Football and politics in Bengal: colonialism, nationalism, communalism

Abstract

First paragraph: In championing the virtues of action in his role as the British leader of imperial India, Lord Curzon concluded his speech on education with a reference to the importance attached by the colonial government to sport. Yet his remarks also captured the spirit of the age in Bengal, which was certainly a centre of action and energy at the end of the nineteenth and at the beginning of the twentieth century. Calcutta, as the administrative capital, mercantile entrepôt and industrial heart of the British Empire in India, was a centre of imperial enterprise and endeavour. Europeans there made fortunes from Asia but also planned societies in their role as imperial governors and shaped cultures in acting as colonizers.