Why were the Games created?
We can trace the roots of the Games back to the 1890s, when John Astley Cooper, an Australian-born clergyman, called for a ‘Pan-British’ sporting festival as a way of bringing together the different parts of the British empire in friendly competition . His vision of who could participate in this project was, typically for his time, racially exclusive: it included only (what he considered) ‘Anglo-Saxon’ dominions, and he also called for the inclusion of America white, thus excluding all blacks and natives from the sport.
This imperial sporting vision developed in parallel with the Olympic Games, first held in 1896. However, apart from a four-team sporting competition at the 1911 Empire Festival at London’s Crystal Palace, the idea did not take off until the late 1920s. The success of the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam inspired Canadian journalist and athletics administrator Bobby Robinson to revive the idea of an empire-wide sporting event along Olympic lines, and his work led to the Canadian city of Hamilton hosting the inaugural British Empire Games in 1930. .
The 1930 Games were quite modest, with 400 competitors from just 11 teams, compared to 2,883 from 46 nations who had competed at the Amsterdam Olympics two years earlier. Teams included British Guiana and Bermuda, as well as the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ vision Dominions of Cooper’s.
Which countries are included in the games?
In their earliest years, the Games were limited to countries from within the British empire and, as it developed, the Commonwealth. Over the decades since then, teams have come from countries with varying degrees of independence and sovereignty. Many countries from Asia, Africa and the Caribbean competed both before and after independence, and 2022 will be Barbados’ first appearance since becoming a republic in November 2021.
Overseas territories of Commonwealth nations also send their own teams, such as Norfolk Island, which has been to every Games since 1986, while Overseas Territories are also eligible: regular teams in this group include those from Bermuda, the Isles Cayman, Falkland Islands, Gibraltar, Montserrat and Saint Helena. The Crown Dependencies of Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man all have their own teams. This arrangement means that the UK does not compete as a single team: instead, England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales all compete separately.
And there are also nations that were not historically part of the British empire but have joined the Commonwealth as part of their post-colonial history. Mozambique, which has competed in every Games since 1998, and Rwanda, which made its Commonwealth Games debut in 2010, are examples of this trend. Similarly, the Irish Free State sent a team to London and Manchester in 1934, but they did not compete again in 1938 and did not return after full independence in 1949. In sporting terms, Australia has the best overall record of medals in 21 Games so far, with England and Canada in second and third place respectively.
Cities throughout the empire and commonwealth have hosted the Games in their various formats, although home nations and former dominions have dominated. So far, Australian cities have hosted them five times, with Canada four each, New Zealand and Scotland three each, England two each and India, Jamaica, Malaysia and Wales one each. England is hosting this year and Victoria in Australia in 2026. We are still waiting for a Commonwealth Games in Africa.
Have the Commonwealth Games ever experienced political boycotts?
Despite the ‘friendly games’ label, political blunders in imperial and post-imperial relations have sometimes affected the games. These are focused around South Africa. The 1934 Empire Games were originally planned for Johannesburg, but London and Manchester took the lead due to South Africa’s racially segregated policies. With Canada, India, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago all due to compete with teams that included black and Asian competitors, sports officials were concerned their athletes would face discrimination in Johannesburg.
In 1978, Nigeria boycotted the Commonwealth Games in Edmonton, Canada. This was to protest the presence of New Zealand. Under the Gleneagles Agreement of 1977, Commonwealth countries had pledged to reduce sporting contact with apartheid South Africa, but New Zealand had failed to act on this.
The most significant boycott came in Edinburgh in 1986. Margaret Thatcher’s government was never fully committed to the Gleneagles Agreement and remained unclear about links with South African sport. In response, 32 nations, ranging from Barbados to Papua New Guinea, via Cyprus, Ghana and India, stayed away from Edinburgh.
What sports are played at the Commonwealth Games and how have these changed over time?
The first Empire Games in 1930 were a modest affair, with events in just six disciplines: aquatics, athletics, cupping, boxing, rowing and wrestling. All of them were open to men, but women could only compete in swimming and diving. From these humble beginnings, the sports program has expanded and over the years have included badminton, cycling, fencing, netball, rugby sevens, hurling, weightlifting and more. The program is now set by the Commonwealth Games Federation, working with each edition’s host city and the international federations of the various sports.
The number of women’s sports gradually increased in the previous years of the event: athletics in 1934, fencing in 1950 and badminton in 1966 were the only new women’s events between 1934 and 1978 (it is worth noting that fencing is no longer an official sport at the Commonwealth Games). Progress accelerated from 1978, with new events added at each edition from then until 1990. The 1998 Games in Kuala Lumpur saw a major step forward, with cycling, field hockey, netball and squash all added for women. At the time of the 2006 Games in Melbourne, only seven boxing and rugby were men-only, and these were opened to women in 2014 and 2018 respectively.
This year there are no indoor sports for women, and two – netball and T20 cricket – which have only women’s competitions. Netball remains women-only due to its international status, while the cricket event is designed to both increase the visibility of the women’s game and help build a case for future Olympic inclusion.
There are 20 different disciplines in Birmingham this year, including the second Commonwealth Beach Volleyball event and the inaugural 3×3 basketball competition. Parasports is integrated into the main event program (it has been since 2002), and this year the Games will include esports – video game-based electronic sports – as a demonstration event. Esports already feature in the Asian Games, but not yet in the Olympics, so this year’s experiment in Birmingham is likely to be another step on the road to their full acceptance at international sporting events. The Birmingham demo event will see mixed-sex teams play soccer simulations and the online multiplayer battle arena game Defense of the Ancients.
What are the main differences between the Commonwealth Games and the Olympic Games?
The main difference is that the Olympic Games are open to any nation with its own National Olympic Committee. There has been some flexibility around this over the years, notably for the Unified Team in 1992 when the USSR was collapsing, and, since 2016, with the introduction of a refugee team for athletes who have lost their national status, but the basic model is the nation-state, regardless of its alliances or membership in other bodies. With the Commonwealth Games, membership of the Commonwealth of Nations is a prerequisite.
This explains the large differences in the size of the events. The most recent Summer Olympics, held in Tokyo in 2021, attracted 11,420 competitors from 206 teams, while the 2018 Commonwealth Games in Australia’s Gold Coast hosted 4,426 athletes from 71 teams. The Commonwealth Games are therefore much cheaper to stage: current estimates are that Birmingham 2022 will cost just under £800m, compared to the £8.8bn price tag for London 2012.
Ultimately, the biggest difference is that the Olympics are a global brand, with all the lucrative commercial and broadcasting deals that go with that, while the Commonwealth Games have a more limited appeal. The seat of the administrative bodies of the two events is quite clear here: the IOC occupies its own complex in Lausanne, Switzerland, while the Commonwealth Games Federation is based, along with various non-sporting bodies, at Commonwealth House in London’s Pall Mall.
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Birmingham is hosting the 2022 Commonwealth Games. Which other British cities have already staged them?
This year the Games will come to Great Britain for the seventh time and England for the third. The 1934 Empire Games, moved from Johannesburg at short notice, were split between London and Manchester. Wales hosted the 1958 British Empire and Commonwealth Games, with Cardiff doing the honours, and then Edinburgh received two Games in successive decades, hosting the successful 1970 edition and the much-boycotted 1986 Games . Next was Manchester in 2002, then Glasgow in 2014.
Some of these Games have left sporting legacies for their cities. Wembley Arena, for example, now used for concerts and major events, was built as the Empire Pool for the 1934 Games and Manchester City FC’s Etihad Stadium began life as an athletics venue for the 2002 Games before being converted in football.
Martin Polley is professor of history and director of the International Center for Sports History and Culture at De Montfort University. He has written widely on sports diplomacy, Olympic history, amateurism and professionalism, gender, and historiographical and methodological issues in the study of sport.
