Overview
- Interrogates how cricket was adapted and appropriated by Samoans during the colonial period
- Demonstrates how the history of cricket in Samoa reflected the complexities and blurred boundaries of imperial expansion and colonial rule
- Appeals to scholars of the history of sport, imperialism and colonialism, and the history of Samoa
Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Sport and Politics (PASSP)
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Table of contents (9 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
Reviews
“Ben Sacks’ subtle and multifaceted analysis of Samoan cricket powerfully disrupts the simplicities of the view of cricket as the quintessential imperial game exported and adopted throughout Britain’s empire and beyond. Grounded in theSamoan experience of multiple imperialisms and of fa’a Samoa, the Samoan way, Sacks shows how the objectives of different fractions of imperial power, the power of fa’a Samoa and the cultural materialities of the experiences of Empire saw ‘white flannels’ cricket adopted and also adapted to the requirements of fa’a Samoa with the new game, kilikiti. This is a significant contribution to histories of Empire, of sport and of thePasifika world that profoundly challenges many of the takens for granted of histories of sport and body cultures showing the importance of doing history with an anthropological sensibility and a decolonial outlook. It should be widely read and celebrated.” (Dr Malcolm MacLean, University of Queensland, Australia)
“A fascinating book that shows how Samoans took cricket, that most English of games, and made it into their own game, kiritkiti. Sacks demonstrates convincingly that a cricket pitch in the colonial Samoan islands was not just a cricket pitch but the site for a multidimensional contest that was as much political as cultural. He places kirikiti and its epic scale squarely within the history of protest against imperial exploitation of the Samoan archipelago and in doing so brings a welcome historical breadth and depth to a region where reporting of sport is dominated by a sensationalist emphasis on Polynesian athleticism in rugby and American football. Exhaustively documented and beautifully written this book will secure a place among the liveliest pieces of scholarship on this most-studied island group in the South Pacific.” (Professor Peter Hempenstall, University of Newcastle, Australia)
“This is a fascinating and important book. It casts entirely new light on the largely neglected history of kirikiti as a culturally and politically significant derivation from cricket amid Samoa’s highly contested colonial period. Simultaneously it provides a vital challenge to conventional and unidirectional accounts of imperial sporting diffusion that have been too prone to treat indigenous people as passive actors. The major themes of the book are sure to broaden the thinking of readers across many different geographical and sport settings, as what became of cricket on this ‘edge of Empire’ was quite unlike anything envisaged on the green and staid fields of England.” (Professor Greg Ryan, University of Lincoln, New Zealand)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Cricket, Kirikiti and Imperialism in Samoa, 1879–1939
Authors: Benjamin Sacks
Series Title: Palgrave Studies in Sport and Politics
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27268-5
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: History, History (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-27267-8Published: 21 October 2019
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-27270-8Published: 21 October 2020
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-27268-5Published: 10 October 2019
Series ISSN: 2365-998X
Series E-ISSN: 2365-9998
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XI, 306
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations, 4 illustrations in colour
Topics: Imperialism and Colonialism, Australasian History, Cultural History, Social History, Political History, Sociology of Sport and Leisure