This collection of essays is the third iteration in a series of publications dealing with Olympic studies that initially developed out of the tripartite relationship between Western University (Canada), Victoria University, Melbourne (Australia), and the German Sport University Cologne (Germany). However, for this collection, papers were solicited from around the world in order to approach the topic from different and much wider perspectives. To this end, this book combines a diverse range...

Soft Power Politics- Past and Present: Football and Baseball on the Western Pacific Rim illustrates the momentous expanse and moment of sport in the Asia Pacific region and through these essays dealing with two of the most prodigious global team sports confronts various cultural clashes that Samuel Huntington would ensure the end of civilisation. They also demonstrate the power sport has to change the world and to inspire and unite people globally. All who sail under the flag ofSport as in...

The book explores the intersection between the Great War and patriotism through an examination of the effects of both on Australia’s most popular football code. The work is chronological, and therefore provides an easy path by which events may be followed. Ultimately it seeks to shine a light on and provide considerable detail to a much-ignored period in Australian Rules football history, including women’s football history, that was subject to much upheaval and which reflected considerable...

Match-Fixing and Sport studies match-fixing in historical perspective, revealing how match-fixing has always been a major sporting continuity, alongside another longstanding continuity, a widely-held belief in a mythical recent past of pristine purity.The volume begins with a brief overview of match-fixing’s global contemporary contexts, the broad range of sports where it now surfaces, increased recognition of its moral, social, and economic threat, and the varied response...

Shortlisted for the Australian Society for Sports History (ASSH) Biennial Book PrizeUnlike every other sport that has captured the nation’s interest, Australian football is not a copy, a clone, or a hand-me-down of European culture. Rather, it is a game with special qualities, which arose from a distinctive series of events in the fledgling colony of Victoria, grew rapidly, and is now the most dominant sport in the country: a social, commercial, cultural and—for ma...

Turnen around the World represents an international effort by an assemblage of prominent sport historians to detail and assess the worldwide scope, effects, and residual influences of the German Turnen movement over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. A male nationalistic movement based on gymnastics and other physical activities established in response to the Napoleonic wars became even more political in the German Revolution of 1848. Refugees, colonizers, and immigrants...

The bestselling author of The Australian Moment asks the most important question confronting the country right now – how do we maintain our winning streak?Most nations don't get a first chance to prosper. Australia is on its second. For the best part of the nineteenth century, Australia was the world's richest country, a pioneer for democracy and a magnet for migrants. Yet our last big boom was followed by a fifty-year bust as we lost our luck, our riches a...

In this companion volume of Thomas Keneally's widely acclaimed history of the Australian people, the vast range of characters who have formed our national story are brought vividly to life. Immigrants and Aboriginal resistance figures, bushrangers and pastoralists, working men and pioneering women, artists and hard-nosed radicals, politicians and soldiers all populate this richly drawn portrait of a vibrant land on the cusp of nationhood and social maturity. From the 1860s to the great rif...

Great Australian Speeches brings together a diverse and often moving collection of more than 40 speeches ranging from colonial times to the present day. Some have resonated with power enough to shape the nation; others encapsulate the best and worst of the Australian character. This selection proves that stirring oratory is not simply the preserve of politicians and military figures. Bushranger Ned Kelly makes a speech within a speech as his death sentence is passed, interrupting ...

1942 was a key year in Australia's history. As its people had so long feared, White Australia, an outpost of empire, seemed about to be invaded by the Japanese. In that one year, Darwin was bombed, submarines torpedoed ships in Sydney Harbour and Australian Militiamen died on the Kokoda Trail.Each year, more and more Australians celebrate Anzac Day and honour the lives of those who fought for their country. There is even a push to create a new public holiday, in remembranc...

'Australian governments find it easy to go to war. Their leaders seem to be able to withdraw with a calm conscience, answerable neither to God nor humanity.'Australia lost 600 men in the Boer War, a three-year conflict fought in the heart of Africa that had ostensibly nothing to do with Australia. Coinciding with Federation, the war kickstarted Australia's commitment to fighting in Britain's wars overseas, and forged a national identity around it. By 1902, when the Boer War ended, ...

'I had two paddocks to look after,' said Les Gilpin, 'one of 1800 acres, one of 1000 acres. My job was to keep the rabbits down.' Les left school when he turned fourteen and went to work as a rabbiter, living in a corrugated iron hut, on a remote corner of a property. This was Australia in 1945. Les stuck it out at the Back Hut, as his little home was called, for six years. His voice is the authentic voice of Australia.Before he went to war in 1939, Geoff Sheehan had hardly ever be...