Dissertation - page 1

3. Early Overseas Diffusion
The nineteenth century was a time of British expansion overseas, and the creation of an empire based on the "subjugation" (Dodgshon and Butlin, 1990) of populations in regions far from Europe. There was an assumption of British superiority over others, causing British ideas and social trends to be imposed on other peoples. This included the diffusion of sports as part of an arrogant duty of enlightenment to supposedly lesser races by public school old boys who travelled the world in the name of Britain, an attitude neatly summed up by a former Harrow headmaster: "Englishmen are not superior to Frenchmen or Germans in brains or industry, but they are superior in the health and temper which games impart. In the history of the British Empire it is written that England has owed her sovereignty to her sports", (Dodgshon and Butlin, 1990 pp.530).
Migration from Britain to the fledgling Empire to exotic places like Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa (and especially the non-Empire United States) became widespread as more people wanted to begin a new life abroad. Between 1853 and 1883, for example, 539,000 British citizens moved to British North America, and over one million left for Australasia (Mitchell, 1988).
Australia, until 1900 a group of separate British colonies, was one of the first places outside Britain to take on Rugby. It was a new society built from the strengths of the 160,000 convicts who were sent there between 1788 and 1868 (Dodgshon and Butlin, 1990). Marshall (1996) asserts that the length of the journey down under meant that many more people were inclined to travel to North America, though gold discovered in Australia during the 1850s or the prospect of lucrative wool farming nonetheless attracted many. The Australian traits of candidness towards monetary issues and an assertive brashness came, perhaps, from a mixture of the resourceful entrepreneur and the self-reliant descendants of exiles - and these values, vastly different from those prevailing in Victorian Britain, would play an important role in the development of Australian Rugby, where League would eventually gain superiority over Union. Rugby arrived in 1856, used as training for cricketers (Rhys, 1992), but soon diffused as a sport as more British immigrants arrived. Its popularity was such that Sydney alone had 41 clubs by 1880 (Bath, 1997).
Across in New Zealand different factors aided Rugby's emergence as the number one sport. In 1840 New Zealand became a British colony, to provide a base from which Britons and Australians could trade with and explore the Pacific (Marshall 1996). The indigenous Maoris became a minority by the end of the New Zealand wars, fought against the British, which ended in 1869 (Power), but they would achieve remarkably equal status in New Zealand, with a middle class English sport embracing them. In 1870 Rugby arrived in New Zealand thanks to Charles James Munro, a public schoolboy whose father, an MP, watched the first match, giving instant kudos (Smith, 1999). The Maori culture embraced Rugby, and surprisingly, given that it was so soon after a series of wars, society in general and Rugby in particular embraced the Maoris to the extent that in 1879 the new provincial teams were picked purely on merit, regardless of race (Mackay). The successful 1888 "Natives Tour", a party comprised of Maoris and European descendants born in New Zealand, proved that New Zealand could compete on equal terms with their English masters in a way that they could not in cricket (Mackay), and Rugby's popularity was cemented further by the 1905 New Zealand tour of Britain in which they lost just one match, to Wales, a game that helped to confirm Rugby as the most important sport in both countries. Rugby became a virtual religion in New Zealand, as John Mulgan wrote in the early twentieth century; "Rugby Football was the best of all our pleasures: it was religion and desire and fulfilment all in one." (Power).
South Africa was initially of significance to the British due to Cape Town's importance as a stopping-off point for ships travelling to and from India. There were relatively few migrants until the mineral discoveries of the late nineteenth century (Marshall, 1996), but even in 1996 only 11% of the population, approximately 4.5 million inhabitants, was White of British or Dutch extraction (Statistics South Africa, 1996). The Great Trek of 1836-46 led to 14,000 Afrikaners, of Dutch origin, disenchanted with British rule moving inland to the North (Marshall, 1996). But Britain feared an Afrikaner alliance with Germany, which until World War One owned South West Africa (Namibia), and this together with the discoveries of diamonds and gold created instability due to the new power of Afrikaner controlled areas such as Transvaal and Orange Free State (Marshall, 1996). Relations between the British and Afrikaners deteriorated, causing the outbreak of the South African (Boer) War of 1899-1902, which was to play an important role in the history of Rugby.
Rugby was brought to South Africa as early as 1858 (Bath, 1997) but was played mainly by schoolboys and soldiers of the British owned Western Cape. It was established as the main sport in British South Africa ahead of other codes of Football largely thanks to Governor Cecil Rhodes, who preferred Rugby's rules, inviting the 1891 British tourists (Bath, 1997), and it did not become a revered part of Afrikaner culture, ironically, until the Boer War. Blacks used to play in large numbers, particularly in the Western Cape, and in 1896 the SA Coloured Rugby Board was formed (Rhys, 1992). This, however, was all to change in due course.
During the nineteenth century the sport spread elsewhere, including to the non-English speaking world's main Rugby power, France. Here, despite a group of British expatriates setting up a club in Le Havre in 1872 (Bath, 1997), Rugby began to diffuse through the country later in the century. Baron Pierre de Coubertin imported it to the Parisian middle classes from English public schools because he wished to bolster the pride and fighting power of the French, who had recently lost Alsace and Lorraine (Smith, 1999). Smith (1999) also asserts that amateurism was important to the Parisian middle classes, who attempted to keep the game exclusive. Rugby's diffusion to the Rugby towns and villages of the South West, via the important wine port of Bordeaux, was due to British wine merchants who had brought the game with them. The man responsible for Rugby's introduction to this region, mainly through schools, was a Protestant republican, Doctor Philippe Tissie, who, despite being from a different background, shared many of de Coubertin's ideas (Smith, 1999). Rugby became popular in the provinces of the South West by the turn of the century, with fierce local rivalries only giving way to a greater hatred of teams from Paris (Smith, 1999). French Rugby was to gain in strength, developing its own unique culture over the early years of the twentieth century. In North America Rugby was popular in universities but the rules were changed in 1869 to form Harvard Rules Football, which would eventually become known as American Football (The Football Archive). Thanks largely to British sailors and soldiers, Rugby's gospel was spread around the world. By the turn of the century, Rugby was also established in countries within the sphere of influence of Rugby's Southern Hemisphere powers. For example, Antipodean missionaries had helped spread the game by around the turn of the century to Pacific Islands such as Fiji and Western Samoa, where the warrior culture embraced Rugby, while Rugby had diffused from South Africa to Zimbabwe and Namibia at around the same time. Other countries with no Rugby playing reputation, India, Germany and Kenya to name but three, also have surprisingly long Rugby playing histories, stretching back to the early 1900s and before, but for various reasons, have never taken to Rugby in large numbers.

The role of conflict in the international diffusion of Rugby Union until World War II
			1. Introduction Rugby Union is a ball game with ancient roots owing its distinct form to the Victorian era when its laws were written at Rugby School. Conflict has been inherent within Rugby, rarely confining itself to the field of play, as exemplified by the famous 1895 "Great Schism", a breakaway of clubs forming Rugby League, a distinct sport. Rugby Union, the continuation of Rugby Football, survived, but the question of conflict does not stop there. Conflicts connected with Rugby involving class, race, money and even warfare, have shaped the history of the sport. The aims of this project are to assess the role that these various forms of conflict have played in Rugby Union's international diffusion and to show how conflict has affected its present day distribution, whilst also accounting for other important factors such as the impact of British Imperialism. (NB. References to "Rugby" imply "Rugby Football" before the division of the game, or later, stand to mean "Rugby Union". Where used, "League" or "Union" signify their appropriate code.)
			2. Origins and Initial Diffusion Rugby's earliest roots are said to be in the Roman conquest of Britain, which saw a new activity introduced, a rough game called Harpastum, used to train soldiers for war. However, this game (which, like Rugby, involved carrying a ball over the opposition's goal line) is said to be derivative of a sport from Greece, China or Japan (Bath, 1997). By the fourteenth century there appeared written references to an illegal ball game known as "football", mostly recorded in official documents such as those from court cases (Elias and Dunning, 1971). Elias and Dunning (1971) also assert that these wild games offered belligerent local groups a chance to settle grievances. Disciplinary problems from increasingly unruly pupils in public schools led to a search for new ways for them to use their energy, resulting in many schools encouraging the playing of local variants of "folk football" (Dunning and Sheard, 1979). Schools soon formulated their own rules, many adapting to their own code of football. When it came to matches between schools, however, this obviously posed a problem. This stage was vital in Rugby's birth because one particular set of rules, as played in Rugby School, began to gain acceptance in other schools. The Rugby Football Union was inaugurated in 1831 and Rugby began to diffuse. As Smith (1999) explains, "Old boys of Rugby School were proud of their game and the school's success and when they left to become members of Victorian society - many as headmasters - they took their game with them". During the first half of the nineteenth century Rugby was still a middle class sport, spreading to the rest of England and to Scotland and Ireland largely through schools and universities (Smith, 1999). Rugby in Ireland is a rare unifying force, the national team representing the entire island. But this perhaps owes to its status as a middle class sport whose fans, educated intellectuals with an attitude of 'the pen is mightier than the sword', refuse to isolate themselves or their sport along North-South lines. If Gaelic sports were part of the Irish working class' independence movement, to them Rugby represented English rule, and indeed Irish Rugby has remained a mainly middle-class sport ever since (Smith, 1999). The working classes were incidental to this initial dispersal: they worked very long hours, but towards the end of the century they started to take up the game in large numbers as leisure time increased (Smith, 1999). Great Britain's population was rising rapidly. In 1801 the total population was 10,686,000, rising to over 23 million by 1861 (Mitchell, 1988). Increasingly industrial, Britain had a national economy rapidly expanding at around 6% in the 1850s (Dodgshon and Butlin), with more and more people living in urban areas. With this increase in leisure time Rugby began to gain particular popularity among the working classes of the industrial centres of Northern England and the South Wales coalfield, as well as in more rural areas like the Borders region of Southern Scotland and the South West of England. As elsewhere, in the North clubs were formed in large numbers, often around pubs, workplaces or churches - the latter as part of a movement called 'Muscular Christianity' (Dunning and Sheard, 1979). By the 1880s the success of the sport in the North was such that, as Smith (1999) informs, Yorkshire were county champions for seven of the first eight seasons of competition and, importantly, rugby matches were attracting much bigger crowds than FA Cup games, bringing money into the game. South Wales was also changing quickly. The coalfield provided high quality anthracite for the Empire, and employment opportunities for thousands of men in the collieries. An underlying theme of this era was immigration: in the 1851 census, from a total population of nearly 1.2 million, almost 140,000 of Wales' residents were immigrants, mostly from England and Ireland, and 320,000 moved to the coalfield itself between 1851 and 1914 (Davies, 1990). These were people who had come together and embraced Wales, needing a new identity which Rugby provided, as historian Gareth Williams explains: "This was a new society. It was bustling and energetic. It was a society that took sport and drink and physical exertion in large quantities. Rugby provided an opportunity for self-expression and collective expression. An aggressive, self-confident working class were increasingly creating their own institutions, whether they were trade unions, choirs or rugby football clubs. They had a growing sense of Welsh nationality" (Smith, 1999).
			3. Early Overseas Diffusion The nineteenth century was a time of British expansion overseas, and the creation of an empire based on the "subjugation" (Dodgshon and Butlin, 1990) of populations in regions far from Europe. There was an assumption of British superiority over others, causing British ideas and social trends to be imposed on other peoples. This included the diffusion of sports as part of an arrogant duty of enlightenment to supposedly lesser races by public school old boys who travelled the world in the name of Britain, an attitude neatly summed up by a former Harrow headmaster: "Englishmen are not superior to Frenchmen or Germans in brains or industry, but they are superior in the health and temper which games impart. In the history of the British Empire it is written that England has owed her sovereignty to her sports", (Dodgshon and Butlin, 1990 pp.530). Migration from Britain to the fledgling Empire to exotic places like Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa (and especially the non-Empire United States) became widespread as more people wanted to begin a new life abroad. Between 1853 and 1883, for example, 539,000 British citizens moved to British North America, and over one million left for Australasia (Mitchell, 1988). Australia, until 1900 a group of separate British colonies, was one of the first places outside Britain to take on Rugby. It was a new society built from the strengths of the 160,000 convicts who were sent there between 1788 and 1868 (Dodgshon and Butlin, 1990). Marshall (1996) asserts that the length of the journey down under meant that many more people were inclined to travel to North America, though gold discovered in Australia during the 1850s or the prospect of lucrative wool farming nonetheless attracted many. The Australian traits of candidness towards monetary issues and an assertive brashness came, perhaps, from a mixture of the resourceful entrepreneur and the self-reliant descendants of exiles - and these values, vastly different from those prevailing in Victorian Britain, would play an important role in the development of Australian Rugby, where League would eventually gain superiority over Union. Rugby arrived in 1856, used as training for cricketers (Rhys, 1992), but soon diffused as a sport as more British immigrants arrived. Its popularity was such that Sydney alone had 41 clubs by 1880 (Bath, 1997). Across in New Zealand different factors aided Rugby's emergence as the number one sport. In 1840 New Zealand became a British colony, to provide a base from which Britons and Australians could trade with and explore the Pacific (Marshall 1996). The indigenous Maoris became a minority by the end of the New Zealand wars, fought against the British, which ended in 1869 (Power), but they would achieve remarkably equal status in New Zealand, with a middle class English sport embracing them. In 1870 Rugby arrived in New Zealand thanks to Charles James Munro, a public schoolboy whose father, an MP, watched the first match, giving instant kudos (Smith, 1999). The Maori culture embraced Rugby, and surprisingly, given that it was so soon after a series of wars, society in general and Rugby in particular embraced the Maoris to the extent that in 1879 the new provincial teams were picked purely on merit, regardless of race (Mackay). The successful 1888 "Natives Tour", a party comprised of Maoris and European descendants born in New Zealand, proved that New Zealand could compete on equal terms with their English masters in a way that they could not in cricket (Mackay), and Rugby's popularity was cemented further by the 1905 New Zealand tour of Britain in which they lost just one match, to Wales, a game that helped to confirm Rugby as the most important sport in both countries. Rugby became a virtual religion in New Zealand, as John Mulgan wrote in the early twentieth century; "Rugby Football was the best of all our pleasures: it was religion and desire and fulfilment all in one." (Power). South Africa was initially of significance to the British due to Cape Town's importance as a stopping-off point for ships travelling to and from India. There were relatively few migrants until the mineral discoveries of the late nineteenth century (Marshall, 1996), but even in 1996 only 11% of the population, approximately 4.5 million inhabitants, was White of British or Dutch extraction (Statistics South Africa, 1996). The Great Trek of 1836-46 led to 14,000 Afrikaners, of Dutch origin, disenchanted with British rule moving inland to the North (Marshall, 1996). But Britain feared an Afrikaner alliance with Germany, which until World War One owned South West Africa (Namibia), and this together with the discoveries of diamonds and gold created instability due to the new power of Afrikaner controlled areas such as Transvaal and Orange Free State (Marshall, 1996). Relations between the British and Afrikaners deteriorated, causing the outbreak of the South African (Boer) War of 1899-1902, which was to play an important role in the history of Rugby. Rugby was brought to South Africa as early as 1858 (Bath, 1997) but was played mainly by schoolboys and soldiers of the British owned Western Cape. It was established as the main sport in British South Africa ahead of other codes of Football largely thanks to Governor Cecil Rhodes, who preferred Rugby's rules, inviting the 1891 British tourists (Bath, 1997), and it did not become a revered part of Afrikaner culture, ironically, until the Boer War. Blacks used to play in large numbers, particularly in the Western Cape, and in 1896 the SA Coloured Rugby Board was formed (Rhys, 1992). This, however, was all to change in due course. During the nineteenth century the sport spread elsewhere, including to the non-English speaking world's main Rugby power, France. Here, despite a group of British expatriates setting up a club in Le Havre in 1872 (Bath, 1997), Rugby began to diffuse through the country later in the century. Baron Pierre de Coubertin imported it to the Parisian middle classes from English public schools because he wished to bolster the pride and fighting power of the French, who had recently lost Alsace and Lorraine (Smith, 1999). Smith (1999) also asserts that amateurism was important to the Parisian middle classes, who attempted to keep the game exclusive. Rugby's diffusion to the Rugby towns and villages of the South West, via the important wine port of Bordeaux, was due to British wine merchants who had brought the game with them. The man responsible for Rugby's introduction to this region, mainly through schools, was a Protestant republican, Doctor Philippe Tissie, who, despite being from a different background, shared many of de Coubertin's ideas (Smith, 1999). Rugby became popular in the provinces of the South West by the turn of the century, with fierce local rivalries only giving way to a greater hatred of teams from Paris (Smith, 1999). French Rugby was to gain in strength, developing its own unique culture over the early years of the twentieth century. In North America Rugby was popular in universities but the rules were changed in 1869 to form Harvard Rules Football, which would eventually become known as American Football (The Football Archive). Thanks largely to British sailors and soldiers, Rugby's gospel was spread around the world. By the turn of the century, Rugby was also established in countries within the sphere of influence of Rugby's Southern Hemisphere powers. For example, Antipodean missionaries had helped spread the game by around the turn of the century to Pacific Islands such as Fiji and Western Samoa, where the warrior culture embraced Rugby, while Rugby had diffused from South Africa to Zimbabwe and Namibia at around the same time. Other countries with no Rugby playing reputation, India, Germany and Kenya to name but three, also have surprisingly long Rugby playing histories, stretching back to the early 1900s and before, but for various reasons, have never taken to Rugby in large numbers.

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