This article seeks to reposition sport as a subject of analysis in ‘global historical’ processes. It examines the diffusion of cricket in the British empire, its appropriation by the colonies, and the subsequent commercialization of the sport. It asks the question: how did an elite English sport come to be one controlled by a former colony – India? With this as the substantive question, it seeks to develop theoretical insights about the nature of global processes and cultural transfers in the twentieth century. By way of conclusion, it asserts that, as a result of these global processes, there was a tangible shift in the ‘cultural economy’ of sports from the developed nations of the West to the developing nations.

This article argues for the importance of an exploration of sporting interactions in the British world. In addition, it presents the case for the adaptation of borderlands theory to the British world framework. Such study of British world borderlands is capable of more accurately capturing the spatial and regional variety of this British world and, in particular, the nascent national identities of dominions such as Australia. Sport is a particularly apt vehicle for the examination of such issues in an Australian context, since playing to the ‘imaginary grandstand’ of international spectators has always occupied a central role in the construction of an Australian national identity. This article uses three brief case studies – cricket, swimming, and Australian Rules football – to explore these theoretical claims.

The 1973 Chilean coup gave rise to an unprecedented growth in a global human rights consciousness. In its aftermath, transnational activists from a diverse array of political and ideological backgrounds found common cause – indeed, a common language of human rights – in campaigns to ameliorate the repressive acts of the Chilean military junta. This article focuses on two models of activism in particular: Amnesty International, whose 1973 investigative mission set the terms of the global debate about human rights in Chile; and transnational solidarity activists, especially Chilean exiles from leftist parties, whose vision of social activism narrowed as their interest in human rights surged. These campaigns – while not without tensions over the role of politics in the moral appeal to human rights – both articulated a transnational discourse of human rights and created new activist techniques to foment moral outrage by revealing the prevalence of torture through the power of personal testimony.