally and externally. In the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, Indian soldiers rebelled and attempted a coup against the British Imperial army.56 While the British army was successful in quelling this uprising, it was nonetheless alarming for the British people as a whole. They saw this as an act of betrayal on the part of the people of India, as well as a failure of British imperial leadership, and the government increased British military forces in the area in order to subdue the indigenous populations and prohibit any further rebellion.57 The

53 “War Relics.” 54 “War Relics.” 55 “War Relics.” 56 EH Carter and RAF Mears, A History of Britain: The Victorians and the Growth of Empire, 1832-1901, ed David Evans (London: Stacey International, 1937), 123-126. 57 Heather Streets, Martial Races: The Military, Race and Masculinity in British Imperial Culture, 1857- 1914 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), 19.

Mutiny also served as a key moment in the development of Indian nationalism by fostering Hindu and Muslim solidarity, which would serve to unseat Britain’s power in the mid twentieth century. In addition to internal threats from indigenous populations, other European imperial powers threatened Britain’s supremacy. In 1887, the British sent troops to independent Afghanistan due to concerns that Russia would ally with the

Afghans and gain control in the area. After quick initial victories, the British were unable to withstand the united Afghan forces. In 1890 the nearly defeated British forced a treaty with the Afghans, which granted the British the right of approval for foreign policy decisions in Afghanistan, before making a hasty retreat. While the British Empire did gain an advantage in this way, the war was nonetheless viewed as a defeat because it solidified the fact that the British would never attain full control in the much-desired

Afghanistan.58 British people were assured of their Empire’s superiority and yet were constantly wary of ways in which that that superiority could be threatened.

A parody article from Bell’s Life in London and Sporting Chronicle on 22 January

1886 outlines some of these anxieties. The author begins with a farcical report about a speech given by Queen Victoria. “She” claims that “things in [the Navy] are about as bad as they can be,” and that though she hopes that the newest members of Parliament will be “an improvement,” she admits, “I do not expect you will.” She implies that the

MPs are a lazy lot, trusting that though they are responsible for “the defences and

Government of the Empire” they will not “overwork” themselves or “injure [their] minds with too much anxiety” about the care and keeping of the country. However, all hope is

58 Kevin Baker, War in Afghanistan: A Short History of Eighty Wars and Conflicts in Afghanistan and the North-West Frontier 1839-2011 (London: Rosenberg, 2011), 74-92.

25 not lost – while “the Russians are making energetic preparations for an attack on India,”

“the French detest us more cordially now than they did in the days of the grand

Emperor,” and “things in Ireland are the usual mess,” Britain has nothing to fear, for the military has “knocked all the fight out of Theebaw and the Arabs” and “skinned over the ulcerous sore in the Transvaal,” and so “there are no more savages to thrash just now.”59

This article is revealing in many ways. It should be noted that Bell’s Life is a sporting newspaper, which perhaps explains why non-sporting news was presented in a humorous light. Given that reporting on non-sporting current events was not this paper’s modus operandi, the news they chose to “report” on reveals what the editors of the paper believed to be important. They express their worries in a tongue-in-cheek way, noting that the military, Parliament, and even international relations are all in a state of disarray.

However, not all is lost. Though Britain may not be on good terms with other international, imperial powers, its prowess in its imperial holdings in the Middle East and

South Africa could be counted on to somewhat balance out the country’s other failings – the exception, of course, being Ireland.

This satirical article shows that English readers were worried about Britain’s position of imperial superiority, and that pains needed to be taken to ensure that that superiority was maintained. This was, in part, accomplished by constructing the relationship between colonies and metropole in such a way as to assure the loyalty of colonists – especially white colonists – to the mother country. In his travelogue Brighter

Britain! Or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand, William Delisle Hay noted, “In the colonies Great Britain is always spoken of as ‘home,’ even by colonial-born

59 “Nunquam Dormio,” Bell’s Life in London and Sporting Chronicle (London, England), 22 January 1886.

26 people.”60 Indeed, some pro-imperialists acknowledged that the British Empire may not have had the strongest military of the European imperial powers, and that because they did not rely on military strength alone to run their Empire the British actually had the advantage. In his speech to the Royal Colonial Institute, Berry argued that “military

Monarchies” were “following a course of depletion” by forcing their young adult men to enlist instead of engage in other “industrial pursuits.”61 The British Empire, on the other hand, was superior in its ability to cultivate an empire through “peaceful development,” the benefits of which were seen in its “healthy increase of population” as well as “the acquisition of almost fabulous material wealth.”62 This peaceful colonization and the benefits it produced ensured that white colonists remained loyal to England. Berry noted that this loyalty would ensure that colonists would help engage in defense of the Empire, if need be:

Once taken for granted that the Colonies are English to the backbone; that they are loyal to the Crown; that they glory in the past history of the race; that they watch with jealous care the foreign policy of other nations as it affects the peace and security of the Empire, that their hearts beat in patriotic sympathy with the grand old land of their birth in that settled policy which has made England not only free itself, but the guarantee of freedom for the world, then we may rest satisfied that any proposal to make more assured the security of all parts of the Empire under any and every contingency, the Colonies will readily and manfully do their part.63

By linking colonial identity to England, the security of the empire was assured – as long as (white) colonial populations had a stake in being associated with the British Empire,

60 Hay 9-10. 61 Berry 6. 62 Berry 6. 63 Berry 17.

27 they would never seek full independence, thus ensuring that the sun would never set on the Empire.

Constant anxiety about Britain’s imperial success put an immense amount of pressure on the young British men who populated the country’s colonial forces from that point forward. Indeed, the concerns about the empire fostered concern over British masculinity, which began to surface in the 1860s (just after the end of the Indian Mutiny) and came to a head in the 1880s (on the heels of the Second Anglo-Afghan War).64

While the 1850s to the 1890s saw the peak of British imperial expansion, it also coincided with imperial expansion from the United States and Germany, the latter of which was especially seeking to expand in regions of established British control.

Concerns over British masculinity became particularly acute because such masculinity was central to the British military and its protection of the Empire. As Michael Roper and John Tosh explain, British masculinity and manhood was viewed as a “civilizing force,” and those men sent abroad as soldiers and colonial administrators to carry out the civilizing mission were expected to embody qualities such as “courage, independence, and veracity.”65 All of these were qualities that the British people believed to be unique to their men and could not be found in the men of the native people they colonized.66

Any British men who were found lacking in any of these qualities were not viewed as truly masculine, a threat to the idea of British masculinity and, by extension, to the safety and security of Britain’s empire.

64 Michael Roper and John Tosh, eds, Manful Assertions: Masculinities in Britain Since 1800 (New York: Routledge, 1991), 67. 65 Roper and Tosh 14. 66 Roper and Tosh, 14.

Roper and Tosh explain that upper and middle class British masculinities around this time were reliant upon “asserting their superiority over the ‘other’,” which included women and indigenous populations.67 These historians have also noted that during this time period there was public concern directed towards “young middle-class men who possessed the means to marry but preferred to remain bachelors.”68 In the same way that

“readers” in English schools were meant to imbue boys with British ideologies and virtues, the family was also seen as a key site for fostering Britishness. Indeed, Cook argues that British society in the late nineteenth century placed home and family in a critical role “in terms of national and imperial wellbeing.”69 Even men who self- identified as “inverted” such as contemporary socialist Edward Carpenter saw marriage as being “of indispensable importance to the State,” if only “as providing workshop as it were for the breeding and rearing of children.”70 Cook also lists several self-identified inverts of the time who not only married and had children, but whose wives and families were complicit in their romantic and sexual activities with other men.71 He notes that,

“men during this period secured not so much their heterosexuality by marrying and having children, but rather their masculinity and social status,” which was determined not only by their ability to control and provide for a wife and children, but also by their

67 Roper and Tosh, 13. 68 Roper and Tosh, 67. 69 Matt Cook, “Families of Choice? George Ives, Queer Lives and the Family in Early Twentieth-Century Britain,” Gender and History 22 no. 1 (April 2010): 3. 70 Edward Carpenter, The Intermediate Sex: A Study of Some Transitional Types of Men and Women (New York and London: Mitchell Kennerly, 1912), 68. 71 Cook, “Families of Choice,” 6.

29 ability to pass on ideologies of Britishness to those children and prepare the next generation to protect and defend the Empire.72

The English also relied on the racial “othering” of indigenous populations in order to maintain their (white) superiority and control. As Stoler and Cooper have pointed out, imperial powers such as the English “harnessed and mobilized” certain “debates and terminologies” about their imperial subjects, especially those debates and terminologies related to race, in whatever ways they saw fit.73 This racial othering was an important component in maintaining the empire. Philippa Levine notes of the British Empire, “in the racial typing of its colonies… we see both Britain’s palpable success as an empire and simultaneously the constant work required to maintain that success.”74 Race was not only important to the Empire, it was important to overall British identity. Levine argues that race was used “as a yardstick of national identity,” and that crucial to the idea of this national identity was the concept that being British was “to be born to rule, and to be not colonized… conditions fundamentally associated with nonwhites.”75 Thus, far from being simply racist prerogative or a cultural misunderstanding, the racial othering of the

Maoris and other indigenous populations was important to the maintenance of the British

Empire as well as British identity as a whole. However, the specifics of the civilizing mission were purposefully vague.

Indeed, the way the English talked about the Maori people reveals the tensions involved in the ideology of the civilizing mission. Attitudes toward the Maori were, at

72 Cook, “Families of Choice,” 6. 73 Stoler and Cooper 41. 74 Philippa Levine, Prostitution, Race, and Politics: Policing Venereal Disease in the British Empire (New York: Routledge, 2003), 3. 75 Levine 4

30 their heart, ambivalent – the Anglicization of the Maori people was a constant point of concern; however, they never presented the Maoris as fully civilized, because this would pose a threat to their white racial superiority. As such, even as English books and newspapers espoused the miracle of Maori civilization, they were sure to qualify these statements by emphasizing the inherent savagery of the Maori people. English writers would compliment Maori people if they behaved in such a way as to prove they were making an effort at embodying British values. However, these concessions were often delivered in a way that assured their attempts were falling short, and indeed would always fall short. An article in The Railway Press noted that the Maori were “more intellectual than any other savages,” especially compared to the Australian Aborigines.76

The same article claimed that while they may have been savages, they were honorable savages, even willing to “[relieve] the thirst of an English soldier” if it created the opportunity for a fair fight.77

Their savage nature meant that, while they might be able to successfully imitate the habits of a civilized person, they would never be truly civilized. In an article published in Chambers’s Journal in London, a New Zealander shared his observations of

Maori participation in Parliament. He applauded the Maori for taking “as kindly a fashion to representative government as they have to football” and praised them for their speaking skills, their dress, and their ability to blend in – indeed, if not for “their olive skin” they would “hardly… be distinguished at first sight from their European brethren”

76 “A Few Notes on Australia and New Zealand,” Railway Press (London, England), 6 Sept 1889. 77 “A Few Notes on Australia and New Zealand.”

31 in Parliament.78 However, while they may have been good imitators, the Maoris performance of a civilized nature was never foolproof. The author noted that after a particularly engaging address, a Maori MP had to take out a handkerchief and wipe sweat off his face and neck “with an unsophisticated vigour that recalls ‘the child of nature’ once more to the audience.”79 In addition, there was the understanding that Maori people were suited to Parliament because political conflict was an easy substitute for “the excitement of war” to which the Maori people were thought to be naturally inclined.80

These racial stereotypes were not as blatant as cannibalism, but they were still harmful in the way they downplayed Maori ability to perform English levels of civilization and respectability. Furthermore, in contrast to the enterprising British, it was noted that “the

Maoris have shown little of that colonizing spirit, of that fire of mind and body, which has caused the Aryan race to be the world’s history-makers for the last four thousand years.”81 This, more than anything, exposed Maori attempts at civilization as merely an act – if they were truly civilized, they would be the colonizers, not the colonized, and would not have any need for the British’s guidance.

A favorite English stereotype was that of the Maoris as violent cannibals. English newspapers were rife with stories of Maori people killing and eating human beings for any number of reasons. Bishop Selwyn noted that “as docile as [the Maoris] may now seem, they are at heart a manly and warlike [race],” proving his point with several stories

78 “Maoris in Parliament,” Chambers’s Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art (London, England), 15 June 1889. 79 “Maoris in Parliament.” 80 “Maoris in Parliament.” 81 Edward Tregear, The Aryan Maori (Wellington: George Dewsbury, 1885), 90.

32 of Maori people attacking English ships, killing and eating the passengers.82 An article in the St. James Gazette told a story about a Maori chief who, upon learning that he could not be baptized if he had two wives, killed and ate one of them, proclaiming, “Now, missionary, you may baptize me, for I have only one wife.”83 Whether or not these stories are actually true is immaterial – they exaggerated and played on existing stereotypes of the Maori people as warmongering cannibals in order to sensationalize their stories for English readers.

Not all depictions of Maori people were so violent; however, they consistently portrayed the Maori people as not fully human and, thus, not fully capable of achieving civilization. For example, Maori people were presented as being “less sensible to pain than Europeans,” able to withstand chopping off one’s own toe and getting right back to work.84 This, and their love of fighting, contributed to the English idea of the Maori people as savages. Indeed, fears of Maori savagery – and British guidance needed to stem that savagery – were constant. Reports of an attempted Maori uprising led by Te

Kooti were assiduously relayed in various English newspapers despite the fact that the local artillery was dispatched and Te Kooti’s rebellion abandoned before it even really began.85 Arthur Somerville noted that while this rebellion was successfully put down and

“there need [not] be any unnecessary alarm or apprehension of another Maori disturbance,” the white population of New Zealand and the imperial government

82 Bishop Selwyn, “Maori Cannibalism,” The North London News and Finsbury Gazette (London, England), 18 May 1889. 83 “A British Proconsul,” St. James’s Gazette (London, England), 27 December 1889. 84 “Maori Insensibility to Pain,” Congleton & Macclesfield Mercury, and Cheshire General Advertiser (Cheshire, England), 1 December 1888. 85 “The Maori Rising in New Zealand,” The Colonies and India (London, England), 27 Feb 1889.

33 nevertheless needed to be on their guard.86 The rebellion had proved that “the Maori is still at heart a savage,” and that “until the back country is opened up by roads, and a sufficient force of police is maintained there,” the threat of violence on white settlers by

Maoris would be a constant.87

English observers also expressed some anxiety about the possible connections and similarities between the Maori and the Irish. As Linda Colley points out, Britain’s anxiety with regards to Catholicism has a long history, borne out of conflicts with the

French and the Irish.88 In the 1850s, Thomas Babington Macaulay wrote an essay in which he expressed some of these anxieties. He noted that it was a phenomenon that had spread from Europe to the Americas, from the southern United States through the rest of

North and South America all the way to Cape Horn. His anxiety was more existential than acute – Catholicism had existed before Britain was a country, and it would certainly outlast it. Macaulay envisioned this future, writing, “And [Catholicism] may still exist in undiminished vigour when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St.

Paul’s.”89 Presumably, he mentioned New Zealand specifically because of its connections with Catholicism, which Irish settlers had brought to the colony and managed to spread among some of the Maori people. In some early reports of the Maori football team’s arrival in England, newspapers poked fun at this particular fear of

86 Arthur F. Somerville, “The Co-Operative Colonising Association (Limited),” The Colonies and India (London, England), 27 Feb 1889. 87 Somerville. 88 See Linda Colley, “Protestants,” in Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 11-54. 89 Thomas Babington Macaulay, “Von Ranke,” in Lord Macaulay’s Essays and Lays of Ancient Rome (London: Longmans, Green & Co.: 1895), 548.

Macaulay’s. An article in London’s Morning Post said that “as St. Paul’s is still standing and London-bridge shows no signs of decay, we may safely discard Macaulay’s prophecy and welcome this invasion of the New Zealander,” heralding the tour as an opportunity to

“encourage the progress of a healthy and manly game among our fellow-subjects in the

Pacific.”90

In this article, the connection between New Zealand/Maoris, Catholicism, and the

Irish is more of an implication. But other authors were not so ambiguous – an article from “The Comic Papers” in the Dover Express joked, “Is it because the Maories [sic] are so averse to Home Rule that they play the Union Game?” In this one-liner, the author referenced the fact that Maori team was playing Rugby Union football as opposed to

Association Football, a fact which he then connects to the ongoing Home Rule controversy in Ireland. Fenianism had been linked to New Zealand decades earlier – a review of a biography about Sir George Bowen, who served as Governor of New Zealand in the aftermath of the Maori Wars of the 1860s, noted that while he was Governor “he had to deal with bellicose Maoris and Fenian conspirators,” and newspapers joked about

Maori leaders secretly being Irishmen.91 These similarities provided humor for some, but anxiety for others. An article from the London Daily News entitled “Home Rule from a

Colonial Standpoint,” written by a man living in Nelson, New Zealand, highlighted some of these anxieties. He argued in favor of Home Rule for Ireland, noting their concerns as valid. However, he also acknowledged the mistreatment of the Maoris by white settlers, and warned that soon they, like the Irish, may push back against British rule. He says

90 “Multiple News Items.” The Morning Post (London, England), 28 September 1888. 91 “A British Proconsul,” The Colonies and India (London, England), 27 December 1889 and “Cuttings from the ‘Comics’,” Faringdon Advertiser and Vale of the White Horse Gazette (Oxfordshire, England), 13 April 1889.

35 that the Maoris “have been robbed right and left,” and that “exactly the same sense of injustice rankles in the Maori mind as the Irish.”92 This author claimed that the only reason Maori people didn’t take action over these injustices was lack of Maori political leadership, something for which the white settlers should count themselves lucky. In addition, this potential threat also served as an additional rationale for the civilizing mission being incomplete – limiting Maori socio-political participation in New Zealand meant less competition for the white colonial status quo.

Part of what made the Irish so troublesome for the British was the idea that they were less uncivilized and dangerous. Catherine Hall notes that while the Irish were always seen as racially distinct from the English, the Fenian uprising in the 1860s were important in also marking them as a particularly dangerous “race apart.”93 Many contemporaries believed that “the Irish slipped… between being as barbarous as black people and belonging… to the nation,” though this potential inclusion into the British national body was troubling, for “their whiteness was the warning sign, for the English, of possible degradation.”94 Fenianism made already-existing fears of the Irish as a savage, degrading race, a threat to Englishness itself, more acute. Fenians were the ultimate threat: “the subversive within, the terrorist potentially rotting the vitals of the nation.”95 The political cartoon in Figure Two demonstrates these anxieties. It depicts a caricature of an Irishman sitting atop a gunpowder keg, which Hall notes was a metaphor for the Irish as “a threat to parliamentary government but also as likely to blow himself

92 “Home Rule from a Colonial Standpoint,” London Daily News (London, England), 12 March 1889. 93 Hall et al 204. 94 Hall et al 213. 95 Hall et al 217.

36 up.”96 While Britain had faced the prospect of Ireland undermining its power with international alliances before, the uprisings of the

1860s were the first in which the threat from abroad was so real and acute, making the Fenians

– and, by extension, the Irish – more dangerous than ever.

This analysis of the Irish as “a race apart” is revealing in two ways. First, New Zealand and the Maoris’ connection with Fenianism, while not as strong as the Irish American connection, would still have been considered a threat, especially given the continuous threat of uprising in the form of Te Kooti and other discontented Maoris. More important, however, is the idea of the Irish poisoning the nation from within. Many British people regarded Irishness as a sort of communicable disease, and feared that if the Irish were allowed equal participation in British politics and society, the degenerative features of their “race” would spread to the British “race,” diluting the latter and leading to the fall of the Empire. This also helps to explain the ambivalence of the civilizing mission. If nonwhite, indigenous populations in Britain’s colonies were ever successful in embodying Englishness, the importance and superiority of the English race would be threatened. The British feared both the loss of their Empire and the dilution of their race at the hands of these colonial populations. Thus,

Anglicization was always something indigenous populations could strive for, but could never achieve.

96 Hall et al 207.

Indeed, no matter how much success the Maori may have had in playing at civilization, according to the English, their inherent nature would always render them savage at heart. For these reasons, the civilizing mission of colonization, in New Zealand and elsewhere, could never be truly complete, for it would go against prevailing cultural and scientific discourse about indigenous colonial populations, and also threaten English racial superiority. However, the British continued to promote the idea of the civilizing mission in order to prevent discord among its colonies’ indigenous populations. In his memoir about growing up in post-apartheid South Africa, comedian Trevor Noah says,

“The difference between British racism and Afrikaner racism was that at least the British gave the natives something to aspire to. If they could learn to speak correct English and dress in proper clothes, if they could Anglicize and civilize themselves, one day they might be welcome in society.”97 In this way, in African colonies and elsewhere, the

British created an imperialism that the nonwhite people they were oppressing could buy into – if they constantly had something to strive for, if there seemed to be a way to gain favor and power, indigenous populations would spend more time trying to reach that seemingly more realistic goal than questioning the inherent injustices of imperialism.

For many indigenous men, including the Maoris, one of the surest ways to demonstrate one’s Anglicization was through sport. Sport was used (in different ways) as a sort of civilizing tool for both white and nonwhite boys. However, it took on a particular function for indigenous populations. For them, was seen as a way to claim

97 Trevor Noah, Born A Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (New York: Spiegel and Grau, 2016), 62.

38 belonging in colonial society; for the English, it was seen as both a marker of their colonizing faculty and the continuous need for the civilizing mission.

Chapter 2: The Grown-Up Game of Rugby

Historians have debated to what extent sport was actually important to Britain’s imperial success. However, as Rouse points out, whether or not sport was, in point of fact, important to the Empire is less significant “than the fact that this was widely considered to be the case.”98 Richard Holt, in his work Sport and the British: A Modern

History, notes that “Anglo-Saxon sports were an integral part of the image that the British presented to the world, and which outsiders came to associate with Britain.”99 In this way, sport is a useful lens through which to analyze British imperialism and, by extension, English identity. Pierre Bourdieu has argued, “[I]t is possible to consider the whole range of sporting activities and entertainments offered to social agents… as a supply intended to meet a social demand.”100 Sport in late nineteenth century England met several social demands, and rugby in particular was multifaceted. As the most

“thoroughly English” of games, it served as an avenue through which English

(masculine) identity was forged and performed.101 Rugby also served to help define regional class identities within England – northerners and southerners played rugby differently, in a way that reflected each region’s ideology with regards to sport and masculinity. Yet rugby’s most important function, in both the north and the south, was the game as a marker of Englishness. The ambivalence of the imperial project is evident in the fact that indigenous populations, including the Maori, were meant to prove their

Anglicization through this and other sports; however, their skill was always found wanting, and so the civilizing mission was forever incomplete.

98 Rouse 171. 99 Holt 85. 100 Pierre Bourdieu, “Sport and Social Class,” Social Science Information 17, no. 6 (1978): 819. 101 “Maoris in Parliament.”

In the particular context of late nineteenth century British imperialism, sport was intended as an avenue through which to transform English boys into English men, ready to spread British values and ideals to his children and to the empire more broadly. Thus, the process of forging the ideal English man through sport began early: in English public schools. Though public schools in England were private institutions, expensive enough to limit them to upper and upper middle class boys, they are still a useful avenue through which to analyze the process of English identity making. Historians have argued that a shift occurred in the latter half of the nineteenth century in which the middle class lifestyle became the standard for all classes in England. Leonore Davidoff and Catherine

Hall argue that by the latter half of the eighteenth century the imposition of middle class values ensured that “feckless aristocrats and atheistic artisans had no place” in “serious”

English society.102 English middle class men and women considered the aristocracy as it existed in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries full of debauchery and immorality, and thus considered most in the landed classes unfit to lead. In the more democratic late nineteenth century, as the franchise expanded, it became more important for the leaders of English society, most of whom came from the aristocracy, to rid themselves of these dangerously unflattering stereotypes. Thus, they adopted middle class values in an effort to portray themselves as morally upright citizens worthy of their leadership roles.

As public schools presented the first step for the elite in forging British men, they were a constant source of anxiety and discussion in the late nineteenth century. Debates

102 Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780-1850 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 450.

41 abounded about the curriculum, character, and environment of the public school. An anonymous author, signing his article, “Vox in Solitudine Clamantis,” expressed his concerns in a volume of The New Review. He questioned the way boys were taught, lamenting that their brains were “stuff[ed]… like Strasburg geese with a vague smattering of the arts and sciences” and left “utterly ignorant of the common affairs of the world.”103

This was an embarrassment to the school system and the country as a whole. Vox argued, “Education is the training of the mind. It is a question of methods, not of ends.”104 Indeed, much of the point of the public school was not for boys to retain the information they learned, but rather to learn how to be a member of the British ruling class. Vox also argued that the schools were becoming overcrowded, making these traits harder to teach – He claimed, “Personal acquaintanceship with all one’s schoolfellows, community of interests, camaraderie, esprit de corps – all these sentiments which add value to a public school training are lost when numbers rise to eight hundred or a thousand.”105 For Vox, the contemporary structure of public schools was a blight on

Britain’s so-called democratic society.

In a follow-up article, Reverend J.E.C. Welldon responded to and, in some cases, dismissed Vox’s concerns. While there was room for improvement, Welldon noted of the public schools that “upon the whole I think, they are good and are becoming better.”106 He also argued that public schools were sites of character building, but did not consider the contemporary curriculum at odds with that goal. He noted that as long as

103 Vox In Solitudine Clamantis, “Our Public Schools: Their Methods an Morals,” The New Review 10, no. 50 (July 1893): 37. 104 Vox In Solitudine Clamantis 39. 105 Vox In Solitudine Clamantis 42. 106 J.E.C. Welldon, “Our Public Schools: A Defence of their Methods and Morals,” The New Review 10, no. 52 (September 1893): 248.

42 boys “leave School with a keen sense of truth, honour, and duty, if they love righteousness and hate iniquity, and if they are qualified to deal with affairs and to play a worthy part in the world of men, it is idle to say that they have lived their school life in vain.”107 For Welldon, while the public school system was not necessarily perfect, it was nonetheless a good system that was excellent in achieving its purpose of turning English boys into English men.

However, there was one issue on which these two men agreed: the moral depravity of the public school, which Vox referred to as “the canker of the public school system.”108 While homosexuality was by no means unheard of among the British public, it had already become, as Lord Alfred Douglas would famously say during the Oscar

Wilde trials in 1895, “the love that dare not speak its name.”109 Indeed, by the late nineteenth century homosexuality was regularly associated with public schools in

Britain.110 In fact, a contemporary study of homosexual men and women by sexologist

Havelock Ellis published several accounts of men who described homosexual behavior within public schools and identified their time in public school as the beginning of their

(homo)sexual awakening.111 One participant claimed that “no-one can have passed through a public school and college life without constantly observing the phenomenon in question.”112 English public schools were, apparently, internationally notorious for this behavior. Vox lamented, “A foreigner once spoke to me with the utmost horror of the

107 Welldon, “Our Public Schools,” 251. 108 Vox In Solitudine Clamantis 43. 109 Leslie J. Moran, “Transcripts and Truth: The Writings of Oscar Wilde,” in Oscar Wilde and Modern Culture: The Making of a Legend, ed. Joseph Bristow (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2008), 244. 110 Havelock Ellis, Sexual Inversion (Philadelphia: F.A. David Company, 1901), 45. 111 Ellis 86. 112 Ellis 49.

43 state of affairs which, even in his country, he had heard prevailed in English pubic schools, and I had to confess that… matters were no better than report had led him to believe.”113 Welldon did not think the situation was so dire, attributing the behavior to less than two percent of public school boys, but nevertheless acknowledged that it did occur and was something to watch for, noting, “Purity is a subject which should be seldom on a schoolmaster’s lips, but never out of his mind.”114

Sport – and, specifically, team sport – was seen as the embodiment of all that was important for boys in public school, as well as an antidote to its evils. The virtues of sport were the virtues of upper and middle class British manliness, and vice versa, and organized games such as rugby, football, and cricket were used as a supplement to the boys’ classes in their training. Team sports such as rugby and football did, in fact, take their modern shape in English public schools. Just as elites made “folk dances” into

“high-art forms such as the suite,” public schools “took over a number of popular – i.e. vulgar – games” standardizing them and “changing their meaning and function.”115 As boys used athletics to prove their school’s superiority, they played boys from other schools, creating the necessity for a set of codified rules and regulations that could would allow for fair play.116 This codification represents a sort of mini “civilizing mission” for

English schoolboys – Richard Holt notes that while team games had long been a part of the “informal curriculum” of these boys, school headmasters applied rules and regulations to these games in order to use them as another way to train and “civilize”

113 Vox In Solitudine Clamantis 44. 114 Welldon, “Our Public Schools,” 255. 115 Bourdieu 823. 116 Holt 74.

44 pupils.117 The cartoon in Figure Three provides a visual representation of this goal. The two people pictured are the same boy at different levels of training. The boy on the left is adorned with the trappings of what the Victorian English considered to be savage – he has long hair, is carrying a spear, and is barefoot, wearing a cape made of an animal’s fur or its hide. The boy on the right, in contrast, is wearing clean, decidedly English clothes, and he is surrounded by markers of civilization.

A train steams through in the background, and the sun is rising behind him. In addition, he leans on cricket wickets carries a cricket bat, and a crew team rows on the river behind him. The illustrator is making the point that, just as industrial technological advances such as the steam engine train, cricket, rowing, and other British sports were indicative of civilization and progress. Sports were a key tool in helping to transform English boys from little barbarians into civilized men.

In addition, sports were seen as a healthy outlet for boys’ sexual impulses. Holt notes that sports “were the most powerful means by which such excesses were to be prevented,” and that those who would criticize the public school’s newfound focus on athleticism “were palmed off with the answer that at the very least games were good substitutes for something worse.”118 Public school headmasters made constant attempts

117 Holt 80. 118 Holt 91-92.

45 to wipe out homosexual behavior in their schools. In one particularly notable case, a school expelled fifteen boys for implication in homosexual activities. Ellis included this newspaper excerpt in his study:

A sensation has been caused by the summary dismissal of fifteen students from a well-known college. Recently the suspicions of the masters were aroused by rumors, which were confirmed when one of the servants, in cleaning a dormitory, came upon a letter. After perusing it she handed it over to the head-master. A full inquiry was then instituted into the matter, with the result that fifteen students were found to be implicated. The offense was so grave that the 'head' saw no other course open but to expel the boys. Among those discharged are said to be the son of a well-known actress and the son of an artist.119

In his study, Ellis drew attention to the fact that two of the boys singled out were the children of an actor and an artist – according to him there was “a special liability to inversion among those who are attracted to these avocations,” and he suggested that perhaps this scandal indicated that this “inversion” could be inherited.120 Part of the justification for encouraging boys to participate in sports was to steer them away from professions like this, which would at best lead them to effeminate lives of aestheticism and bohemianism; at worst, turn them into homosexuals. In the same way that courage, independence, and veracity were asserted to be indicative of British men, homosexuality and same-sex love between men was distinctly “non-British perversity.”121 Prevailing sentiment in the late nineteenth century was that homosexual practices and the necessary disregard to social boundaries that accompanied them were a “danger to the [British] race and nation.”122 Thus, encouraging boys to engage in healthy, manly activities such as

119 Ellis 45. 120 Ellis 46. 121 Philippa Levine, Gender and Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 15. 122 Matt Cook, London and the Culture of Homosexuality, 1889-1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 12.

46 sport was not only a moral imperative, it was something on which the future of the nation and the Empire depended on.

For some, sport was one of the most important tools used to shape the future defenders of the Empire. In a speech on education’s contributions to empire given to the

Royal Colonial Institute in 1895, Welldon placed supreme importance not on traditional classroom education, but on the lessons taught through team sports. He claimed that

“England owes her Empire far more to her sports than to her studies,” and that English sporting practices were far superior to those of other European imperial powers, which made the English “race” itself superior as well.123 The benefits of English sport were not just physical, however. For Welldon, “[t]he pluck, the energy, the perseverance, the good temper, the self-control, the discipline, the cooperation, the esprit de corps… are the very qualities which win the day in peace or war.”124 The very qualities that “Vox” valued and found lacking in too-large public schools were the qualities that could be cultivated on a smaller scale, through the cricket or football or rugby team.

As public school boys left school and built lives for themselves as upper and middle class adults, they carried the lessons and ideologies of public school sport with them. In the less industrial towns and cities of southern England, the popularity of sport was reserved, for the most part, for the upper and middle classes. In part, this was due to the idea of the athlete as the “gentleman-amateur” and the idea of sport as purely a site of character building.125 Norman Baker notes that the rise of the “amateur ethos” was “a response to what were perceived as the undesirable characteristics of many sports as

123J.E.C. Welldon, “Imperial Aspects of Education,” Proceedings of the Royal Colonial Institute 26 (1894- 95), 329. 124 Welldon, “Imperial Aspects of Education,” 329. 125 Holt 74.

47 customarily practiced.”126 Horse racing, for example, was an incredibly popular spectator sport; however, much of its popularity was based on its association with gambling, a practice that was incongruous with middle-class Victorian ideals of modesty and self- restraint.

In order for sport to align with these ideals, there could be no question of financial motivation. As Baker puts it, “The game was played for the game’s sake, for personal satisfaction and not material gain.”127 Professionalism was strictly regulated and a cause for constant debate among sporting circles. In the 1880s, some sporting organizations had already begun to allow professionals to play in their clubs. In December 1888, the leadership in the Football Association (the governing body which facilitated the type of football later known as soccer) introduced two new rules, one of which defined a professional – “Any member of a club receiving remuneration or consideration of any above his necessary hotel and travelling expenses and wages… lost” – and another which allowed “a professional from any part of the United Kingdom” to play for its clubs as long as he completed a registration form.128 This move was unpopular among many fans, as it was thought to sully the game. An article in the Local Government Gazette complained of a disappointing end to the Association football season, saying it was

“unusually blemished with gambling and rough play – the sure and certain results of the professionalism which may end in driving gentlemen into such inferior pastimes as the

Hockey that is being patronized and developed in suburban London.”129 Concerns

126 Norman Baker, “Whose Hegemony? The Origins of the Amateur Ethos in Nineteenth Century English Society,” Sport in History 24, no. 1 (2004): 2. 127 Baker 1. 128 “Football Professionalism.” Lloyd’s Weekly London Newspaper (London, England), 16 December 1888. 129 “Sporting Notes.” Local Government Gazette (London, England) 6 December 1888.

48 related to professionalism were thinly veiled class complaints. Only upper or middle class gentlemen could afford to “play the game for the game’s sake,” as it were.

Belonging to a football club, especially if that club was expected to travel nationally or internationally to play, was a significant time commitment, one that often required taking days, weeks, or even months off work – something working-class men could not do without some sort of compensation beyond travel, room, and board. Thus, the commitment to the amateur ethos and the disdain for professionalism that many English people expressed was really a middle and upper class desire to maintain control over organized sports.

Newspaper articles cited Rugby and Association football’s connection to professionalism for the rough play that had, apparently, become more common in the two sports. Newspapers regularly reported on injuries and even deaths sustained in the course of violent games of football, and rugby was a particularly common target due to the inherent roughness of the game. An article in the St. James’s Gazette complained, “[I]t cannot be denied that football, having become a democratic game, is not always played in the spirit which regulated the encounters of teams from public schools or universities.”130

Far from public school headmasters’ original intent of organized sport as a sort of

“civilizing mission,” rugby was in danger of being yet another outlet of debasement.

While it was “of the essence of sport to contain a spice of risk,” gambling and “the growing employment of professionals, eager to win reputation at any cost to themselves

130 “Notes,” St. James’s Gazette (London, England), 15 January 1889.

49 and others,” was creating a dangerous environment for athletes and, more importantly, marring the character of the game.131

Some commentators believed that professionalism was also creating an environment that allowed for a rougher game of rugby. Rough play was, to a certain extent, allowed and even expected in rugby. While commentators criticized rugby for being “a curious relic of barbarism,” they nonetheless admitted that “the healthy

Englishman, up to a certain age, is desperately fond of fighting, and, up to any age, of watching it,” and so some level of rough play was necessary.132 However, newspapers were rife with stories of rugby players being seriously injured by regular, completely legal rugby plays. On one occasion, a man died after sustaining a spinal injury during a game. The man’s doctor and the coroner who performed his autopsy ruled his death an accident but “gave their opinion that football as played by the Rugby union rules was a very dangerous game.”133 One reporter noted, after two men sustained broken bones in the same game, that at the current injury rate “it will have to be made compulsory to have ambulance corps in connection with all football clubs.”134 Another joked, after reporting on several men who sustained serious injuries in multiple games on the same day, “The football-field is the place wherein to spend a happy day.”135

Complaints that linked rugby injuries to professionalism also tied into the classism inherent to the ideology of amateurism. One reporter admitted, “[I]t might be fairly said in defence of football that it keeps our young barbarians out of worse mischief

131 “Notes,” 15 January 1889. 132 “Cambridge Notes,” The Nonconformist and Independent (London, England), 25 October 1888. 133 “Rugby Football Denounced,” Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper (London, England), 27 January 1889. 134 “At Home and Abroad,” The Echo (London, England), 2 January 1889. 135 “Miscellanea,” St. James’s Gazette (London, England), 29 October 1888.

50 into which they might be led if they did not play football on their unemployed

Saturdays.”136 However, while rugby could be an outlet for the inherent barbarism of upper and middle class men, when working class men played rough games of rugby it was considered a blight on the sport. The same commentator lamented, “[I]t is to be feared that the growing popularity of the game has debased it. The men who now play it are not animated by the chief glories of life at the public schools and universities.”137

Rugby could be a site of controlled barbarism, but only for the elite. Once it spread to other, lower classes, rough play was no longer controlled barbarism – it was just outright barbarism.

In response to the high number of injuries rugby players sustained, the heads of

Rugby Union passed strict rules in the 1888-89 season that assigned harsher punishments, both on and off the field, to roughness. A reporter in the Northern Daily Mail applauded this decision, noting that referees were to be given “immense power” in helping to control violence in games. He wrote, “The penalty is so severe – ranking as it does with that for professionalism – that we may confidently expect the rampant rowdyism which has been prevalent in some matches… will at once subside into oblivion.”138 Again, rough play and professionalism were seen as linked, both in general sporting ideology and in the punishments assigned to them. Soon after the rule was put into effect, a man from a rugby club in Hull was suspended for the remainder of that season – the

136 “Notes,” St. James’s Gazette (London, England), 21 January 1889. 137 “Notes,” 21 January 1889. 138 “Rugby Football,” Northern Daily Mail (Hartlepool, England), 5 October 1888.

51 suspension began in November, and the rugby season ended in March.139 In passing such stringent rules, the Rugby Union hoped to prevent rugby’s descent into depravity.

The association of rugby with roughness lent it a distinctly working-class character. Indeed, residents of northern England, home to such “blue-collar” towns as

York and Manchester, came to regard rugby as their sport, and rugby fans widely agreed that northern England was home to some of the country’s best football. Richard Holt argues that football, as standardized by the English public schools, was introduced to working class communities out of a sense of paternalism. This was part of a wider effort of social and moral uplift. Holt notes, “Sports were to play a major part alongside the provision of parks, museums, libraries, and baths in the creation of a healthy, moral, and orderly work-force.”140 By providing these services and potential hobbies to the working class, middle class reformers hoped to instill a sense of “rational recreation” into the poor population of England’s northern cities. For rugby in particular, rational recreation was thought of as the antithesis of the informal games of street rugby of which northern

English boys and men appeared to be fond. However, rather than blindly accepting the game as developed in the public schools, the men of the north created their own sort of hybrid rugby, much to the reformers’ chagrin. Holt argues that doing so was an important act of agency on the part of these working class men. He notes,

sports were very much an area of free expression and cultural independence. Working men made their own culture, as Edward Thompson and others have insisted, even if they did not do so ‘in conditions of their own making’ – to borrow Marx’s celebrated formulation. They

139 “Rough Play in Hull,” Hull Daily Mail (Hull, England), 1 November 1888. 140 Holt 136.

shaped so-called élite sports in their own image and according to their own values and traditions.141

Just as the elite of the public schools had imposed their strictures on informal games, rugby players and fans in the north took the game the public school boys created and found ways to make it their own.

The key difference in public school rugby – which dominated the south of

England – and northern working class rugby was what it meant to the men who played and watched it. While the ethos of the gentleman amateur dominated middle class rugby, for the working classes in the north rugby became a key element in defining their identity. Holt argues that rugby “offered more than exercise; to be part of a team was to have friends, to share a sense of loyalty and struggle together, and to represent your street or workshop, your patch of territory.”142 Working class men did not play rugby for the game’s sake so much as an avenue through which to compete with and prove themselves to other cities and towns, especially others in the north. Middle class reformers who had hoped to instill a form of “rational recreation” in the working classes lamented the turn rugby had taken in the north to “mindless fanaticism, obstinate and arbitrary partisanship devoid of sense, morality, or self-restraint.”143 Given that rugby matches determined honor, northern English rugby tended to be much more competitive than that of the south, as well as much more of a spectator sport. This competitiveness, in the eyes of many commentators who preferred the public school version of rugby, lent itself to a different, more violent form of the game.

141 Holt 165. 142 Holt 153-154. 143 Holt 145.

The class dimensions of roughness in rugby are clear in one article from the

Hornsey and Middlesex Messenger. The author noted that while rugby “continues… to hold the extraordinary position of popularity” in northern England, “[i]n London it has never secured the same amount of enthusiasm.”144 He blamed this on the game’s violence, remarking that “the pleasure it affords may be regarded with mingled feelings” when men are so often injured in the course of playing.145 The callousness with which some spectators treat this violence was also disturbing to the author. He noted indifference to injury “is not a pleasing symptom of popular taste, and it suggests grave reflections.”146 Given the stark divisions he drew at the beginning of his article – north vs. south, rugby enthusiasts vs. non-fans – one can only assume that he applied these

“grave reflections” and lack of “popular taste” to England’s northern population. To a certain extent, rugby was a rougher game in the north than in the south. Holt argues that northern rugby “enshrined older forms of toughness and rudeness, which stoutly resisted the ‘civilizing process’ of fair play and sportsmanship.”147 However, they only resisted these aspects of the “civilizing process” insofar as they interfered with victory. Rugby was a site of “contained barbarism” for the north, too, but the lines demarcating barbarism were drawn in different places.

It should be noted, however, that as critical as middle class English people were of the north’s rough play, the right to criticize rugby in any way was limited solely to

English people. An article in the Leeds Times reported on a Frenchman, Phillipe Daryl,

144 “Correspondence,” Hornsey and Middlesex Messenger (London, England), 4 January 1889. 145 “Correspondence.” 146 “Correspondence.” 147 Holt 173.

54 who criticized rugby for being too rough, calling it “a game for blackguards.”148 The author of the article was scathing in his rebuttal, doing nothing to hide his disdain. One can almost picture his eye roll in his comment, “Yet another shrieker has broken forth in abuse of football, though when I say that the individual is a Frenchman, there will not be much astonishment… as Frenchmen have a notorious weakness for misunderstanding

English games.”149 Despite the numerous reports of injuries in rugby specifically, and not in other sports, the author dismissed Daryl’s claim that rugby was particularly rough, claiming that “the percentage is not, proportionally, much higher than amongst cricketers.”150 He then clearly conveyed a sense of English superiority over all things

French: “Thank you, Mr. Frenchman; it’s just as well some of us should know to what class we belong, and, of course, any utterance on the subject from across the channel, where they haven’t backbone enough to execute as a feat of magnitude what the average

Englishman can accomplish as a recreation, clenches the matter.”151 To this author, and, presumably, to his readers, the French were so weak and cowardly that they had no room to criticize English sport, especially one so important to English identity as rugby.

Regardless of the internal, class differences related to rugby within England, the English were united in their defense of rugby to outsiders.

Sport was also useful in helping to promote social cohesion among colonizer and colonized. Many imperialists claimed that “[w]herever the Englishman goes he carries the bat and the goal-posts,” and that when British colonizers played sports in the colonies

148 “Sports and Pastimes,” The Leeds Times (Leeds, England), 22 September 1888. 149 “Sports and Pastimes.” 150 “Sports and Pastimes.” 151 “Sports and Pastimes.”

“the natives… take a fraternal interest.”152 An article from The Times mentioned, “The colonizing race which can imbue the aboriginal inhabitants of the colonized countries with a love for its national games would seem to have solved the problem of social amalgamation in those countries.”153 In addition, sport helped to make the Empire feel less like a set of disparate countries connected only by a common metropole and more like a very large community with a shared culture and similar values. The same Times article mentioned that “the popularity of our English games in the colonies” facilitated the formation of “a bond of sympathy between the various parts of the Empire, of which, perhaps, the strength is as yet imperfectly realized.”154 This connection of sport and empire provides insight into the significance of nonwhite colonists participating in British sports, in New Zealand and elsewhere.

Accounts from nonwhite British colonial subjects show that this was not merely

British boasting – or if it was, there was at least some truth to it. CLR James was a Black cricketer and journalist who was born and raised in Trinidad and traveled to England and the US. His ideas about Trinidadian independence and decolonization were incredibly influential, as were his writings on cricket. In his memoir Beyond a Boundary, James describes the impact that the quintessentially British sport of cricket had on his life. Just as participation in team sport was meant to imbue boys in England with specific traits associated with Britishness, so too was school in the colonies meant to cultivate a sense of Britishness among the Empire’s subjects. James notes, “Along with restraint… we learnt loyalty,” not only towards the team and his teammates but also towards the school,

152 “The football team of Maori amateurs have made,” The Times (London, England), 4 October 1888. 153 “The football team of Maori amateurs have made.” 154 “The football team of Maori amateurs have made.”

56 something that James later in life recognized “for the specifically British thing that it was.”155 For James, this loyalty also extended, to a certain extent, to Britain itself – he was simultaneously in awe of the country as well as resentful of it, “mov[ing] rapidly from uncritical admiration of abstractions to an equally uncritical hostility to the complex reality” of the relationship between Britain and Trinidad.156

In addition to these British qualities, James also addresses the role sport played in his political and cultural identity as a Trinidadian. In particular, he notes that he and other Black Trinidadians used sport as an avenue through which to prove themselves as equals, not only on the cricket pitch but also within the Empire as a whole. He explicitly connects West Indian politics and cricket, arguing that “the clash of race, caste and class… stimulated West Indian cricket,” in that “social and political passions, denied normal outlets, expressed themselves so fiercely in cricket (and other games) precisely because they were games.”157 In this way the nonwhite people of the West Indies used the amateur ethos to their advantage – amateurism dictated that games were not to be taken overly seriously, engendering a feeling of healthy but positive competition, and so

James and others were able to stake a claim as legitimate subjects of the British Empire through the seemingly harmless avenue of cricket. For instance, a particularly successful

Trinidadian cricketer, Wilton St. Hill, was a source of “pride and hope” for Black

Trinidadians – James notes that “the unquestioned glory of St. Hill’s batting conveyed the sensation that here was one of us, performing in excelsis in a sphere where competition was open,” which showed Britain and its colonies that in this, at least, Trinidadians were

155 C.L.R. James, Beyond a Boundary (London: Stanley & Co., 1963), 42. 156 James 111. 157 James 66.

57 on a level playing field with the rest of the Empire.158 James was not an uncritical subject of empire – he advocated for Trinidadian self-rule and was a Trotskyist and Black nationalist. However, his claim that cricket was an open competition, a level playing field on which Trinidadians could trust they would be honestly tested, shows the extent to which he internalized the British ideology of sport as a site of racial and class equality.

James published his memoir in the 1960s, right in the middle of a decades-long process of decolonization. In this too James notes the power of sport. He argues, “In the inevitable integration into a national community, one of the most urgent needs, sport, and particularly cricket, has played and will play a great role.”159 Both the contemporary

British accounts as well as James’s memoir display the power of sport in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Britain. Despite the ideology of amateurism and the notion that sports were meant to be treated lightly, this clearly was not the case. Sports were used, in Britain and especially in the colonies, as a medium through which to cultivate important notions of British ideology and cultural belonging.

James talks about cricket, and indeed cricket is widely regarded as the most influential sport in the British Empire. Of course, however, different populations experienced colonization in different ways, and this includes which British sports took hold. In New Zealand, rugby quickly became far more popular than either cricket or football. Maori men quickly picked up on the fact that they could gain not just acceptance into society, but a higher social status by becoming successful rugby players.

Sociologist Brendan Hokowhitu notes that twenty-first century constructions of Maori

158 James 93. 159 James 252.

58 men as ultra-physical have their roots in nineteenth century ideals of the Maori as a

“noble savage.”160 He argues, “The Maori male, like various ‘Othered’ groups, had limited, conditional access to the white man’s world. For example, as warriors in the service of the British army or in rugby.”161 Indeed, rugby served as a socially acceptable avenue for Maori men to gain access to and integration with the white British settler society of the nineteenth century – as a more physical game than soccer or cricket, Maori participation in the sport made sense to many white New Zealanders and Britons.

Hokowhitu, in line with scholars like John Hoberman, identifies sport “as a site of

‘positive’ racism that acts as a contemporary conduit to channel tāne [Maori men] into the physical realm.”162 As long as Maori men sought participation in colonial society through avenues that would not challenge ideas of them as violent or physical, they would, in theory, be accepted by the white British settlers. Referring to Black integration in the United States, Patrick Miller notes that “athletics offered a platform for social mobility or a move from margins to mainstream” for many minorities.163 However, for many Black men this was their only opportunity for social mobility, and so while it allowed them to seek some semblance of equality, it also served to reinforce racially essentialist ideas about the Black physicality. Miller notes a similar phenomenon in New

Zealand, where “claims to cultural power” through participation in sport “have created the context where longstanding notions of essential difference make their way into the everyday language or sports.”164 Thus, Maori men were able to gain some level of social

160 Hokowhitu, “Tackling Maori Masculinity,” 268. 161 Hokowhitu, “Tackling Maori Masculinity,” 269. 162 Hokowhitu, “Tackling Maori Masculinity,” 262. 163 Miller 132. 164 Miller 139.

59 mobility, but only in the very narrow arena of sport, and only because their participation in sport aligned with preconceived notions about the inherent “nature” of Maori people.

Paradoxically, Maori men were allowed to seek even this level of participation in colonial society in part because the English generaly saw the Maoris as more capable of achieving civilization than other indigenous groups. An English newspaper from 1889 described the Maori people as “more intellectual than other savages,” especially compared to their neighbors down under, the Australian Aborigines.165 A missionary named Bishop Selwyn described the “abrupt and total transformation” of the Maori people, from vicious cannibals to a somewhat civilized race, as “something more like a modern ‘miracle’ than any event recorded in the annals of our time.”166 Selwyn attributes this transformation to religious conversion, but many of his contemporaries identified rugby as the primary civilizing influence. In an article celebrating the team’s first match in England, The Colonies and India ran an article which argued that, while the British had brought vices such as gambling and drinking to its colonies, readers should

“remember with pride that we never fail to cultivate the practice and love of our games in all lands,” and that it had helped to civilize the Maori people, who had evolved from

“untutored savage[s]” to play the “grown-up” game of rugby.167 Indeed, by teaching the

Maoris to play rugby, a sport whose rules were being increasingly codified and standardized in the late nineteenth century, the British had created in the “noble Maori” a

165 “A Few Notes on Australia and New Zealand,” The Railway Press (London, England), 6 September 1889. 166 Bishop Selwyn, “Maori Cannibalism,” The North London News and Finsbury Gazette (London, England), 18 May 1889. 167 “The Maori Football Team in England,” The Colonies and India (London, England), 3 October 1888.

60 model of “obedience, absolute and unquestioned, to law.”168 Thus, not only were the

Maoris learning the lessons of which Welldon was so fond, such as “perseverance,”

“good temper,” “self-control,” and “cooperation,” they were also being tamed, as it were, into obedient, subservient colonial subjects.

However, as we will see in the next chapter, the Maori were never perceived as being able to fully learn these lessons, hindered as they were by their inherent, underlying savage nature. In this way, then, the civilizing mission was forever incomplete, even in rugby. The Native New Zealand Tour of 1888-89 was, in some ways, seen as a test of sorts – a test measuring the success of the imperial project. The author of the

Chambers’s Journal article noted, “There is no more thoroughly English game than football.”169 Thus, the Maori team’s ability to play rugby was not just a marker of athletic ability, but also of the English’s colonizing ability. On the other hand, however, the tour also provided an opportunity for English commentators to reassure their readers that the Maori team still had much to learn – the civilizing mission was not yet complete, and the Maori people were still in need of English guidance.

168 “The Maori Football Team in England.” 169 “Maoris in Parliament.”

Chapter 3: Friendly Combat

The question might be asked, why look at the Maori tour to determine how

English identity was forged? Why not simply analyze reports of English teams playing one another? Simply put, the Maori tour operates at the intersection between sport and

Empire. As discussed in the previous chapter, for the English, sport was used as a gauge for the success of the imperial project. An article from London’s Morning Post, reporting on the beginning of the Maori team’s tour in England, proclaimed, “The test of the power of any race to spread itself in Colonies, is its ability to impress its own character and institutions on the peoples who it subdues.”170 The New Zealanders’ tour, then, was a matter of significance for the English that went beyond rugby. Indeed, the same article identified this connection for its readers: “The incident of the New Zealand football players… shows in its own small way” the “colonising aptitude” of the English, for

“[t]here is nothing more distinctly characteristic of a nation than its pastimes.”171

Whether or not the Maori players were able to play such an important English game stood as a test of the English’s colonizing faculty. Further, the tour provided the English with an opportunity to critique the Maori players in such a way as to ensure that they were never described as fully civilized, thus serving as an example for why the civilizing mission must continue.

In a similar vein, another reason for studying the Maori team in particular is that as nonwhite people they were easy targets for the criticism of the English press.

Newspaper reports of the tour were rife with racism directed towards the Maori team,

170 “Multiple News Items,” The Morning Post (London, England), 28 September 1888. 171 “Multiple News Items.”

62 from racial epithets to subtle – and not so subtle – references to the players’ inherent savagery. In his book Forerunners of the All Blacks, the most comprehensive account of the 1888-89 tour, author Greg Ryan acknowledges the English press’s racially loaded reactions to the Maori team. However, he does not consider them particularly significant, arguing that “these responses to the team were more a matter of ignorance and misunderstanding than any kind of deliberate racism.”172 This statement conveys a fundamental understanding of how racism works in general. Michael Omi and Howard

Winant have developed the idea of the “racial project,” arguing that “race has no fixed meaning, but is constructed and transformed sociohistorically through competing political projects.”173 According to these authors, a racial project is racist when it “creates or reproduces structures of domination based on essentialism.”174 Far from being merely statements of “ignorance and misunderstanding,” the derogatory statements and caricatures included in coverage of the Maori team’s tour were important in the larger racial project that was inherent to maintaining the British Empire.

Indeed, Ryan’s statement also fails to recognize the important role of racism in the Empire. For the English, racism was far from just the result of innocent misunderstanding; it was the glue that held the Empire together, a set of institutionalized beliefs on which their imperial mission rested. Even if the main function of the Empire was purely economic in nature, the imperial economy relied on the exploitation of the indigenous populations, and it was much easier for the British to exploit those

172 Greg Ryan, Forerunners of the All Blacks: the 1888-89 New Zealand Native Football Team in Britain, Australia and New Zealand (Canterbury: Canterbury University Press, 1993), 53. 173 Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States (Routledge: New York, 1994), 71. 174 Omi and Winant 71.

63 populations if they did not think of them as fully human. When one talks about empire as realized by nineteenth century Britain and Europe, one is “always already” talking about race – without racism, there was no civilizing mission; without a civilizing mission, it was much harder to justify imperial maintenance and expansion. Thus, it is important to acknowledge and analyze English racist reactions to the Maori team, not just in an effort to provide a complete picture of the tour, but more importantly to consider these reactions as part of a wider system of discrimination that fueled the Empire. For these reasons, analyzing the construction of Englishness through the lens of this Native New Zealand team’s tour provides a particularly useful perspective on identity formation.

The nature of sport in England at the end of the nineteenth century, as well as a general lack of sources about the tour, makes it hard to pin down precisely what motivated the tour’s organizers. Though the tour was almost certainly financially motivated, the amateur ethos that dominated English nineteenth century sporting practices meant that the public image of the tour had to be free from associations with professionalism. Concerns about financial gains outside the bounds of paying for travel and hotel costs had to be kept out of the public eye if the tour was to continue in England.

Indeed, the English press displayed an intense interest in verifying the amateurism of the team. In their introductions to the team, many articles ensured their readers that the

Maori players were “amateurs in the strictest sense of the word,” which seemed to be satisfactory enough for most readers.175

175 “Multiple Sports Items,” The Huddersfield Daily Chronicle (West Yorkshire, England), 27 September 1888.

One article from the Birmingham Daily Post, however, went so far as to ensure its readers that the players were not only amateurs, but gentlemen – or at least the Maori equivalent. The author of the article noted that rugby was “a game at which not only can gentlemen still play, but at which none but gentlemen are allowed to play.”176 He then wrote, “All the New Zealand team are, of course, amateurs,” and noted that the team were also “the landed aristocracy” in New Zealand, especially on the north island. This, according to the author, “is the reason why the Maori members of the team are able to spend nine months of the year on a holiday trip to Europe.”177 The author offered no evidence for this claim other than stating that one of the players, Richard Taiaroa, had a father who served in New Zealand’s Parliament. Indeed, according to Ryan’s appendix of known information about the players, very few of them were actually major landowners, and several of them worked ordinary jobs in pubs, on ferries, and in the police force.178 However, the actual truth of the article is immaterial. The fact that the author went to such lengths to reassure his readers that the Maori players were gentlemen shows not only the importance fans of the game placed on amateurism, but also the connection fans made between amateurism, gentlemanliness, and civilization.

The tour was also marketed as a sort of exhibition of Maori strength and skill in rugby. Joe Warbrick, the team’s captain and the man responsible for recruiting the team’s players, saw it as a chance to prove the might of New Zealand rugby on a colonial stage, in the same way that CLR James saw cricket as a way to bolster Black

Trinidadians. He hoped that the tour “would do for Maori football what the Australians

176 “The Maori Football Team,” Birmingham Daily Post (Birmingham, England), 13 October 1888. 177 “The Maori Football Team.” 178 Ryan 133-140.

65 have done for Australian cricket and make it famous.”179 Though he was, in a sense,

“guided by the need for paternal acknowledgement,” Hokowhitu notes that this motivation is nonetheless “an important statement of tino rangatiratanga [self- determination],” providing a certain idea of agency for the Maori men who played on the team.180

Regardless of the intentions and expectations of the Maori players themselves,

English rugby fans were interested in the team because of their exotic appeal. While there were numerous reports, travel guides, and memoirs about New Zealand that described Maori people, the immense difficulty of travel to the colony meant that very few English people had ever actually met or even seen a Maori person before. Fans were desperate for their local rugby clubs to gain the opportunity to play the Maori team. A letter published in the North Devon Journal from a man with the penname “Once a

Player” asked, “Is it too late for our local club… to obtain a visit from the Maori team?”181 He was sure that local rugby fans as well as “many from the outside towns” would attend the game, and that it would “have a great influence in popularising the manly sport” in the area.182 The Maori team played only one game in Scotland, due to a disagreement between the English and Scottish rugby unions, a fact that Scottish fans were sorry for. A Glasgow newspaper that followed the Maoris’ progress lamented the missed opportunity, remarking, “[I]t is to be regretted that neither Glasgow nor

179 Hokowhitu, “Rugby and Tino Rangatiratanga,” 86. 180 Hokowhitu, “Rugby and Tino Rangatiratanga,” 86. 181 “Local,” The North Devon Journal (Barnstaple, England), 11 October 1888. 182 “Local.”

Edinburgh is to have a visit from them.”183 Everyone, rugby fans and non-fans alike, wanted the opportunity to catch a glimpse of the team.

Those who did have matches arranged with the team considered it a privilege that was not to be squandered. One newspaper article criticized the Yorkshire Rugby Union for the players it selected to represent Yorkshire in their game against the Maori team, arguing that the selection committee did not pick the strongest team, taking a victory against the Maoris for granted. The author chastised the YRU, noting, “There are not a few who say it would serve Yorkshire right if the Maori fixture is lost.”184 When matches with the Maori team did seem to be in jeopardy, fans and club officials worked to ensure the match would be worthwhile for the visitors. At one point in the latter part of the tour, Eyton and the other managers wanted to call off matches in the south of

England because, though thousands of people came to the matches, they were apparently not as well-attended as ones in the north, and thus unlikely to pull in “the big gates [the

Maori team] desire.”185 When this happened, southern English rugby executives in charge of arranging the matches bent over backwards to accommodate the Maori team, promising extra measures like “running of special trains from the surrounding districts” into the town to ensure a higher attendance, and “the raising of prices” for the matches, ensuring enough profit would be raised for the Maori team to (at least) break even.186

Newspaper reports do not indicate that fans took exception to these measures being taken, desperate as everyone was to have the Maori team play their home club.

183 “Notes on Football and Other Sports,” Glasgow Herald (Glasgow, Scotland), 19 November 1888. 184 “Sports and Pastimes,” The Leeds Times (Leeds, England), 8 December 1888. 185 “Topics of the Week,” The Gloucester Journal (Gloucester, England), 12 January 1889. 186 “Topics of the Week.”

While people all over England cherished the opportunity to play the Maori team, the reactions to the team varied by region. In the south of England, where public school rugby prevailed, fans’ enthusiasm was primarily driven by curiosity. In the north, however, where rugby was the site in which a town’s honor was defended, fans’ excitement was driven by a combination of curiosity and blatant superiority, an international match providing a unparalleled opportunity to display a team’s rugby prowess. A lengthy article on the Maoris’ game against Leigh at the end of February provides an example of this multidimensional excitement. Both the writing and the content of the article convey a sense of immense joy and pride at the chance for Leigh to host the Maoris, not only because of the opportunity itself but also because of the fact that the Leigh team defeated them. The author of the article held nothing back in his enthusiastic report, which began:

Whenever the history of Leigh comes to be written Wednesday, February 27th, 1889, will be handed down to posterity as one of the memorable days in the annals of the ancient town; for, on that day, a team representing the combined strength of New Zealand, and including within its ranks the descendants of the Maories [sic] or aborigines of that lovely land in the Pacific Ocean, came down to meet, in friendly combat on the Leigh football field, a combination composed mainly of Leigh youths who have for years striven to achieve a proud position in the football world, and have at length almost arrived at the summit of their ambitions. Never in the history of Leigh Football Club has a heavier responsibility rested upon the shoulders of the players, and never have they striven with greater zeal and energy to compress their ends and bring about a glorious victory.187

187 “The Maoris at Leigh,” Leigh Chronicle and Weekly District Advertiser (Leigh, England), 1 March 1889.

Leigh fans, like fans in other English towns, considered the chance to host the Maori team a privilege in the extreme, and they also considered it a grave responsibility that their rugby club would at least play well enough to make the game a challenge for their visitors.

Indeed, it appears as if the entire town of Leigh was anxious to see the Maori team play. Some employers gave their workers the option to leave work early to go to the match. Others, including “the various foundries and coalpits in the neighbourhood… from whence comes the majority of football enthusiasts,” closed their doors entirely, so great was the desire to watch the Maoris.188 Even women, who apparently did not normally show any interest in rugby, came out in droves – some “overcame their natural timidity” and went to the match, while others waited “at the shop and house doors, peering anxiously down the street… waiting to see the Maoris drive past” on their way to the match.189 In addition, people from towns surrounding Leigh flooded in for the match, including some visitors from as far away as Ayrshire in Scotland.190

Leigh’s excitement was a more extreme example of the feeling most northern towns felt at the chance to play the Maoris and to showcase the region’s rugby prowess to an international team. An article anticipating the Maoris’ match against the Hull team in

October conveyed a similar sense of enthusiasm, noting that, just as in Leigh, people from surrounding towns and even non-rugby fans were sure to attend the game. In addition, the author of the article noted that the Maori team managers were only expecting 10,000 people to attend the match, a number that the author thought was quite

188 “The Maoris at Leigh.” 189 “The Maoris at Leigh.” 190 “The Maoris at Leigh.”

69 low. This low estimation, however, was understandable, as “they do not know the inherent love of the game which exists in the breast of almost every Tyke.”191 The author of the article was also sure not only of the Hull team’s superiority, but of the superiority of the quality of rugby in the north as a whole. He remarked, “We know as a fact that the

[Maori team] had no idea of getting a thrashing anywhere else but in Yorkshire.”192 This sense of pride and confidence at the northern towns being home to rugby’s best football went beyond simply being good at rugby. Rugby was an important avenue through which those in the north carved out a sense of belonging for themselves within England.

Holt notes that people living in the north of England recognized that they “were members of larger administrative, political, and economic units; and these in turn were integral parts of a nation of forty million and of a great Empire, as the popular press constantly emphasized.”193 Beating a colonial team like the Native New Zealand team was a sort of metaphor for England’s colonizing faculty; in this way, northern English people, who were largely working class, embedded themselves into the country’s imperial project.

Northern rugby fans developed a sense of local identity through their teams, but they also developed a sense of national identity by proving themselves to be the champions of this most English of English games.

The excitement of seeing the Maori team play was also, in part, borne out of a desire to see people that the English considered exotic. The author of the article notes this was particularly true of the women, who were full of “curiosity to see the copper

191 “Great Football Match in Hull,” Hull Daily Mail (Hull, England), 24 October 1888. 192 “Great Football Match in Hull.” 193 Holt 167

70 coloured New Zealanders.”194 The author also notes that the Maori team’s “swarthy complexions, dark hair, massive shoulders, robust frames, and thus muscular legs contrasted strongly with the light hair, rosy cheeks, and thin wiry frames of the men of the North.”195 Further evidence that Leigh’s interest in the Maori team was not entirely rugby related is provided in the fact that later that evening, when the Maori players were invited to a show, people came to the Leigh Theatre in droves especially “many who had been unable to witness the match,” greeting the Maori team with “great cheering and… enthusiasm.”196

With regards to its fascination with the general appearance of the Maori team, the

English were more ambivalent in this aspect, perhaps, than in any other reaction they had to the Maori team. Some considered that the appearance of the team was decidedly exotic. Newspapers especially commented on their strong builds and darker skin, and several papers published the heights and weights of each individual player. One paper’s reaction was extreme. The author noted, “It cannot truthfully be said that the Maori

Football Team… is remarkable for the personal beauty of its members.”197 He noted that the six of the team were “full-blooded Maories [sic], which means that they are about the ugliest objects on earth.”198 Most of the comments on the Maoris’ appearance were not so extreme; however, they nonetheless remarked on the fact that the team was mostly nonwhite. Papers most often described their skin tone as “copper” or “dusky,” with a few describing them as “darkies.”

194 “The Maoris at Leigh.” 195 “The Maoris at Leigh.” 196 “The Maoris at Leigh.” 197 “Society” The London Society Herald (London, England), 8 October 1888. 198 “Society.”

Still, other than their skin color, most papers did not find their general physical appearance to be too shocking or exotic. An article in Gloucester’s Citizen remarked,

“The real Maoris are good-looking men, for the most part with regular features, aquiline noses, fine brows, and pleasant open countenances, nothing but their rich olive complexions distinguishing them from handsome white men.”199 For some, these similarities were a good thing – a marker of the players’ abilities to embody Englishness.

One newspaper noted with satisfaction that “the New Zealanders have learnt and preserved every rule and tradition of the game.”200 New Zealand Native team captain,

Joe Warbrick, pictured in Figure Four, was particularly notable in this regard, for “though his mother is a full-blooded Maori, is not only in his face and figure, but in the quiet and restrained courtesy of his manner, and the absolute purity of his accent, a perfect English gentlemen.”201 The same article also referenced Macaulay’s “New Zealander,” mentioned in Chapter One, who represented the destruction of Britain at the hands of Catholics and colonists – the author of the article in the Citizen remarked, “We enquired nervously if any one of the twenty-five was an artist, and if he had been heard to ask his way to London Bridge. But surely it is as yet too early to fear the full consummation of that gruesome prophecy.”202

Most likely this was meant as a joke, a tongue-in-cheek reference to a famous essay.

199 “Topics of the Day,” Citizen (Gloucester, England), 27 December 1888. 200 Quoted in Ryan 79. 201 “The Maori Football Team.” 202 “The Maori Football Team.”

However, the fact that it was even on the minds of those following the Maori team indicates that there was, perhaps, some level of anxiety attached to the Maori players’ ability to blend in with the English so well.

Some were incredibly disappointed with the Maoris’ ordinariness. A “real”

Maori, according to English papers, was much more intimidating, “a splendid fellow, and if he is tattooed looks even more formidable than he really is, for a Maori is a beefy person.”203 Indeed, some papers give them impression that the English public were expecting ancient Maori tribal warriors as opposed to rugby players. An article in the

Gloucester Citizen noted, “There is a hazy expectation abroad of a fifteen in paint and feathers, who will constantly add variety to the proceedings by the execution of a war- dance, and will on the slightest occasion scalp an offending half-back.”204 These reactions indicate that for some the ability for Maori people to become civilized was either undesirable or impossible to the point of not worth expending effort. These reactions were perhaps related to the idea that the Maori as a race were dying out – indeed, the Maori population in New Zealand had apparently gone down in the previous few decades.205

Yet despite their apparently ordinary appearance, they were nonetheless marketed as a Maori team, and so some of the practices in which they engaged were meant to play on stereotypes of Maoris as “noble savages.” Each member of the team had a “mat,” a sort of cloak made of kiwi feathers, which they wore to each game. A man who interviewed Joe Warbrick had an opportunity to see one of these mats up close, and

203 “Occasional Notes,” The Pall Mall Gazette (London, England), 4 October 1888. 204 “The Maori Football Team.” 205 “New Zealand,” Globe (London, England), 7 April 1888.

73 described it as so beautiful that “it made me almost wish to be a Maori for the sole purpose of possessing it.”206 Two umpires, one from each team, were provided for every game, and the Maori team’s umpire wore his mat for the entire game, so as to clearly be identified as belonging to the Maori team. The English press’s incoherence is telling.

There was no discernable prevailing opinion about whether or not the team was exotic enough to be truly Maori; and if they were exotic enough, there was no consensus about whether that was something to be admired, corrected, or eliminated.

A particularly interesting indication of the Maori team’s incomplete level of civilization was the issue of whether or not some members of the Maori team wore shoes when they played. Unrelated to the tour, papers had previously reported on Maori people in New Zealand playing cricket and other sports barefoot, and at the first practice the

Maori team held in England one or two players did not wear shoes, a fact which became a major talking point in English papers. For the first few games, many articles took care to comment on this issue. One article mentioned, “All the men played in boots, the hard- footed individuals who, report said, were in the habit of discarding such luxuries as shoe- leather, being either absent from the team or, what is perhaps more likely, having changed their minds after a short experience of English weather.”207 Many commentators were also of the opinion that the Maori players who normally did not wear shoes would change their minds, as a result of English weather or because of the higher risk of foot injury.

206 “Football,” The Huddersfield Daily Chronicle (West Yorkshire, England), 5 October 1888. 207 “The Maori Football Team,” Aberdeen Weekly Journal (Aberdeen, Scotland), 6 October 1888.

Though it seems inconsequential, the issue of the Maori players wearing boots was not trivial – it was yet another sign that for the Maori, despite their best attempts, the civilizing mission was not complete. An article from The Morning Post mentioned that

“the origin of the game of football should be sought at a time when the Britons first began to wear boots,” and that “the pastime has never been popular among races accustomed to go barefoot, or wear sandals.”208 In this way, he directly identified the seemingly simple notion of wearing shoes to play football as one of the key components in ensuring that rugby was a game for civilized people. Indeed, he noted that the

Englishman’s propensity to play football and participate in other sports such as hunting and shooting was an act of self-improvement, borne out of a wish “to keep up the healthy vigour of body and mind.”209 For the Maoris and other “savages,” however, athletics played a different role. According to this author, “The savage hunts and shoots for food and fights either in defence or in offence generally because it is his nature to;” however,

“[u]nder British rule he is cut off from many of his old enjoyments,” and so he turned to rugby in order to fulfill these impulses.210 In rugby as in other areas of British life, the

Maori were seen as play-acting at civilization, their inherent savagery making it impossible for them to truly become civilized.

For some commentators, the fact that some Maori players didn’t wear boots was a source of anxiety because it reflected poorly on the Maoris’ English opponents. An article in the Dover Express used the issue as fodder for self-deprecating humor about the lack of success some English teams were having against the Maoris. One part quipped,

208 “Multiple News Items,” The Morning Post (London, England), 28 September 1888. 209 “Multiple News Items.” 210 “Multiple News Items.”

“Isn’t it remarkable that these barefooted players don’t hesitate to kick a winning Point when they get the chance?” Another said, “If they don’t wear football boots, wouldn’t it be an advantage for them to play in Goal-oshes?”211 For others, however, the situation was not a laughing matter. An article from the Times noted that the Surrey team were shocked to learn that the Maori rugby players played without shoes, and that “home players cannot help feeling a little ashamed of their own effeminate habits.”212 He said that this habit, as well as The Maori team’s general prowess on the rugby pitch, indicated that “In manliness and bravery they never had anything to learn from us; rather the contrary.”213 Clearly the issue of Maori players not wearing shoes was more than another exotic Maori quirk; it was a characteristic that threatened to mark Maori men, in at least this respect, more masculine than Englishmen. This prospect goes beyond male posturing and indicates, rather, a sense of concern about English men’s ability to properly embody colonial power.

Given this anxiety, the author of the Times article was careful not to give the

Maori team too much credit, and balanced many of his complimentary statements with qualifying statements that showed the English to be, despite a few minor faults, overall more racially superior. He noted that though they were already a good football team, they still had much to learn by way of technique, and that playing against English teams would improve their game immensely. He also noted that despite their “success against the Surrey team,” which proved the skill of individual players, they did not play well as a team, and so one should not be “led to the belief that they will overthrow the best English

211 “The Comic Papers,” The Dover Express (Dover, England), 26 October 1888. 212 “The football team of Maori amateurs have made.” 213 “The football team of Maori amateurs have made.”

76 clubs, much less an international English, Scotch, Welsh, or Irish” team.214 In addition, the author, perhaps making up for his earlier criticisms of the Surrey football team, noted that while the Maori players displayed the “habits of discipline and self-restraint” crucial to a good game of rugby, the English “should not presume to congratulate the Maoris upon the possession of virtues which come naturally to most football players now,” especially the English.215 The members of the Maori team were good rugby players,

“foemen worthy of the greatest respect” who clearly exhibited some of the characteristics found in a civilized race, but for this author they were not good enough to beat the best teams in the United Kingdom, and thus they were certainly not civilized enough to threaten the English’s racial superiority.216 This Times article is exemplary of the way that many English papers reported on the team. The author engaged in a careful balancing act that allowed the reader to come away reassured that there was room for improvement both in the Maoris’ rugby skills as well as their overall Anglicization.

Even discussion of the Maori team’s style of play was an indication of the players’ mixed success at Anglicization. Most commentators thought that the New

Zealanders’ game stood a lot to gain from contact with English teams. An article from

July 1888 in anticipation of the tour discussed an English team’s tour in New Zealand.

The author noted, “The style of play adopted by the Colonials is similar to that of the

English fifteens, save that in some places wing forwards are a recognized institution. The recent visit of the English team has discounted the value of these players, and already the

214 “The football team of Maori amateurs have made.” 215 “The football team of Maori amateurs have made.” 216 “The football team of Maori amateurs have made.”

77 clubs are dropping them.”217 For this author, contact with the English team exposed weaknesses of the New Zealanders’ game. The same was true of the Native New

Zealand team in England. While many articles praised the Maoris’ skill in the scrum and their ability to dribble and tackle, the general consensus was that they were “somewhat inefficient in the important matter of ‘passing,’” although most thought this deficiency would be remedied after a few months of playing against English teams.218 While the ability to learn new techniques and adapt your game to that of your opponents is a fairly standard practice in the sporting world, the idea that these teams could learn from each other was not a two-way process. For example, though the New Zealanders’ practice of

“playing only eight forwards, with three – instead of the customary two – three quarter backs” was regarded as “anything but a failure,” no commentators suggested this was a move the English should think about adopting.219 The Maoris could only learn from the

English, not the other way around.

The Maori team was also criticized on a regular basis for their allegedly “rough” playing style. Given that roughness in football was already a concern within English teams, it makes sense that a team made up of who the English considered to be “noble savages” would be carefully watched for overly aggressive play. Many of the overviews of the various games identified rough play as the Maori team’s most glaring deficiency.

Rumors of their roughness proceeded them – an article from 22 September, several days before their arrival, noted, “The Maories [sic] are spoken of as being a powerful lot, good

217 “Football at the Antipodes,” Edinburgh Evening News (Edinburgh, Scotland), 28 July 1888. 218 “Multiple Sports Items,” The York Herald (York, England), 19 September 1888. 219 “The Maori Football Team.”

78 dribblers and tacklers, quick on the ball, but somewhat rough in play.”220 Commentators were thus on the lookout for this type of play from the Maoris. Early in the tour, at the game against Kent on 10 October, commentators confirmed that “the rumours which preceded the team as to their rough play have not proved unfounded. Last week there were no signs of roughness, but yesterday they erred much in this respect when

‘collaring.’”221 Accusations of roughness followed the team for the rest of the tour.

Anxiety about the rough play of the Maori team was, in part, borne out of a desire to keep their English opponents injury-free. Importantly, however, English rugby fans were also concerned that the Maori’s roughness went against the “spirit” of rugby. This was true of teams in the north of England as well as the south. Despite the fact that roughness in English rugby was most often attributed to the northern English teams, an article in the Huddersfield Daily Chronicle criticized the Maori team for playing with a roughness “with which our men are altogether unfamiliar.”222 Tackling from the Maori team was particularly dangerous, this author noted, because “they are a much weightier lot of men than the ordinary run of English players,” and they often “resort to their strength to carry them through their opponents.”223 This was not simply the Maori team not knowing their strength, however. The author considered the Maori team’s actions

“acts of intentional roughness and unfairness, altogether contrary to an Englishman’s style of the game.”224 In this test of Englishness, the Maori team failed miserably. By engaging in unnecessarily rough play, the Maori team gained a win that they didn’t

220 “Sports and Pastimes,” The Leeds Times (Leeds, England), 22 September 1888. 221 “Football,” The Standard (London, England), 11 October 1888. 222 “Multiple News Items,” The Huddersfield Daily Chronicle (West Yorkshire, England) 11 January 1889. 223 “Multiple News Items.” 224 “Multiple News Items.”

79 deserve. Indeed, the author declared, “I would rather see the ‘claret and gold’ defeated every match than follow the example of the dusky New Zealanders.”225 This deficiency was an important indication of the fact that the civilizing mission as it pertained to the

Maoris was incomplete.

However, despite the Maoris’ apparent roughness and the controversy over roughness in English teams that took place separate from the New Zealanders’ tour, allegations against the English teams that played the Maori teams were virtually nonexistent. Privately, Warbrick expressed his dissatisfaction with some aspects of the

English behavior during the tour. Ryan notes, “In a country supposed to be the home of chivalry, Warbrick found much to fault in both opponents and spectators.”226 Warbrick said, “As a country England did not quite come up to my expectations,” in part due to the fact that the English were sore losers.227 According to Warbrick, “As long as [the Maori team] were losing they were jolly good fellows in the eyes of the crowd. But as soon as they commenced to win they were hooted and the papers were full of… the rough play of the visitors.”228 Publicly, however, Warbrick never gave the impression that he was anything other than completely pleased with his experience in the country. Criticism from the Maori team was as unwelcome as criticism from the French.

Indeed, when some newspapers accused English teams of roughness in games against the Maoris, other newspapers were quick to come to the English teams’ defense, even going so far as to ask for statements from the Maori team that assured English fans the team found no fault in the English style of play. This is another example in which

225 “Multiple News Items.” 226 Ryan 94. 227 Ryan 105. 228 Ryan 94.

80 criticism of English rugby was limited to English fans only. When two Maori players were injured in the game against Moseley on 13 October, leading some to accuse the

Moseley team of rough play, newspapers all over the country were quick to defend the team. Fans also asked the Maori team to reassure English fans that they found no fault with the Moseley team’s play. A newspaper in Birmingham and a newspaper in

Gloucester published the following letter from Warbrick:

16th October. The Captain Moseley Football Club, Birmingham. Dear sir, – In reporting on our match v. your club last Saturday I notice that the Press have in many cases stated that the game played by your team was an unnecessarily rough one, and on behalf of the Maori team I have pleasure in stating that though the game was both a hard and fast one on both sides, we feel assured that no intentional rough play was exhibited by your men. Of course on a ground with an incline such as yours has, many hard throws must occur. The misfortunes that befel [sic] us were pure accidents, and might just as easily have been against your team. – Yours faithfully, Joe Warbrick, Captain N.Z.M.F Team; E.G. McCausland, Field Captain in match v. Moseley.229

Whether or not the accusations were true was immaterial. The New Zealand team were forced to admit that they found no fault with the English’s behavior, from either the fans or the players.

The most controversial match of the tour was, undoubtedly, the Maoris’ game against the English national team. At one point during the game, one of the English players collided with a referee, tearing his clothes. Players on the field – it is unclear from the reports whether it was Maori or English players – made a ring around him to shield him from the audience, helping him off the field so he could go change. After he

229 “Correspondence,” Birmingham Daily Post (Birmingham, England), 17 October 1888.

81 was ushered away, the referee gave England possession of the ball, a fact that the Maoris disputed. While they were conversing with the referees, protesting this decision, an

English player was able to score a try, which was then converted to a goal. Three of the

Maori team were so incensed by what they considered unfairness that they stormed off the field.230 After a few minutes, their teammates persuaded them to return, but by then the damage was already done, and this behavior was widely discussed in reports of the match.

Many papers thought the referee’s decision to be unfair, noting that “the English should have been courteous enough to give way to their visitors” and that the Maori team were probably justified in their frustration.231 Despite this, however, the behavior of the

Maori team was universally condemned. Fans at the game let their distaste be known, and the three upset players left the field “amid hoots and jeers.”232 An article in

London’s Evening News remarked, “The Maori contention may be arguable, but it was a breach of football etiquette to take such marked umbrage at the referee’s decision.”233

Indeed, while the team may have been made up of men from all over England, the game was played in London, where public school rugby prevailed, and the negative reactions to the Maoris’ behavior reflected that perspective. Holt notes that key to the public school style of rugby was the “ideal [of] ‘self-government’ and respect for the rules in themselves.”234 The expectation was that players would have “absolute and unquestioning acceptance of the referee’s decision even if it was wrong,” and to argue

230 “Football,” The Morning Post (London, England), 18 February 1889. 231 “Football Notes,” The Devon and Exeter Daily Gazette (Exeter, England), 18 February 1889. 232 “Sporting Notes and Anticipations,” St. James’s Gazette (London, England), 18 February 1889. 233 “Sporting Notes and Anticpations.” 234 Holt 174.

82 with the referee or protest his decision “was the height of bad form.”235 In addition to being against public school ideals, the press’s reaction to the Maoris’ behavior also went against the expectations of colonial subjects. At the beginning of their tour, an article in

The Colonies and India noted that the expectation was that the Maori rugby team would be a model of “obedience, absolute and unquestioned, to law.”236 While the author of the article is talking about rugby, it is clear from his tone and wording that Maori

“obedience” and deference to the English was expected on and off the field, both in

England and in New Zealand. The Maori team’s protest was an indication that they were both unable to conform to public school rugby rules and that they were not quite ready to be rid of British colonial guidance. Indeed, they were, once again, forced to apologize.237

By the end of the tour English public opinion was thoroughly ambivalent about the Maori team. Indeed, coverage of the tour was fraught with contradictions. The Maori team was good, but they still had a lot to learn from the English. They had adapted well to the English style of rugby, but elements of their “savage” nature was still evident – in their rough play, in their inability to defer to the referees, in their pre-match haka and kiwi feather mats. They were, all at once, purely Maori, not Maori enough, and Maoris but civilized. The most obvious contradiction was in the press’s reactions to the team’s wins and losses: the Maoris team’s ability to play rugby was proof of the English’s colonizing faculty, but then again, so was the English’s ability to beat them. These disagreements were purposeful – the English were deliberately indecisive in their opinion of the Maori team’s ability to play rugby because any other reaction would have reflected

235 Holt 174. 236 “The Maori Football Team in England,” The Colonies and India (London, England), 3 October 1888. 237 “Sports and Pastimes,” The Hornsey and Middlesex Messenger (London, England), 22 February 1889.

83 negatively on the English’s colonizing abilities and, by extension, their racial superiority.

Despite regional (and class) differences with regards to how rugby was played and the meaning behind it, in this the English were united. If sport was a metaphor for civilization, the Maori team could not be truly successful – and thus fully civilized – because it might spell the end of the Empire.

Conclusion

Reactions to the end of the Native New Zealand rugby team’s tour were mixed. A newspaper in the Exeter and Plymouth Gazette remarked, “The Maories [sic] have good cause to look back with pleasure on their tour,” as “their percentage of successes has been exceedingly high” and they certainly acquired enough gate money to break even on the excursion.”238 Others, however, were not so generous. An article in the Pall Mall

Gazette was rife with criticisms of the behavior and motivations of the Maori team. The author noted, “The colonials have not made a good impression during their stay in this country,” given their penchant for rough play and unsportsmanlike conduct, especially with regards to the match against England.239 He was also skeptical of Eyton’s alleged lack of financial motivations of the tour, claiming that the amateurism of the venture, which was so loudly proclaimed when they landed, has been open to grave doubts since, and the tour is now generally looked upon as a speculative venture on the part of a few individuals.”240 While they did “play a good game” and end their tour with an

“excellent” record, these factors did not make up for the more unsavory elements of the tour.241

The organizers of the tour also had mixed feelings. While there is no indication that they expressed any sort of outright regret, before the tour was even over they were discussing ways to improve future ventures. One of the managers, James Scott, told a

Yorkshire newspaper, “I hope in a year or two to bring over another team, excluding the

Maori element. We have much better talent than was included in the present

238 “Sports and Pastimes,” Exeter and Plymouth Gazette (Exeter, England), 11 March 1889. 239 “The Maoris’ Football Team,” Pall Mall Gazette (London, England), 29 March 1889. 240 “The Maoris’ Football Team.” 241 “The Maoris’ Football Team.”

85 combination, and if able to obtain anything like a representative side could doubtless secure a better record.”242 Despite the success of the tour, their winning record (forty nine games won, twenty games lost, and five games drawn), and the enthusiastic English response, the Native New Zealand rugby tour of 1888-89 was soon forgotten by rugby fans in New Zealand and elsewhere.243

Another New Zealand rugby tour, that of the 1905 “Originals,” fared much better in the annals of history. Despite the fact that the 1888-89 New Zealand team was the first to introduce iconic elements of New Zealand rugby – the all-black kits with the distinctive fern leaf and the pre-game haka, for example – the 1905 tour is credited with being the origin of the All Blacks. Not only has the 1888-89 team lost out on credit in the creation of the All Blacks, in some cases, their existence has been forgotten entirely. An article in the Telegraph in 2015 reporting on the sale of a 1905 Originals rugby shirt calls that tour “New Zealand’s first ever tour of Britain,” which completely ignores the existence of the 1888-89 team.244 Ryan speculates that the “forgetting” of the Native

New Zealand tour “might have been deliberate,” but he credits this amnesia to “behaviour which rugby administrators have always tried to stamp out – professionalism, unsporting conduct, drunkenness.”245 He argues that these activities were an embarrassment to both the New Zealand and England Ruby Unions, and that the reason the 1888-89 team has fallen by the historical wayside is due to an effort to mask these shameful activities.

242 “The Maoris’ Football Team.” 243 “Natives’ Rugby Tour, 1888-89: Page 10 – Matches Played,” New Zealand History, 13 August 2015, https://nzhistory.govt.nz/culture/nz-natives-rugby-tour/matches-played. 244 Agency, “All Blacks Shirt Worn on New Zealand’s First Tour of Britain Sells for Record £22k,” The Telegraph, 27 May 2015 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/11634159/All- Blacks-shirt-worn-on-New-Zealands-first-tour-of-Britain-sells-for-record-22K.html. 245 Ryan 9.

While there may be some truth to this statement, it is crucial to point out that the

1888-89 team and the 1905 team differed in one very key way, other than their record: the 1905 team was mostly white. While the Native New Zealand team was marketed as a

Maori team, with the majority of its players being of Maori descent, only two players on the 1905 team were identified as being of Maori descent.246 Hokowhitu identifies this, and not the actions of the team, as the key reason for the elimination of the 1888-89 team from historical memory. He says this team was an icon forgotten within dominant

Pakeha discourses that, of course, depicts the 1905 ‘Originals’ as trailblazers of New

Zealand masculine culture. Such accolades are reserved for the tough, stoic, white frontierman.”247 Hokowhitu, Ryan, and others have begun to argue for the rehabilitation of the 1888-89 team’s image. However, the team’s legacy is still characterized by ambiguities with regards to the its perceived success, behavior, and contribution to the origins of the All Blacks. The 1905 team holds unquestioned legitimacy and prowess.

The racial makeup of the two teams is, undeniably, a factor.

Indeed, the legacy of racism in rugby reporting that started with the 1888-89 tour lingers into the twenty first century. A recent article by Scotty Stevenson from

RugbyPass, a site which provides coverage and livestreams to a global rugby market, mirrors coverage of the 1888-89 tour in key ways. Entitled “The mongrel men that make the Highlanders great,” Stevenson describes the successful players of New Zealand’s

Dunedin Highlanders using descriptions that allude, in both direct and indirect ways, to the idea of rugby players, including Maori players, as “noble savages.” In fact, he refers

246 Hokowhitu, “Rugby and Tino Rangatiratanga,” 87. 247 Hokowhitu, “Rugby and Tino Rangatiratanga,” 87.

87 to Ruby Tui – a Maori player for New Zealand’s women’s rugby team, the Black Ferns – as a “savagely effective defensive juggernaut.”248 In addition, just as in the late nineteenth century, commentators sometimes couch their praise of the New Zealand team in language that makes their success seem incomplete or wrong. The All Blacks’ dominance in the rugby world is absolutely unparalleled, a fact that Guardian writer Bret

Harris finds concerning. He argues that while dominance of the sort expressed by the All Blacks is

“abhorred in other sports,” no one in positions of leadership in Rugby Union has done anything to stop or even slow the march of the All Blacks.249 He notes that the All Blacks are, in fact, too good, a fact that threatens to “turn Test rugby into a great, big yawn.”250 Just as praise of the 1888-89 Maori team was subject to qualifications, so too are the twenty-first century All Blacks.

Furthermore, many newspaper articles about the team are accompanied by photos of the team in the process of performing the haka, a Maori pre-match tradition that also started with the 1888-89 team. Figure Five provides an example of one such photo. The photo shows both white and mixed-race All Blacks players performing the haka; however, this particular photo shows a Maori player leading the haka, tattooed and

248 Scotty Stevenson, “The Mongrel Men that Make the Highlanders Great,” RugbyPass, 20 March 2018, https://www.rugbypass.com/news/mongrel-men-make-highlanders-great. 249 Bret Harris, “All Blacks’ Dominance Threatens the Health of International Rugby,” The Guardian, 11 October 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/oct/12/all-blacks-dominance-threatens-the-health- of-international-test-rugby. 250 Harris.

88 aggressive. While the haka is an important and iconic element of the All Blacks, performed by all players regardless of race, the fact that this performance is often the photo newspaper editors choose to represent the team shows a lingering association between the New Zealand team and tribalism.

Another article from RubgyPass, referring to the much-anticipated international

Test match between England and New Zealand in November 2018, bears the headline

“England will conquer the All Blacks in 2018,” a headline that doesn’t even attempt to be subtle about its imperial allusions.251 In this way, too, contemporary rugby press mirrors that of the late nineteenth century. The forthcoming game between England and the All

Blacks is, in part, anticipated because it will be the meeting of two superpowers – the current English team have won nineteen of twenty Test (international) matches, while the

All Blacks have only lost two games in nearly three years.252 However, part of the appeal is also due to England and New Zealand’s long history of rugby competition, one that everyday English people and New Zealanders are aware of. The comments section of a

YouTube video of highlights from a 2013 England v All Blacks match is full of numerous references to this imperial connection, in the form of competition about to whom rugby belongs in the twenty first century. A New Zealand fan commented, “You pommys deserved to lose cause you all are a bunch of whinging fools. how [sic] the f***

251 Andy Goode, “England will Conquer the All Blacks in 2018,” RugbyPass, 4 January 2018, https://www.rugbypass.com/news/england-conquer-blacks-2018-andy-goode. 252 Duncan Bech, “England to Face New Zealand for First Time in Four Years as Eddie Jones Looks to Develop 'Bulletproof' Side,” The Independent, 13 September 2017, https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/rugby/rugby-union/international/england-vs-new-zealand- twickenham-2018-tickets-schedule-when-where-a7944326.html and Harris.

89 can you invent a sport and not be good at it.”253 A comment from an English fan in a later thread reads, “HA HA, you wouldn’t be playing the game if the English hadn’t invented it, so fuck you, come up with your own games that have appeal on the world stage, we’ve started you off with Rugby, Cricket and Foot ball [sic], now it’s your turn.”254 YouTube comments are not known for thoughtful discussion, and yet even here a centuries-old imperial association related to sport thrives, indicating the depth of the connections between sport and the imperial mission.

This crude yet effective example illustrates why the continuous evaluation and re- evaluation of imperial history is so important. In the introduction to her book, Duress:

Imperial Durabilities in Our Times, Stoler calls on scholars who study imperialism to continuously interrogate its connections to the contemporary world. Describing her motivation to address this concept, she notes, “I am increasingly convinced of slippage… between what we who devote ourselves to discerning the machinations of colonial practice think we know about these practices and how we imagine they manifest now.”255

In other words, she notes that even those who consider themselves experts are likely to

(mis)interpret imperial histories in a certain way because of their interactions with the lingering contemporary effects of colonialism. Stoler identifies some analytic problems that currently impede the study of imperial histories and suggests how scholars might overcome these problems. She notes that a key task for scholars is “to recognize the force field of colonialism’s conceptual web in which many more of us than often

253 AllBlackFans, “England vs All Blacks 2013 Highlights - End Of Year Tour,” YouTube, 16 November 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTv2tNJUnsM. 254 AllBlackFans. 255 Ann Laura Stoler, “Critical Inclusions: On Concept Work and Colonial Recusions,” in Duress: Imperial Durabilities in Our Times (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016), 14, emphasis mine.

90 acknowledged remain tangled.”256 Her metaphor of colonialism as a “force field” is apt: it calls to mind the image of an invisible but incredibly strong and enduring presence that surrounds us and somewhat impedes our ability to move through the world. The effect of this force field is what she calls the “colonial histories of the present,” explicitly connecting the imperial projects of the past to the conditions of inequality that continue to exist in certain parts of the world.257

The “force field” of colonialism also demonstrates why the study of a forgotten late Victorian rugby tour could have an impact on events in the twenty first century. The

British Empire existed for so long, the imperial project so pervasive, it remains ludicrous to think that either the former British colonies or England itself are free of any lingering effects of Empire. The racism and xenophobia that defined the Empire and thus defined

Englishness expresses itself in the twenty first century through controversies such as

Brexit. In June 2016, a very slight majority of Britons (51.9%) voted for the United

Kingdom to leave the European Union. The demographics of the voting patterns are indicative of a fractured British national identity: England and Wales voted overwhelmingly to leave the European Union, while Scotland and Northern Ireland voted overwhelmingly to remain.258 Politicians in favor of leaving gave several reasons for wanting to do so, but the one that carried most debates about the issue was the idea of cultural and ethnic contamination. Citizens of European Union member countries are allowed to travel and work within the Union with relative ease. For many Britons, and

English people especially, this was considered a threat rather than a benefit. One

256 Stoler, “Critical Inclusions,” 9. 257 Stoler, “Critical Inclusions,” 7. 258 “EU Referendum: The Results in Maps and Charts,” BBC News, 24 June 2016, http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-36616028.

Englishwoman in favor of leaving angrily demanded, “Why do they want to come here?

They want our wages and our benefits! We’re too bloody soft!”259 In an article published just before the referendum was held journalist Steven Erlanger noted of the

English, “Their nationalism is proving to be a key part of the exit debate. It embodies national pride, nostalgia and a sense that something precious to those islands is being destroyed” by the influx of people from European Union coming to the U.K. to work.260

The perceived threat not to Britishness, but to Englishness specifically, has triggered a process that will have major political and economic consequences for Britain and, in a world with increased transnational communication and economic exchange. Indeed, the day after the referendum the pound fell to its lowest value since 1985.261 Far from being abstract concepts with only ideological consequences, the project of deciphering and analyzing notions of English identity, with all its complications, caveats, and ambiguities, is an incredibly important one.

This project has shown that a key component of the justification for imperialism – the civilizing mission – was fraught with ambivalence and anxiety. The English considered theirs to be the most superior of all races, and so as they colonized countries and exploited indigenous populations they also sought to imbue those countries and those populations with English characteristics. Sport, in particular, was a crucial tool in imbuing both colonized and colonizing men with the most important tenets of

259 Steven Erlanger, “European? British? These ‘Brexit’ Voters Identify as English,” The New York Times, 16 June 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/17/world/europe/european-union-britain-brexit-voters- english.html. 260 Erlanger. 261 Katie Allen, Jill Treanor, and Simon Goodley, “Pound Slumps to 31-Year Low Following Brexit Vote,” The Guardian, 24 June 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jun/23/british-pound-given- boost-by-projected-remain-win-in-eu-referendum.

Englishness: self-discipline, the ability to work well with fellow players, and loyalty to both the team and, by extension, the Empire as a whole. Nonwhite men were promised societal inclusion and socio-economic mobility if they were able to prove their ability to embody the tenets of Englishness and civilization; however, the way imperialism functioned ensured this process could never be complete. If indigenous populations were able to achieve civilization, and the civilizing mission succeeded, English white racial superiority would be threatened; not only that, but the very existence of the Empire, as without the civilizing mission the imperial project becomes harder to justify. Thus, in order to ensure the maintenance of the Empire, the civilizing mission always had to be presented as a goal that could never be completed.

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