Donors and the Global Sportive “Civilizing Mission”: Asian Athletics, American Philanthropy, and YMCA Media (1910s–1920s)

This article focuses on changes in American philanthropy during the Progressive Era and the Young Men’s Christian Association’s (YMCA) domestic promotion of its global sports program during the 1910s and 1920s. Since the American YMCA’s foreign department was entirely dependent on donations, philanthropists’ demands concerning efficient and scientific methods to fight the causes of social dysfunction needed to be addressed. YMCA and Christian progressive media thus presented clear-cut success stories about spreading Western sports. Oft-repeated topoi included the superiority vis-à-vis local practices of Western scientific and rational approaches to public health and leisure, and a knowledge transfer to local elites, meaning that indigenization would prevent a permanent “donation drain.” During the First World War, Asian sports events were communicated as a peaceful contrast to the European battlefields. Following the war, YMCA writers turned Asian athletes into a vanguard among non-Western athletes, now promoting the YMCA’s experience gained in this region as a guarantee to donors that an expensive expansion of its sportive “civilizing mission” would lead to similar achievements on a global level. By the late 1920s, the YMCA had completely “de-Orientalized” its earlier coverage of Asian social deficits to emphasize its own efficiency.