Sport And The Military

On battleships, behind the trenches of the Western Front and in the midst of the Desert War, British servicemen and women have played sport in the least promising circumstances. When 400 soldiers were asked in Burma in 1946 what they liked about the Army, 108 put sport in first place - well ahead of comradeship and leave - and this book explores the fascinating history of organised sport in the life of officers and other ranks of all three British services from 1880–1960. Drawing on a wide range of sources, this book examines how organised sport developed in the Victorian army and navy, became the focus of criticism for Edwardian army reformers, and was officially adopted during the Great War to boost morale and esprit de corps. It shows how service sport adapted to the influx of professional sportsmen, especially footballers, during the Second World War and the National Service years.

The institutional relationship between sport and the military appears to be intensifying. In the US for example, which faced global criticism for its foreign policy during the "war on terror," militaristic images are commonplace at sporting events. The growing global phenomenon of conflating sport with war calls for closer analysis. This critical, interdisciplinary and international book seeks to identify intersections of sport and militarism as a means to interrogate, interrupt and intervene on behalf of democratic, peaceful politics. Viewing sport as a crucial site in which militarism is made visible and legitimate, the book explores the connections between sport, the military and the state, and their consequent impact on wider culture. Featuring case studies on sports such as association football, baseball and athletics from countries including the US, UK, Germany, Canada, South Africa, Brazil and Japan, each chapter sheds new light on the shifting significance of sport in our society. This book is fascinating reading for all those interested in sport and politics, the sociology of sport, communication studies, the ethics and philosophy of sport, or military sociology.

This book explains how and why the American armed forces embraced sports as a critical part of training and as entertainment for the men—and, eventually, women—in uniform. The author traces the development of military sports from the Spanish-American War through the end of World War II and shows how they became an integral part of military culture. Wakefield uses the military's sports program to explore issues of power, masculinity, and race as they were expressed and reinforced through athletic competitions and demonstrates how they strengthened hierarchical relationships. She also shows how the armed forces attempted to use sports to further national interests on the diplomatic front and to reduce racial and sexual tension. In addition, Wakefield argues for the interpenetration of the worlds of sports and war, showing how sports metaphors were used to masculinize the military enterprise and maintain morale. Wartime propelled interest in sports, and sports helped to maintain patriotism and gender identity among the troops. The book makes the case that the size and scope of the military's efforts to draw all soldiers and sailors into sports reflect the extent to which competitive athletics in the twentieth century have come to represent a means for advancing not only war but peace.

"On battleships, behind the trenches of the Western Front and in the midst of the Desert War, British servicemen and women have played sport in the least promising circumstances. When 400 soldiers were asked in Burma in 1946 what they liked about the Army, 108 put sport in first place - well ahead of comradeship and leave - and this book explores the fascinating history of organised sport in the life of officers and other ranks of all three British services from 1880-1960. Drawing on a wide range of sources, this book examines how organised sport developed in the Victorian army and navy, became the focus of criticism for Edwardian army reformers, and was officially adopted during the Great War to boost morale and esprit de corps. It shows how service sport adapted to the influx of professional sportsmen, especially footballers, during the Second World War and the National Service years"--

The Great War has been largely ignored by historians of sport. However sport was an integral part of cultural conditioning into both physiological and psychological military efficiency in the decades leading up to it. It is time to acknowledge that the Great War also had an influence on sport in post-war European culture. Both are neglected topics. Sport, Militarism and the Great War deals with four significant aspects of the relationship between sport and war before, during and immediately after the 1914-1918 conflict. First, it explores the creation and consolidation of the cult of martial heroism and chivalric self-sacrifice in the pre-war era. Second, it examines the consequences of the mingling of soldiers from various nations on later sport. Third, it considers the role of the Great War in the transformation of the leisure of the masses. Finally, it examines the links between war, sport and male socialisation. The Great War contributed to a redefinition of European masculinity in the post-war period. The part sport played in this redefinition receives attention. Sport, Militarism and the Great War is in two parts: the Continental (Part I) and the "Anglo-Saxon" (Part II). No study has adopted this bilateral approach to date. Thus, in conception and execution, it is original. With its originality of content and the approaching centenary of the advent of the Great War in 2014, it is anticipated that the book will capture a wide audience. This book was originally published as a special issue of The International Journal of the History of Sport.

Spanning the colonial campaigns of the Victorian age to the War on Terror after 9/11, this study explores the role sport was perceived to have played in the lives and work of military personnel, and examines how sporting language and imagery were deployed to shape and reconfigure civilian society’s understanding of conflict. From 1850 onwards war reportage – complemented and reinforced by a glut of campaign histories, memoirs, novels and films – helped create an imagined community in which sporting attributes and qualities were employed to give meaning and order to the chaos and misery of warfare. This work explores the evolution of the Victorian notion that playing-field and battlefield were connected and then moves on to investigate the challenges this belief faced in the twentieth century, as combat became, initially, industrialised in the age of total warfare and, subsequently, professionalised in the post-nuclear world. Such a longitudinal study allows, for the first time, new light to be shed on the continuities and shifts in the way the ‘reality’ of war was captured in the British popular imagination. Drawing together the disparate fields of sport and warfare, this book serves as a vital point of reference for anyone with an interest in the cultural, social or military history of modern Britain.

Drawing on newspaper accounts, college yearbooks and the recollections of veterans, this book examines the impact of World War I on sports in the U.S. As young men entered the military in large numbers, many colleges initially considered suspending athletics but soon turned to the idea of using sports to build morale and physical readiness. Recruits, mostly in their twenties, ended up playing more baseball and football than they would have in peacetime. Though most college athletes volunteered for military duty, others replaced them so that the reduction of competition was not severe. Pugilism gained participants as several million men learned how to box.