Mapping an Empire of American Sport ─ Expansion, Assimilation, Adaptation and Resistance

Since the mid-nineteenth century, the United States has used sport as a vehicle for spreading its influence and extending its power, especially in the Western Hemisphere and around the Pacific Rim, but also in every corner of the rest of the world. Through modern sport in general, and through American pastimes such as baseball, basketball and the American variant of football in particular, the U.S. has sought to Americanize the globe’s masses in a long series of both domestic and foreign campaigns. Sport played roles in American programs of cultural, economic, and political expansion. Sport also contributed to American efforts to assimilate immigrant populations. Even in American games such as baseball and football, sport has also served as an agent of resistance to American imperial designs among the nations of the Western hemisphere and the Pacific Rim. As the twenty-first century begins, sport continues to shape American visions of a global empire as well as framing resistance to American imperial designs.

Mapping an Empire of American Sport chronicles the dynamic tensions in the role of sport as an element in both the expansion of and the resistance to American power, and in sport’s dual role as an instrument for assimilation and adaptation.

This book was published as a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport.

Mark Dyreson is Professor of Kinesiology and History at the Pennsylvania State University, an academic editor of the International Journal of the History of Sport, a former president of the North American Society for Sport History, and the author of several books on the history of sport.

J.A. Mangan, Emeritus Professor, University of Strathclyde, FRHS, FRAI, D. Litt.l is Founding Editor of the International Journal of the History of Sport and the series Sport in the Global Society, author of the globally acclaimed Athleticism in the Victorian and Edwardian Public School, The Games Ethic and imperialism and ‘Manufacturing ‘Masculinity: Making Imperial Manliness, Morality and Militarism. He has authored and edited many studies of politics, culture, and sport.

Roberta Park is Emeritus Professor University of California, Berkeley, former president of the American Academy of Kinesiology and Physical Education, vice president of the International Society for the History of Physical Education and Sport, and author of numerous historical articles.