Sport and Colonialism in 19th Century Australasia - LA84 Foundation

together with a contemporary cult of the personality; and
racial ideas associated with Social Darwinism. 5
India, the cornerstone of the imperial structure in the
east, provides the most remarkable example of the fusion of
style and spectacle into the institutional life-style of the
Empire where recreation and sport were elevated to become the
classic symbols of the English-man abroad. Morris describes
the hunt clubs of the Nilgiri Hills dressed in "meticulous
hunting pink, attended by elegant whippers-in and well-bred
packs of fox-hounds, to hunt the slinking jackal". 6
The Indian
hill station epitomised in a "single impression the recreation
of the imperial Establishment" 7
and the sons of the rajahs
played cricket with as much ease and familiarity as did Squire
Brown's son Tom, at Rugby School.
This essay, however, addresses itself to the notion of
the reshaping of a British heritage and the extent to which
British forms of recreation and sport, while brought out lock,
stock and barrel to colonial New Zealand underwent profound
changes. In a young country like New Zealand, colonial in
character and dependent by necessity, the seeping of influences
from the mother country can determine to a large extent the
nature of subsequent development. The new society is moulded
principally by those institutions and ideas which have been
inherited and transported to the new situation and thus form
the basis of a new structure. Sporting practices are part of
the cultural inheritance and the games and pastimes which are
adopted reflect essentially the sporting characteristics of the
mother culture.
New Zealand's British immigrants brought with them varying
aspects of nineteenth century developments in recreation
and sport depending on their individual situations and experiences
before they left. Dependence as a state of mind can not
easily be shaken off and cultural heritage is almost a continuing
process as contacts and roots remain with the rules and
regulations determined at their nucleus. The importation of
sporting supplies, particularly from England, and the constant
distribution of English books and the massive newspaper coverage
devoted to British recreational and sporting developments,
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