THE REPRESENTATION OF BRITISH SPORTS IN LATE NINETEENTH AND EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY ELITE IRISH SCHOOL PUBLICATIONS

This article examines the presentation and promotion of British 'imperial' sports, such as rugby and cricket, in the publications of a selection of elite Irish schools during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The article also discusses the ways in which this representation of British sports differed from the representation of such sports by Irish nationalists and argues that the positive representation of these sports in the school publications was part of a wider worldview, prevalent among Ireland's upper and middle classes, which saw connections with Britain and its empire as being in no way incompatible with the development of Irish national identity or of Irish patriotism.