‘Manufactured’ Masculinity

Making Imperial Manliness, Morality and Militarism

J. A. Mangan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317984771
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Theory & Criticism
• Index: History

'Manufactured' Masculinity should be considered essential reading for scholars in the humanities and social sciences at every level and in all parts of the academic world. It weaves together brilliantly the elements of the 'manufacture' of masculinity in the period world-famous 'public' school system for the privileged which serviced the largest empire, the world has ever known, at the zenith of its control and which has had a significant influence in the formation of the modern world. This authoritative study of the making of British imperial masculinity shines light on the period of Muscular Christianity, Social Darwinism and Militarism as meshed ideological instruments of both power and persuasion.

This magisterial study reveals the extraordinary and paramount influence of games fields as the 'machine tools' in an 'industrial process' with the schools as 'workshops' containing 'cultural conveyor-belts' for the production of robust, committed and confident servants of empire, and templates for imperial reproduction in imperial possessions. Mainly on efficient 'production belt' playing fields of the privileged minds were moulded, attitudes were constructed and bodies shaped - for imperial manhood. Earlier 'manliness' was metamorphosized, morality was redefined and militarism at the high point of imperial grandeur was an adjunct. Professor Mangan outlines this unique process of cultural conditioning with a unique range of evidence and analysis.

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

Duty unto Death: English Masculinity and Militarism in the Age of the New Imperialism [1]

I

E.P. Thompson’s’ The Making of the English Working Class is widely known throughout the academic world, [2] and indeed beyond; justifiably so, as it has many virtues. Among other things, it is an impressive synthesis of the ideas of the ‘good and the great’ of the social sciences. In it we hear echoes not only of Gramsci but of Weber and Durkheim, and we see references not only to classes but to codes and values. [3] Thompson, of course, was concerned, first and foremost, with the creation of ‘community’. In the eighteenth century, he argued, in traditions which revolved around the ‘code’ of the self-respecting artisan – decency, regularity, mutuality – were to be found the seeds of the ‘highly organised and self-conscious working class’ of the Industrial Revolution. This code promoted a secure, ordered, cultural milieu and ensured a viable working-class culture. As this culture evolved, it linked to the artisanal code the languages of religious brotherhood and socialist idealism. The outcome was a collectivist culture, propagated by political theory, by new social organizations and by cohesive rituals. [4] This cultural transformation, Thompson insisted, ensured political recognition. In Thompson’s view, the emergent autonomy of working-class culture ‘was a historical and political necessity’ [5] – an interesting viewpoint with period application elsewhere.

The attraction here of Thompson’s analysis, albeit briefly outlined above, is that it appears relevant at the other end of the social class continuum of Victorian England, especially late Victorian England and the era of the New Imperialism. Among the upper middle class of the period there was also concern with the creation of a ‘community’, albeit smaller; a ‘self-sacrificial warriorhood’ – a small elite of sacrificial subalterns conditioned to accept the responsibility, if necessary, of martial martyrdom. This elite had its ‘code’ that ensured a militaristic culture, one that also emerged out of perceived historical necessity.

David D. Gilmore’s Manhood in the Making: Cultural Concepts of Masculinity [6] is concerned with the way different cultures conceive and experience manhood: [7] ‘the approved way of being an adult male in any given society’. Gilmore is intrigued by the fact that so many societies construct an exclusionary image of manhood through trials of skill and endurance, by the fact that there seem to be ‘parallels in male imagery around the world’ constituting ‘a ubiquity rather than a universality’, and finally, by the fact that there appear to be continuities of masculine expectations across cultural boundaries; in particular, the demand made upon males to ‘be a man’ or ‘act like a man’ – an expectation of aggressive assertion. [8]

Gilmore’s attention has been caught by the apparently similar and the often dramatic manner in which cultures, past and present, non-literate and literate, define manhood. Can we speak, he asks, of a global masculine archetype born of trials and testing? He surmises:

If there are archetypes in the male image, they must be largely culturally constructed as symbolic systems, not simply as products of anatomy, because anatomy determines very little in those contexts where the moral imagination comes into play. The answer to the manhood puzzle must lie in culture; we must try, therefore, to understand why cultures use or exaggerate biological potentials in specific ways. [9]

It is appropriate at this point to note the conclusions of Clark McCauley in The Anthropology of War:

Twenty years ago, Lorenz and Ardrey … popularized the idea of an aggressive or killer instinct for aggression in warrior societies, but which was present to some degree in all humankind. Anthropologists then and now find the hypothesis of a killer instinct not so much wrong as irrelevant to the kind of facts they want to explain. The Vikings of some hundreds of years ago are the notably peaceful Danes of today. The horse and gun made some people of the Shoshonean Basin – the Utes and Snakes – into warriors, and other people of the same basin – the poor Diggers – into fearful refugees. The gun and the market for sales made both the Miskito kingdom and its Sumo victims ‘out of identical aboriginal material’. [10]

In these examples, the rate of cultural change is too great to be a function of genetic differences. So McCauley advances the notion of pre-adaption: [11] ecological change that leads to cultural adaptation mediated by human choice based on pre-existing culture. Historians of culture, claims McCaulay, ‘are confident that the speed and direction of cultural change in relation to changed ecology could only be understood in terms of change consciously directed by the perceptions of human actors’. [12] Both directly and indirectly such arguments lead back to Gilmore who argues, unremarkably, that culturally endorsed ideals of manhood make an indispensable contribution both to the continuity of social systems and to the psychological integration of men into their communities. To understand the meaning of manhood from a sociological point of view, and, on occasion, as I hope to demonstrate, from a historical point of view, therefore, it is important to understand its social, rather than individual, functions and causes. And to Gilmore, it is clear that acts of manhood are frequently related to the extent of disciplined aggression required of the male. In his opinion this simply demonstrates that life is mostly hard – and men, historically, have been given the dangerous tasks in the interest of the survival of the group. Thus while there may be no ‘Universal Male’ it is possible to speak of a Ubiquitous Male – a quasi-global personage: ‘Man- the-Impregnator-Protector-Provider’. [13]

These three moral injunctions ‘seem to come repeatedly into focus’ whenever and wherever the ‘word’ manhood is valued. They represent danger: ‘they place men at risk on the battlefield, in the hunt, or in confrontation with their fellows.’ [14] Consequently if the group is to survive, boys must steel themselves to undertake such activities, must be prepared by various sorts of tempering and toughening and must accept the fact that they are expendable Thus, states Gilmore, in a crucial passage, men too, nurture their society ‘by shedding their blood, their sweat, their semen … by producing children, by dying if necessary in faraway places to provide a safe haven for their people.’ [15] In short, manliness is a cultural construct with the important concomitant of martial expendability. And in Gilmore’s words – most apt for our immediate historical purpose here (the relationship to contemporary society will be discussed later) – ‘in Victorian England, a culture not given over to showy excess, manhood was an artificial product co-axed by austere training and testing.’ [16] In other words, an imperial masculinity consonant with empire building became a sexual imperative.

The making of masculinity is the focus of this study. It is concerned with the cultural creation of a self-sacrificial warrior elite – an imperial elite – and with the conditioning of this elite on the public-school playing fields of the privileged, those important locations of an indoctrination into martial, moralistic manhood with eventually serendipitous global ramifications.

II

Correlli Barnett has suggested that ‘to hear politicians and constitutional historians holding forth on the virtues of parliamentary democracy, it is easy to forget that ours is a civilisation largely born out of war and ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Series Editors' Foreword
• Sport in the Global Society: Historical Perspectives
• Sport in the Global Society
• Dedication
• James Anthony Mangan: An Appreciation
• Preface: ‘Swansong'
• Revolution
• Metamorphosis
• Adjunct
• Emulation
• Dissemination
• Evolution
• Index