ABSTRACT
New Zealand, in particular, earned a reputation for having the most salubrious climate among all the settler colonies. In his 1861 book, Britain of the South, Charles Hursthouse pronounced the New Zealand climate a perfect balance between excessive fitness and rigour.30 In evidence before the Dominions Royal Commission in Dunedin, New Zealand in 1913, J. A. Johnstone of the Dunedin Chamber of Commerce stated that 'people bred in the country are naturally better qualified for our requirements than those that are town-bred' .31 Much of the testimony collected by the commission in New Zealand stressed the need for physically fit immigrants willing and able to undertake strenuous work. Despite these conceptions urbanization increased rapidly in New Zealand and Australia, as well as in Canada and among white South Africans, in the period after 1890. Images of these societies as 'rural arcadias' were little more than just that by the early 1900s. Nevertheless, much of the immigration literature promoting New Zealand, Australia and South Africa continually emphasized their clean and healthy climates, particularly in their vast rural areas. With these views of colonial societies and colonial men in mind, it is important to see how British responses to colonial sporting teams developed. Sporting contests, increasingly held more often than wars, became central sites for expressions of manly traits and for interpretations of successes or failures in terms of relative masculinity between two regions or nations.
