For a ‘United’ Kingdom and a ‘Greater’ Britain: the British Olympic Association and the limitations and contestations of ‘Britishness’

Abstract

During the first two decades of the twentieth century, the Home-Nations of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales joined forces in competing in the Olympic Games under the banner of ‘Great Britain’ (or deviations thereof). The Olympics served as an important symbolic site for fostering and promoting a broader ‘British’ national identity. In practice, however, the prevalence and persistence of competing national identities and allegiances roiled early attempts to create a unified British Olympic team. These counter-prevailing forces of nationalism further served to undermine the British Olympic Association's ambitious attempt to unite the British Empire in a ‘Greater Britain’ team for the 1916 Berlin Olympic Games. As this work will reveal, ‘Britishness’ was a layered, contested and racially homogenous term that was interpreted and applied differently across various parts of the British Isles and its Empire.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

^1. For the purposes of this work, I will be using the appellations ‘United Kingdom’ and ‘Great Britain’ interchangeably. In modern parlance, the ‘United Kingdom’ is a country that consists of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Great Britain is the name of the island northwest of France and east of Ireland that consists of three somewhat autonomous regions: England, Wales and Scotland.

^2. British Olympic Association, Inaugural Committee Meeting Report, 24 May 1905. Grande-Bretagne Correspondence (1892–1923), OU MO 01 14 36, IOC Archives.

^3. British Olympic Association, Council Minutes, 11 March 1907, British Olympic Archives.

^4. Amateur Athletic Association, General Committee Minutes, 8 February 1908, AAA/1/2/2/4, Amateur Athletic Association, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, England.

^5. Curiously, two notable exceptions to this policy popped up. In field hockey, the BOA granted Ireland permission to compete as a nation after their national Field Hockey Association rejected a proposal from their English counterparts to compete as a unified, Great Britain and Ireland team. As further evidence of the fluid internationalism of early Olympic competition, Ireland's polo team also compete as a separate entity – a move that whetted Irish appetites for full sporting independence.

^6. British Olympic Association, Council Minutes, 25 April 1911, BOF Archives.

^7. Reverend Robert S. de Courcy Laffan to Pierre de Coubertin, 15 December 1910, MBR-COURCY-CORR, 0056930 (1902–1929), IOC Archives.

^8. British Olympic Association, Aims and Objects of the Olympic Games Fund, 14, BOA Archives.

^9. Minutes, Third Annual Meeting, Amateur Athletic Union of Canada, 23 November 1912, 8–9, Amateur Athletic Union of Canada fonds, M3209, Library and Archives Canada.