True Left

Mainstream academia catches up to what we have been pointing out for a long time:

https://archive.ph/hH6tn#selection-1333.1-1607.111

Golf balls were the product of colonial exploitation, according to the University of St Andrews - with the game “imposed” around the world by the British Empire.

The Fife town of St Andrews is known as the “home of golf” for its 600-year playing history, but the prestigious local university has now examined the sport’s contentious links in a new exhibition.

Golf is connected to imperial “exploitation”, according to display information, because balls were once made using rubber harvested from colonial territories.

The game itself was also “imposed” across the Empire, the St Andrews exhibition claims, as British enthusiasts established clubs from South Africa to Hong Kong.

Cricket - similarly carried across the globe by amateurs from the UK - was also an imposition, according to display information that states: “By recreating and imposing British sports in colonised countries, golf and cricket were spread around the world.
“Natural resources from colonised countries were exploited to make sporting equipment.

“Gutta percha, a natural rubber material found in trees native to south-east Asia, was harvested to make golf balls for the European market.”

The information is displayed next to the Karahi Golf Club Cup, the prize given by one of the many British-founded clubs in India during the day of Empire. Clubs were also established in other imperial possessions including Canada, Egypt, Sri Lanka and Malaysia.

Gutta rubber grew most abundantly in Malaysia, which was formerly held by the British. Some experts have said that harvesting the rubber for Western markets caused ecological damage. Victorian scientists discovered that the rubber was a perfect and profitable material for covering burgeoning telegraph wires.
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The Re-collecting Empire exhibition, running at St Andrews affiliated Wardlaw Museum until October, also includes displays arguing that European textile mills created wares inspired by styles “that originated overseas” in the colonies - and therefore “exploited the originating culture”.

The Re-Collecting Empire exhibition, which runs until Oct 22, is part of St Andrews pledge to continue “examining the legacies of Empire in our collections and exploring how we can build a more equitable future”. It is part of a broader trend of academic “decolonisation” accelerated by Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.

See also:

https://trueleft.createaforum.com/counterculture-era/anti-western-resistance-from-the-counterculture-to-21st-century/msg10946/#msg10946

https://trueleft.createaforum.com/human-evolution/misinformation-about-racial-origins/msg7335/#msg7335