Cricket, Kirikiti and Imperialism in Samoa, 1879-1939

This book considers how Samoans embraced and reshaped the English game of cricket, recasting it as a distinctively Samoan pastime, kirikiti. Starting with cricket's introduction to the islands in 1879, it uses both cricket and kirikiti to trace six decades of contest between and within the categories of 'colonisers' and 'colonised.' How and why did Samoans adapt and appropriate the imperial game? How did officials, missionaries, colonists, soldiers and those with mixed foreign and Samoan heritage understand and respond to the real and symbolic challenges kirikiti presented? And how did Samoans use both games to navigate foreign colonialism(s)? By investigating these questions, Benjamin Sacks suggests alternative frameworks for conceptualising sporting transfer and adoption, and advances understandings of how power, politics and identity were manifested through sport, in Samoa and across the globe.

Auteur
Benjamin Sacks is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia.

Contenu

1. Introduction: an English game, a Samoan contest
2. Transcultural adoption in Samoa (and in sport)
3. From cricket to kirikiti
4. Colonial officials: play halted in the interests of industry and progress
5. Christian missionaries: much that was distinctly heathenish
6. Colonists, 'afakasi and military men: sundries on 'the Beach'
   7. Navigating colonialism in three contexts: cricket assumed a political importance
7. Navigating New Zealand colonialism: more interested in cricket than in Samoan politics
   9. Conclusion: sporting contest at the edges of empire