See below for news of a seminar that will interest list members.



Best wishes



Gemma





British Society of Sports History



South of England Sport and Leisure History Network



London Branch: Sport and Leisure History Seminar







'Englishmen who Happen to Reside in the West Indies': Early West Indian Cricket Tours and Imperial Identity







Speaker: Geoff Levett (Birkbeck, University of London)







A series of tours by colonial teams to Europe in the 1900s provoked a debate in the English and imperial press about the relationship between race and imperial belonging. With the Englishman’s sense of entitlement to rule being partly invested in his superiority at sports, it came as something of a challenge to that sense of superiority when colonial subaltern groups began to excel at the game both in the colonies and in tours to the mother country.







In the West Indies the position of the white minority as a political and social élite was being challenged by a black, Asian and Chinese population that was becoming more wealthy, better educated and hungry for social reform. Black West Indians were also challenging white supremacy on the cricket field.







This paper looks at the West Indian cricket tours of 1900 and 1906 against the background of relative economic decline in the West Indies, and at the end of a period when the region became less prominent in the imperial family relative to the white settler colonies of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.







Using a range of archival material, visual culture and contemporary press reports it argues that the cricket tours were part of a new effort by the white West Indian upper class to transmit a new, racially inclusive, image to the British public and imperial decision-makers.







Geoff Levett is currently undertaking a PhD on sport and imperial identity during the Edwardian era in the Department of History, Classics and Archaeology at Birkbeck. He has had articles published in The London Journal and in Bruce Murray and Goolam Vahed (eds.), Empire and Cricket: The South African Experience, 1884-1914 (2009).







Time and Date: 5:15 PM, Monday, 27th January.



Location: Holden Room (103), Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU







All are welcome. For more information about this seminar, or the BSSH South network in general, please contact us at [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>.



Begin forwarded message:



From: BSSH London <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>

Date: 21 January 2014 16:20:41 GMT

To: Gemma Robinson <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>

Subject: Fwd: Sport and Leisure History Seminar - Mon, 27 Jan: Early West Indian Cricket Tours and Imperial Identity



Dear Dr Robinson,



On Monday, 27th January, Geoff Levett (Birkbeck, University of London) will be giving a paper entitled ''Englishmen who Happen to Reside in the West Indies': Early West Indian Cricket Tours and Imperial Identity', as part of the Sport and Leisure History Seminar hosted by the Institute of Historical Research in London.



We would be extremely grateful if you could draw this event to the attention of Society for Caribbean Studies members, as we believe it may well be of interest to some of them. If we have sent this email to the wrong person within your organisation, please do let us know who we should forward it to instead.



Best wishes,



The Seminar Convenors



<Jan 27th - Geoff Levett ad.docx>


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