"Morris successfully weaves the intricacies of baseball's history into a compelling narrative while giving us a keen analysis of its larger significance. It is rare to find someone who can pull that off. This is an absorbing and distinguished addition to sports history, to Taiwanese history, and to studies of colonialism and its aftermath."--William Kelly, Yale University "Colonial Project, National Game offers an engaging and penetrating analysis of the culture of baseball in Taiwan, in both its local and global conditions. Morris weaves details into a compelling narrative that is as much about the game on the field as the game being played out in the arenas of ethnicity, nationalism and geopolitics. Morris's study is a model of sophistication and lucidity. He demonstrates that through a perceptive reading of the mundane world of curve balls and player contracts, we can better understand the ideological substructure of the social."--Joseph R. Allen, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

When the Empire of Japan defeated the Chinese Qing Dynasty in 1895 and won its first colony, Taiwan, it worked to establish it as a model colony. The Japanese brought Taiwan not only education and economic reform but also a new pastime made popular in Japan by American influence: baseball. But unlike in many other models, the introduction of baseball to Taiwan didn’t lead to imperial indoctrination or nationalist resistance. Taiwan instead stands as a fascinating counterexample to an otherwise seemingly established norm in the cultural politics of modern imperialism. Taiwan’s baseball culture evolved as a cultural hybrid between American, Japanese, and later Chinese influences. In Empire of Infields John J. Harney traces the evolution and identity of Taiwanese baseball, focusing on three teams: the Nenggao team of 1924–25, the Kan? team of 1931, and the Hongye schoolboy team of 1968. Baseball developed as an aspect of Japanese cultural practices that survived the end of Japanese rule at the end of World War II and was a central element of Japanese influence in the formation of popular culture across East Asia. The Republic of China (which reclaimed Taiwan in 1945) only embraced baseball in 1968 as an expression of a distinct Chinese nationalism and as a vehicle for political narratives. Empire of Infields explores not only the development of Taiwanese baseball but also the influence of baseball on Taiwan’s cultural identity in its colonial years and beyond as a clear departure from narratives of assimilation and resistance.

This book explores the transformation of cultural and national identity of global sports fans in South Korea, which has undergone extensive cultural and economic globalization since the 1990s. Through ethnographic research of Korean Major League Baseball fans and their online community, this book demonstrates how a postcolonial nation and its people are developing long-distance affiliation with American sports accompanied by nationalist sentiments and regional rivalry. Becoming an MLB fan in South Korea does not simply lead one to nurturing a cosmopolitan identity, but to reconstituting one’s national imaginations. Younghan Cho suggests individuated nationalism as the changing nature of the national among the Korean MLB fandom in which the national is articulated by personal choices, consumer rights and free market principles. The analysis of the Korean MLB fandom illuminates the complicated and even contradictory procedures of decentering and fragmenting nationalism in South Korea, which have been balanced by recalling nationalism in combination with neoliberal governmentality.

Baseball Beyond Our Borders celebrates the globalization of the game while highlighting the different histories and cultures of the nations in which the sport is played. This collection of essays tells the story of America’s national pastime as it has spread across the world and undergone instructive, entertaining, and sometimes quirky changes in the process. Covering nineteen countries and a U.S. territory, the contributors show how each country imported baseball, how baseball took hold and developed, how it is organized, played, and followed, and what local and regional traits tell us about the sport’s place in each culture. But what lies in store as baseball’s passport fills up with far-flung stamps? Will the international migration of players homogenize baseball? What role will the World Baseball Classic play? These are just a few of the questions the authors pose.

Winner of the Joseph Levenson Post-1900 Book Prize This cultural study of public space examines the cityscape of Taipei, Taiwan, in rich descriptive prose. Contemplating a series of seemingly banal subjects--maps, public art, parks--Joseph Allen peels back layers of obscured history to reveal forces that caused cultural objects to be celebrated, despised, destroyed, or transformed as Taipei experienced successive regime changes and waves of displacement. In this thoughtful stroll through the city, we learn to look beyond surface ephemera, moving from the general to the particular to see sociocultural phenomena in their historical and contemporary contexts. Watch the book trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBdGIoox7zM

In Imperial Gateway, Seiji Shirane explores the political, social, and economic significance of colonial Taiwan in the southern expansion of Japan's empire from 1895 to the end of World War II. Challenging understandings of empire that focus on bilateral relations between metropole and colonial periphery, Shirane uncovers a half century of dynamic relations between Japan, Taiwan, China, and Western regional powers. Japanese officials in Taiwan did not simply take orders from Tokyo; rather, they often pursued their own expansionist ambitions in South China and Southeast Asia. When outright conquest was not possible, they promoted alternative strategies, including naturalizing resident Chinese as overseas Taiwanese subjects, extending colonial police networks, and deploying tens of thousands of Taiwanese to war. The Taiwanese—merchants, gangsters, policemen, interpreters, nurses, and soldiers—seized new opportunities for socioeconomic advancement that did not always align with Japan's imperial interests. Drawing on multilingual archives in six countries, Imperial Gateway shows how Japanese officials and Taiwanese subjects transformed Taiwan into a regional gateway for expansion in an ever-shifting international order. Thanks to generous funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities Open Book Program and its participation in TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem), the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access volumes from Cornell Open (cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open) and other repositories.

Written by a team of international scholars, Sport and Nationalism in Asia - Power, Politics, and Identity is a collection of original research which addresses a number of issues central to notions of nationalism and identity in sport including: how the Olympics and other international and regional sports events have fostered an active interweaving of sport, politics and nationalism; the role of traditional sport in the building of national consciousness and national identity; the way modern sport creates and reflects nationalism, thereby giving it a voice and a focus. The book covers eight case studies on countries/regions across West Asia, Central Asia and East Asia. It is one of the few works that examines the relationships between sport, politics and nationalism from Asian perspective. This book was published as a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport.

In Search of Our Frontier explores the complex transnational history of Japanese immigrant settler colonialism, which linked Japanese America with Japan’s colonial empire through the exchange of migrant bodies, expansionist ideas, colonial expertise, and capital in the Asia-Pacific basin before World War II. The trajectories of Japanese transpacific migrants exemplified a prevalent national structure of thought and practice that not only functioned to shore up the backbone of Japan’s empire building but also promoted the borderless quest for Japanese overseas development. Eiichiro Azuma offers new interpretive perspectives that will allow readers to understand Japanese settler colonialism’s capacity to operate outside the aegis of the home empire.

The Routledge History of Western Empires is an all new volume focusing on the history of Western Empires in a comparative and thematic perspective. Comprising of thirty-three original chapters arranged in eight thematic sections, the book explores European overseas expansion from the Age of Discovery to the Age of Decolonisation. Studies by both well-known historians and new scholars offer fresh, accessible perspectives on a multitude of themes ranging from colonialism in the Arctic to the scramble for the coral sea, from attitudes to the environment in the East Indies to plans for colonial settlement in Australasia. Chapters examine colonial attitudes towards poisonous animals and the history of colonial medicine, evangelisaton in Africa and Oceania, colonial recreation in the tropics and the tragedy of the slave trade. The Routledge History of Western Empires ranges over five centuries and crosses continents and oceans highlighting transnational and cross-cultural links in the imperial world and underscoring connections between colonial history and world history. Through lively and engaging case studies, contributors not only weigh in on historiographical debates on themes such as human rights, religion and empire, and the ‘taproots’ of imperialism, but also illustrate the various approaches to the writing of colonial history. A vital contribution to the field.

This multivolume set is much more than a collection of essays on sports and sporting cultures from around the world: it also details how and why sports are played wherever they exist, and examines key charismatic athletes from around the world who have transcended their sports. Sports Around the World: History, Culture, and Practice provides a unique, global overview of sports and sports cultures. Unlike most works of this type, this book provides both essays that examine general topics, such as globalization and sport, international relations and sport, and tourism and sport, as well as essays on sports history, culture, and practice in world regions—for example, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East and North Africa, Europe, and Oceania—in order to provide a more global perspective. These essays are followed by entries on specific sports, world athletes, stadiums and arenas, famous games and matches, and major controversies. Spanning topics as varied as modern professional cycling to the fictional movie Rocky to the deadly ball game of the ancient Mayans, the first three volumes contain overview essays and entries for specific sports that have been and are currently practiced around the world. The fourth volume provides a compendium of information on the winners of major sporting competitions from around the world. Readers will gain invaluable insights into how sports have been enjoyed throughout all of human culture, and more fully comprehend their cultural contexts. The entries provide suggestions for further reading on each topic—helpful to general readers, students with school projects, university students and academics alike. Additionally, the four-volume Sports Around the World spotlights key charismatic athletes who have changed a sport or become more than just an outstanding player.