Cricket in the Country of Football: Sport and Social and Cultural Exclusion in Nineteenth-Century Brazil

Abstract

The history of organised cricket in Brazil during the nineteenth century presents a compelling case study because of its development as an exclusionary social practice around British expatriate communities. In Brazil, cricket was played in many places well before Association Football became the national game. In contrast to cricket in formal British colonies in the West Indies, or English-speaking independent territories in North America, in Brazil the sport did not reach out to social groups that differed from British expatriates in language, ethnicity or social class. Club initiatives created in six Brazilian cities stand out for their economic power and political influence: the national capital (Rio de Janeiro), three state capitals (Niterói, Recife and São Paulo) and Santos and Campinas. Empire and language played a key role in defining sports cultures, as is shown by the periodicals that circulated in these cities in both Portuguese and English.