LAUSR

Stefan Huebner has produced a fascinating volume that will interest scholars of the Cold War in Asia. Huebner starts before World War II, with the establishment of the Far Eastern Championship Games and the Western Asiatic Games, and the role in Pan-Asian sport played by the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), which wanted to use international sport in service of Western Protestant Christianity’s “civilizing mission,” particularly in the U.S.-controlled Philippines. The bulk of the book focuses on Pan-Asian sport during the Cold War, specifically the Asian Games, which were first held in New Delhi in 1951. Huebner carries the story through to 1974, when the Seventh Asian Games were staged in Tehran. In between, Asian Games were hosted by the Philippines, Japan, Indonesia, and Thailand (twice). As that roster of host countries suggests, the Cold War was an issue in all of these Games. Among the major political actors with starring roles here are India’s Jawaharlal Nehru, Indonesia’s Sukarno, the Filipino president Ramon Magsaysay, the Thai royal family and military leaders, and the Shah of Iran. Cold War politics took varied forms in the Asian Games. For example, Japan and the Philippines sought to exclude participation by Communists, and Indonesia’s Sukarno tried to use the Asian Games in Djakarta to promote and establish his leadership of what he called “new emerging forces” and the Non-Aligned Movement. Huebner has engineered the book with care and consistency. The chapters are organized chronologically. After two on the establishment and early years of the Far Eastern Championship Games and the Western Asiatic Games, they proceed chronologically through the Asian Games from 1951 through 1974. Each chapter starts with an overview, then proceeds to consider the situation in the host country at the time, identify key sports and political officials, describe the infrastructure improvements (if any) and facilities for the Games, and discuss the opening ceremonies and related cultural events and their symbolism. Each chapter concludes with an assessment of the subject Games. Huebner ends his story in 1974 because, he argues, “the sportive ‘civilizing mission’ that had characterized the Games since 1913 at last found its end” (p. 277). Readers need not be persuaded by this particular assessment to find the volume useful and its length of coverage sensible. Although readers might dispute when “the sportive civilizing mission” ended, a change in the purpose of pan-Asian sport was unavoidable as the European (and U.S.) empires receded and Asians took ownership of their international activities. For example, although the YMCA sought to use pan-Asian events to encourage mass participation in sport, the postwar hosts typically staged entertaining spectacles designed to bolster their country’s international stature. For example, Japan used the 1958 Games as a (successful) audition for the 1964 Olympics. Had the Shah of Iran not fallen, Huebner credibly speculates, Iran’s hosting of the 1974