Events

CHAIRPERSON

Dr Stefan Huebner, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore

ABSTRACT

Eugen Sandow (1867-1925) was a British strongman, physical culturist and fitness entrepreneur who achieved international fame by 1900 as “the perfect man” and “the apostle of physical culture”. There have been several studies of Sandow since the 1990s, but they have focused mostly on Europe and North America, where he is seen as the founder of modern bodybuilding. However, Sandow was much more than that and his life, influences and legacy extended far beyond Europe. He was a serious proponent of national, imperial and global health initiatives and was the foremost advocate of a worldwide physical culture movement at the turn of the twentieth century. Thus, he was well known to colonial officials, settlers and “natives” in Africa and Asia. Yet very little is known about Sandow’s activities or his reception in these places – before, during or after the “world’s tour” he commenced in the summer of 1904.

Sandow’s Afro-Asian tour of 1904-05 lasted seventeen months. He left England in May 1904 and proceeded to southern Africa before moving on to Aden, India, the Straits Settlements, Hong Kong and Shanghai. Eleven of those months were spent in Asia, with the bulk of those in India. In the summer of 1905 he left the subcontinent and headed further east for a few months. Interestingly, Sandow was touring Asia as India became more restive under British rule and the Russo-Japanese War intensified, culminating in the rise of Japan as an imperial power and an “Asian Awakening”. Sandow’s shows, featuring vaudeville, circus and physical culture acts and demonstrations, were sensational and they presented him as the world’s preeminent practitioner of “scientific” physical culture and as the world’s “perfect” and “strongest man”. Moreover, he claimed to have learned nothing during his tour while local populations clamoured to see and hear him, and begged him to stay. How much of this was predictable rhetoric that echoed the tenets of Britain’s civilizing mission? To what extent can detailed archival work reveal or expose more complex interactions and exchanges with Indian, Chinese and Japanese strongmen, other athletes and health practitioners, entertainers, impresarios or politicians? And since it touches on themes such as body, masculinity, race, commercialism and long-distance communication and transportation across or through continents, regions, circuits and oceans, how much can Sandow’s tour tell us about world or global history at the turn of the twentieth century?

There will be a closed-door meeting before the seminar.
View more information: https://ari.nus.edu.sg/Event/Detail/1b8fdc13-864e-4dc4-9aac-7076b017a315

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Carey Watt is Professor of History (South Asia & World) at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, Canada. He has been interested in the history of sport and physical culture for many years, especially in the visit and legacy of strongman Eugen Sandow in India. His most recent article is “Physical Culture as ‘Natural Healing’: Eugen Sandow’s Campaign against the Vices of Civilization c. 1890-1920”, in Global Anti-Vice Activism, 1890-1950: Fighting Drinks, Drugs, and “Immorality”, edited by Jessica Pliley, Harald Fischer-Tiné & Robert Kramm-Masaoka (Cambridge University Press, 2016), pp. 74-99. This builds on other publications on fitness and physical culture, such as “‘No Showy Muscles’: The Boy Scouts and the Global Dimensions of Physical Culture and Bodily Health in Britain and Colonial India”, in N. R. Block and T. M. Proctor (eds.), Scouting Frontiers: Youth in the Scout Movement’s First Century (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009), pp. 121-42. More publications on Sandow are in the works: articles and a book, on Sandow in India and on the significance of his 1904-05 Afro-Asian “world tour”, which included stops in southern Africa, Aden, India, the Straits Settlements, Hong Kong and Shanghai. For more information, please visit http://w3.stu.ca/stu/sites/faculty/watt/index.aspx.

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