eBook - ePub
War, Sport and the Anzac Tradition
Kevin Blackburn
This is a test
Share book
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub
War, Sport and the Anzac Tradition
Kevin Blackburn
Book details
Book preview
Table of contents
Citations
About This Book
Commemoration of war is done through sport on Anzac Day to remember Australia's war dead. War, Sport and the Anzac Tradition traces the creation of this sporting tradition at Gallipoli in 1915, and how it has evolved from late Victorian and Edwardian ideas of masculinity extolling prowess on the sports field as fostering prowess on the battlefield.
Frequently asked questions
How do I cancel my subscription?
Can/how do I download books?
At the moment all of our mobile-responsive ePub books are available to download via the app. Most of our PDFs are also available to download and we're working on making the final remaining ones downloadable now. Learn more here.
What is the difference between the pricing plans?
Both plans give you full access to the library and all of Perlegoâs features. The only differences are the price and subscription period: With the annual plan youâll save around 30% compared to 12 months on the monthly plan.
What is Perlego?
We are an online textbook subscription service, where you can get access to an entire online library for less than the price of a single book per month. With over 1 million books across 1000+ topics, weâve got you covered! Learn more here.
Do you support text-to-speech?
Look out for the read-aloud symbol on your next book to see if you can listen to it. The read-aloud tool reads text aloud for you, highlighting the text as it is being read. You can pause it, speed it up and slow it down. Learn more here.
Is War, Sport and the Anzac Tradition an online PDF/ePUB?
Yes, you can access War, Sport and the Anzac Tradition by Kevin Blackburn in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in History & Social History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
Information
1
The âRace of Athletesâ of World War I
Abstract: Soon after the Gallipoli landing on 25 April 1915, the Australian soldiers were described as a ârace of athletesâ in the first despatch to make it back to Australia. The use of this sports metaphor by British journalist Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett reflected the prevalence in both Britain and Australia of the late Victorian and Edwardian idea of masculinity which decreed that proving oneâs manhood on the sports field was preparation for the âgreater gameâ of proving manhood on the battlefield. The notion that Australian men, who excelled at sports before World War I, had at Gallipoli proven themselves and upheld the manhood of their nation found its way into Australian national identity.
Blackburn, Kevin. War, Sport and the Anzac Tradition. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. DOI: 10.1057/9781137487605.0003.
This chapter explores the striking parallels between the discussion of war and sport in Australia with similar debates in Britain during World War I. It argues that these similarities suggest that the intertwining of sport and war in the public imagination had similar origins. However, in Australia because the Anzac tradition became central to the Australian identity this connection between sport and war was elevated to an aspect of national character. Australian historian Carolyn Holbrook in her study of the history of Anzac in public culture has briefly commented that âSport seems to have a particular affiliation with the Anzac tradition.â1 In Britain, sport was also strong in military life, but the connection between war and sport did not become part of constructions of national character as it did in Australia.
âThis Race of Athletesâ
The first report describing in detail the landing of the Anzacs at Gallipoli reached Australia on 8 May 1915. The despatch was written by the distinguished British war correspondent Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett. He described the Australians as a ârace of athletesâ scaling cliffs and hurling back the Turks with their bayonets. He recounted what happened when the Australians encountered sheer cliffs after the initial landing:
Here was a tough proposition to tackle in the darkness, but those colonials were practical above all else and went about it in a practical way. They stopped a few minutes to pull themselves together, get rid of their packs, and charge their rifle magazines. Then this race of athletes proceeded to scale the cliff without responding to the enemyâs fire. They lost some men, but didnât worry, and in less than a quarter of an hour the Turks were out of their second position, and either bayoneted or fleeing.2
The description of Australian soldiers as a ârace of athletesâ was emblazoned in the headlines of Australian newspapers and sports magazines in the week following 8 May 1915. The most popular sports journal of the Australian State of New South Wales, The Referee, used âThis Race of Athletesâ as a front page headline. It further embellished the description on the front page with a banner that read: âDeeds that Thrill by our Athletes and Sportsmenâ, expressing the assumption that the Australians who landed at Gallipoli were mainly athletes and sportsmen. Its subtitle below this front page banner compared Gallipoli to a football game, implying that the time spent by the sportsmen playing football had prepared them well for battle: âRushes of the Football Field Repeated with the Bayonet Against the Turksâ.3 On its front page, The Referee chronicled the life of the most well-known Australian sportsman who had been killed on the first day of the Gallipoli landing, a rugby union international for both Britain and Australia, Blair I. Swannell.4 This use of the description of the Australians as a ârace of athletesâ caught on. The Referee and other Australian newspapers used it repeatedly in the weeks that followed the release of Ashmead-Bartlettâs despatch.5
Before Gallipoli, there was a perception that Australian manhood was seen to have proven itself on the sports field but not yet on the battlefield. Just before the outbreak of the war, writers such as Gordon Inglis, with the assistance of his fellow journalist C. E. W. Bean, helped popularise the perception that just as in sport young Australian males have âproved equal to defeating the worldâs bestâ, so too they would take equally well to âthe stern game of soldieringâ.6 Writers such as Inglis reflected a widely held view at the beginning of the twentieth century that Australian sporting prowess was perceived to have been due to the effects of the Australian climate physically improving the manhood of the British race.7
Australians, it was believed, had inherited and improved upon what was called âthe spirit of sportâ that âhas always been inherent in the people of Great Britain and Irelandâ.8 Publicly endorsing Inglisâ view, former conservative Prime Minister George H. Reid wrote the preface of his book, Sport and Pastime in Australia, and noted that âthe true sportsman learns to obey, exercise self-control, to subordinate self-interestâ, which were also perceived as good qualities for soldiering.9 Liberal Prime Minister Alfred Deakin, when delivering a speech on 28 August 1908 marking 50 years of Australian rules football, proclaimed that Australians were a âsporting peopleâ, who, when âtoscin sounds the call to armsâ, will âplay the Australian game of nation-makingâ.10 Success in fighting at Gallipoli appeared to remove any doubts that Australian manhood was not an improvement on its British racial origins.11 According to Ashmead-Bartlettâs despatch, the Anzacs âknew they had been tried for the first time, and had not been found wanting.â12
At the beginning of the twentieth century it was commonly accepted that a nation had to be âbloodedâ in war to prove itself. Battle was the test of the manhood of a nation.13 The Australian poet Edward Dyson had expressed this in his well-known poem, âMen of Australiaâ, that had been written in 1898 as the country moved towards the 1901 federation of the group of British colonies on the Australian continent into a nation. Dyson regretted that the Australian nation was not âbloodedâ in battle: âWe are named to march unblooded to the winning of a nation.â14 He hoped that soon the young men of Australia would âcrown her with a glory that may evermore abideâ.15
The idea that a nation has to be âbloodedâ, and that Australia had been indeed âbloodedâ at Gallipoli, was a theme in the Australian official war histories, which helped foster the Anzac legend after the war. The Anzacs were described by H. S. Gullett, an official Australian correspondent who worked with C. E. W. Bean, as âchildren of a virgin unblooded countryâ, who at Gallipoli âfought with all the might and resource of their proud exuberant manhoodâ. Gullett extolled in the official history: âBy their work at Anzac would the world know them ... By their work would the standard of valour be set for all timeâ for Australian men to follow.16
The ârace of ...