Soft Power Politics - Football and Baseball on the Western Pacific Rim

This unique collection of essays considers the impact of modern sport on the Western Pacific Rim in terms of its political consequence, intended and unintended. The inclusion of sport in the ‘Soft Power’ geopolitics of the Asia Pacific region is powerfully illustrated in this text with its focus on football, a feature of the cultural imperialism of the British Empire, and baseball, spread through this region as a component of American cultural imperialism.

This book was published as a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport.

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 of ‘Sport’, as ingenuous as it may seem to the host of cynics that abounds, believe that dialogues that emerge from arguments included in this text represent communication of the highest order and have the potential to produce the cohesion that can close some of those cracks that Huntington said would open up along, what he called the fault lines between civilisations.

This book was published as a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport.