Basepaths to Empire: Race and the Spalding World Baseball Tour

Abstract

During the Gilded Age, transnational American agents carried national values abroad, including defense of the "civilizing mission" of the white race toward people of color. This article explores race within the context of the Spalding world baseball tour of 1888-89, a transnational enterprise that marketed the national pastime abroad and, in so doing, indicated the latent, private power behind the official policies of the United States. A rather unusual segment of society to be considered for such scholarly treatment, professional baseball elites nonetheless helped generate a racist imperial ideology and thus added to the voices that set racial parameters for the American empire when it was attained in 1898. By tracing the racial attitudes of the baseball tourists, this article contributes to recent scholarly enterprises that examine foreign relations from a cultural perspective and integrate overlooked actors into the study of diplomatic history.

Research as a military mascot: Political ethnography and counterinsurgency in southern Thailand

“…An opera is credited with bringing the Provençal French term ‘ mascotte ’, originally meaning ‘sorcery’, into English: written by Edmond Audran in 1880 and translated into English in 1881, the comic operetta La Mascotte performed the story of a woman with the mysterious powers to bring good luck as long as she remained a virgin. While in Audran’s piece the mascot was a heavenly female creature tasked with transmitting God’s benevolence, 5 animality became one of its most definitive features once translated into the US context; here, mascots became popular companions of baseball teams, in particular (Zeiler, 2007). Consequently, the role of a mascot was reserved for animals or those considered part of this category, such as the mentally ill, the physically disabled and, most importantly, the racially subordinated.…”