Gerald Gems. The Athletic Crusade: Sport and American Cultural Imperialism.

Brown, Robert S.

Gerald Gems. The Athletic Crusade: Sport and American Cultural Imperialism. University of Nebraska Press, 2006. 233 pp.

With the innovations in communication technology, the integration of regional economies, and the breaking down of traditional geopolitical barriers, we clearly are living in an age of globalization. We are also witness to the backlash against this globalization, as seen through protests at recent G8 summits and, some might argue, the Middle East tensions with the Western World. Gerald Gems' The Athletic Crusade is an examination of one facet of the globalization process and the various reactions to it. Gems examines the spread of American sport in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries into nations such as China, Japan, Hawaii, Cuba and Puerto Rico. These efforts were normally led by religious organizations, especially the YMCA, but Gems also reveals the involvement of the American government and military as both enablers and enforcers of this sport imperialism.

From one perspective, the efforts to spread American sports globally were part of a noble cause. Religious leaders, with the zeal of doing good work, saw sport as a way to attract native peoples while teaching a new morality. Political leaders saw sport as a path toward education and civility. Business leaders, such as major league baseball, argued for sport as a method of opening diplomatic doors and building bridges, though a truer motive might have been increasing the popularity of their sports and, hopefully, equipment and merchandise sales as well. Gems, however, provides thoroughly documented research into the negative side effects of these globalization efforts. American sports are used to crush indigenous cultures, create caste systems among the locals, and establish American control over local government, education, and religious institutions. Gems details how sport became just another tool for invading and oppressing foreign lands as part of the vision of manifest destiny.

What I found most interesting in Gems' book were the various reactions to imperialism. For example, whereas China, especially with the rise of communism after World War Two, rejected American sport, in Japan, nationalist efforts used sport to resist Western imperialism and take back their culture. Cuba used the same sports intended to pacify them to challenge the Western world. Gems is careful to examine each nation and its own experiences and not lump the globe together in a one effort/ one reaction model. The study of sport imperialism is not new. Gems provides the largest and most detailed examination of American involvement in this process, and the organization of his book readily allows for nation by nation comparisons of imperialist techniques and reactions. The book is of obvious interest to sport scholars but also those whose interests include sociology, politics, and military history.