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VJ Day and the story of women's football: history behind the headlines
00:45:19
Hannah Skoda and Rana Mitter discuss the historical context behind recent news stories
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- [00:03]
A
Hello, and welcome to our monthly series, History behind the Headlines. I'm Matt Elton. In each episode, an expert panel will be exploring the historical news stories that have caught their eye and the history that will help you make sense of what's going on in the world. Each month, I'll be joined by our two regular panelists.
- [00:19]
B
I'm Hannah Skoda. I'm fellow and Tutor in medieval history at St John's College in Oxford.
- [00:24]
C
I'm Rana Mitter. I'm St. Lee Chair in US Asia Relations and at the Harvard Kennedy School, and I'm a specialist on modern Chinese history.
- [00:33]
A
Hannah and Rana, thank you both so much, as always, for being here. This month has marked the 80th anniversary of VJ Day, 15th of August 1945, and the end of fighting on the Asian front in the Second World War. Though the conflict in Europe had been over by May, brutal battles continue to be fought in Southeast Asia until Japan's surrender at the end of the summer. Rana, can we start with your thoughts about how we should mark this moment?
- [00:56]
C
Absolutely, Matt. One of the things I think that Western listeners may notice, and again, I'm giving a very broad brush picture there, but for this purpose, I hope you'll excuse me, is the memory of the VJ victory over Japan by the Allies still sits in a much more secondary place in public memory than victory in Europe. That's very much the case in Europe itself. I think there was a lot more commemoration, really just two or three months ago for May 1945, being commemor in May 2025. But actually, I think it's also broadly more the case in the United States as well, even though, of course, the US is very much involved in both theaters of war. And again, I think it's fair to say that although today's Russia obviously uses the Second World War in highly politically problematic ways, since its invasion of Ukraine, nonetheless, there's always been a concentration on the Soviet Union's contribution to the second front in Europe. So to that extent, actually the actual ending of the Second World War, essentially by surrender in the middle of August of 1945 by the Japanese and then formalized essentially in early September, slightly different dates depending which power you are at that that point, it's always been seen as slightly a sort of a coda, a final ringing down the curtains, but in some ways not really quite as significant as the defeat of Hitler. And I would say that certainly if you're sitting in Asia and certainly if you look at the spread and the devastation of the war in Asia then actually, that's not at all what was going on there, not least because, of course, the war in Asia began before the war in Europe. There are different dates in terms of how it started. Some people might say it even started with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, northeast China, back in 1931. And that's the official position, actually these days, of the Chinese government. But most historians would still look at 1937, the outbreak of war between China and Japan. And then it becomes a global war after Pearl harbor, when the Japanese attack the American fleet in Hawaii in 1941. So that's when you get the combination of the European and Asian wars. And then in some ways, because there was the Europe first strategy by the Allies, essentially, there was always an expectation that the Axis powers in Asia, or the Axis power, I should say Japan, would be defeated after the reconquest of Europe. And in some ways, that prioritisation has continued to shape perceptions of the war itself. First of all, they're actually really at least two wars going on in the period of World War II in East Asia. One is perhaps the best known these days, the Pacific War, essentially between the United States, British Empire and the Empire of Japan. And this is the one where great naval battles like midway in 1942 see the turning of the tide. The sheer capacity of the United States in terms of its arsenals and its production, eventually proving the hammer that would be the blow that would destroy the Japanese Empire. But also less remembered, certainly in much of the wider world, cbi, the China, Burma, India Theatre. Again, the war started there in 1937, and then it goes on all the way to 1945. It's not, although it perhaps sits more in the shadows once the war in the Pacific starts, it's still very much there. And it is notable that, of course, that is the one theater, cbi, where essentially Asians are fighting other Asians, primarily the Chinese, against the Japanese. Of course, there is a Western contribution, not least the American air support for the Chinese as one of the Allies. And more broadly speaking, of course, there's financial and military strategy and assistance from the British and from the Americans. But overall, this is the theater which is mostly about the Chinese and the Japanese and perhaps difficulties of language, difficulties of emphasis. The Cold War all came together to mean that that war in which China fought Japan has always been in a sort of secondary status when it comes to thinking about World War II in the wider world. Worth remembering that we have many millions, eight to 10 or more Chinese died during that wartime period from effects that came from the war itself, including a terrible famine that killed more than 4 million people during that war, aside from the combat casualties and bombings and deaths during that time, but also massive refugee flight and the destruction of the infrastructure of China during that time. So brief sketch there of stakes, you might say what was at stake in terms of the Second World War in Asia, not just in terms of the Pacific War, but also the China War. But it's also worth noting that I think that there are reasons inherent to the way in which history has unfolded, why the memory of the Second World War in Asia on this 80th anniversary of VJ Day is still much more scattershot, much more fragmented, than the memory of war in Europe. And I would say that in some ways it's the post War, it's the Cold War that creates a unified sense, at least in Western Europe, of shared memory. There is a unified narrative to this day that the Nazi regime that arose in Germany was an existential threat to Europe, had to be defeated, and that ultimately, even though Nazi Germany conquered much of Europe, in the end, the defeat by the Allies of that power was an unadulterated good. Overall, despite many flaws that may have existed on the Allied side, the story in Asia is in some ways similar. The growth of Japan as an aggressive imperialist power, not genocidal like the Nazis. It's important to make the distinction, but very, very brutal in much of its occupation and attacks on China, the Philippines, Southeast Asia and much of the rest of the region. And yet there was never a united Asia. There never has been a united Asia in the way that there was a sort of united Europe, and therefore the shared history of that period never had time to embed in Asia. I would say that if you look at the way in which Japan has dealt with the wartime period, it's concentrated very much and expressing great regret and remorse for its wartime record. I think it's important to note that Japan has done a great deal to foster the culture of peace in the post war, but mainly concentrating on the war with the Americans, at least for external global understanding, less about the war with China. And that's partly because, of course, the Cold War drove China and Japan apart. There were no diplomatic relations between the. Between Mao's China And Japan until 1972, you know, nearly a quarter century after the war was over. There's also another ambiguity in some of those places. For instance, amongst the Indians who fought on the Japanese side, the Japanese were not seen as necessarily benevolent allies, but they were seen as a force that could act against British imperialism in Asia as well. And even today, there's an ambiguity about whether or not you can use another imperial power to essentially pursue your own view of nationalist freedom. Certainly today, the airport in Kolkata, formerly Calcutta, is named after Subas Chandra Bose, the Indian nationalist leader who, unlike Nehru, unlike Gandhi, fought with the Japanese against the British. So those sorts of ambiguities exist very much in the story that is told in Asia today. One last example that fits into today's headlines from Asia Today, or at least during this month, we'll see commemorations, I suspect, of the ending of World War II. The VJ commemorations in both China and Taiwan. China will very much portray this as a moment, understandably, when resistance by many, many Chinese Communists, nationalists, who are often anti communists nonetheless against the Japanese, fought together in a united front against the Japanese invasion of the 1930s and 40s. But in Taiwan, there'll be more ambiguity because, of course, more than 200,000 Taiwanese Chinese did fight in World War II, but as a Japanese colony at the time, they fought with the Japanese, not against them. And that creates a historical complexity about where imperial soldiers sit. That's very hard for a kind of hardline Chinese mainland nationalist story to actually incorporate. So even now, there are those sorts of ambiguities in terms of how that memory is put together. I mean, Hannah, I know that obviously your herrier we all, we all know as listen to the podcast, is Europe and it's the medieval period. But I'm just wondering, as someone who, you know, teaches a lot of students, do you have an impress that they have much of an idea of that sort of Asian dimension of the war or, you know, World War II is something we're all taught in British schools. It tends to, I think, be more on the European front. And I would imagine that most of our students in Britain do tend to have some idea of that. I do still feel that the Asian side is just much less well known.
- [09:47]
B
Do you have that perception actually noticeably in pre modern history at the moment, students are becoming increasingly global in their outlook and in their interests. But for the modern period, I think when people are thinking about the Second World War, there is very generally a lack of awareness of how in particular it's remembered in Asia. I think students do in many cases think very carefully about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and I think in some cases that's taught at a level as well. But I have the impression that our students are thinking quite carefully about what they see as the kind of moral conundrum involved here. But the ways in which those moral conundru tend to be framed, I think are pretty explicitly European.
- [10:29]
C
You brought up Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the only two places on earth to have suffered the effects of an atomic bombing dropped in anger in combat situations. And you know, as we're recording in the last few days, there has been the 80th anniversary of those particular historic events. Still, of course, you know, the horror of the destruction of those cities and the radiation sickness which came with the aftermath of the atomic bomb, still something very, very understood in both of those places and beyond as well, still a controversial area historically, where the debates go on about whether or not this was something that could have been justified at the time, whether it shortened the war, whether or not the nature of the weapon should have been known at that time, and understanding quite how they were devastating even beyond conventional incendiary bombs. There's a book by one of the most important scholars of the Second World War period. Professor Richard Overy has written many groundbreaking books on this subject. But his most recent one published this year, Reign of Ruin, is about the atomic bombings, about how the world got to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But it also puts it not in the context just of the moral argument. It's very, very much a book about that moral argument. I recommend it to anyone to read. But also understanding how previous tactics of warfare, many of which were used in Europe as well as Asia, had led to the position where American bombers could think that about using these weapons. In particular the firebombing of cities, which happened in German cities, Dresden most famously, but others too in those last months of the war in Europe. But then also the trying out of some of those weapons, including a substance that became known as napalm in the Vietnam War. It was its predecessor substance that was used first of all actually on cities in occupied China, including the city of Wuhan, to see if that kind of incendiary bomb would set the city on fire. And then where, when technological capability made it possible to actually fly bombers over the Japanese home islands in Tokyo and other major cities, essentially dropping these incendiary bombs that just created a sea of fire, massive destruction beyond anything that anyone had seen before, essentially opening up the way. At least I think this is a fair summary of Richard over his argument for the idea that this sort of mass destruction of civilians was something that was thinkable. And then you get from that pathway on the pathway towards ultimately the atomic bombings that happen in the summer of that year, in other words, they don't come out of nowhere in terms either of technology or in terms of the very anguished debates that went on about whether or not this was a tactic of warfare that could be used. But just thinking about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, one thing that's happened in the last few days, as we see the commemorations, is a reminder that those very, very elderly Hibakusha survivors of the atomic bomb, by definition, were people who were very young children in the summer of 1945 when those bombs fell on those cities. Old enough in some cases to have memories, but still children. And it's a reminder that sometimes we do tend to underplay or forget that so many of the frontline victims of wars, particularly in an era when war against civilians has become so mainstream, our children are people who are not themselves holders of any responsibility for the outbreak of war, but become often its most notable victims. I mean, Hannah, is this a phenomenon that you see, the sort of wider context and perhaps historical precedent for the presence of children as frontline victims in war?
- [14:15]
B
Yes. I've been thinking quite a lot recently about the effects of warfare on children and histories of this, and I think perhaps at this point we should just make a note to listeners that this material is really extremely distressing. It should be extremely distressing. These are utter tragedies that we're talking about. And then since we're talking about headlines as well, of course, at the moment, every time we pick up a newspaper, we see images of children in appalling circumstances, of suffering caused by warfare in various parts of the world. Of course, notably at the moment, we're seeing images of children in Gaza suffering in really extraordinary circumstances. I'm really struck, actually, that once I start to think more carefully about this, we know that children have suffered appallingly in warfare throughout history. But the written history of that, the historiography of that, I think, is very sparse at the moment. I think this is something that historians need to turn their attention to much more carefully. In many different periods, actually, in a sense, children are the most innocent victims of warfare. And yet a sort of comprehensive history of the effects on children, on childhood and on these humans as those who survive as they grow up, as well, I think, in many ways, is yet to be written. There are a few studies, those deserve due credit. But I was wondering, why is this the case? Of course, it's partly because children themselves tend often not to leave written records. Most of the time, children aren't in a position to document their experiences in a way which is going to survive across history. But I wonder whether it's also partly because acknowledging what warfare has done to children throughout the ages is so profoundly discomforting and it pushes so much against a kind of history of heroics and ideologies that, in a sense, is much easier, much easier to tell. I looked up some of the numbers here. Currently There are about 473 million children globally living in conflict zones. In a sense, I suppose we might divide children affected by warfare into two groups, children who get caught up actually inviting child soldiers, which is an interesting and appalling phenomenon throughout history. One might start that history possibly in ancient Sparta, where famously children were recruited from about the age of seven and then trained up. And when they're really little, they're generally not actually being used for fighting, but being used to do more menial tasks simply because they're not physically strong enough, not because of any sense of sympathy towards their sensibilities. And then very, very young, they're involved in kind of frontline fighting. One could trace that sort of history through the Middle Ages. One particularly poignant moment is the so called Children's Crusade of 1212. So this was an extraordinary movement, apparently of about 30,000 children who decided to set off to the Holy Land to convert the Muslims, according to the Chronicles. And these children set off across Europe and they were to board ships in Italy to sail across and reach Jerusalem, but they were all either shipwrecked or sold into slavery. That's the account we get in the Chronicles. It's very, very difficult to kind of uncover the historical reality of this rather extraordinary episode. Seems there were two separate movements, one led by a French boy called Stephen of Cloy, who was an extremely charismatic young man who managed to mobilise a huge crowd of young children who set off to Italy and who did indeed board ship, and many of whom were indeed then enslaved, particularly in modern day Tunisia. And then there was a separate movement in Germany led by another child called Nicholas of Cologne of Cologne, who again mobilized a huge group of young people. It's a little bit unclear whether the Latin genuinely means children or whether it means kind of unskilled, quote unquote, innocent young people. And he set off with them. They're completely ill equipped and the whole thing is a disaster. And all the distraught parents in the villages in Germany from which these young people have been mobilized, in fact, lynch Nicholas of Cologne's father for allowing him to make this happen. So there's an extraordinary sense in the chronicle accounts of this episode of the sheer levels of distress caused by young people becoming involved in this. There's a real sense that this is something abnormal and completely extraordinary. And on the one hand, in this medieval context, they're kind of playing on the innocence and the sort of particular holiness of these children, particularly when in the stories they're captured and enslaved. But they're also really playing in the chronicles on a sense of the sheer extraordinariness and awfulness of seeing young people involved in this kind of thing. We would also, I think, if we are thinking about a history of children in warfare, obviously want to think about children not as child soldiers, but straightforwardly as victims of warfare. I think there's a rather interesting shift in the Middle Ages here, which has potentially quite a lot to sort of show us in terms of how we might think about this conceptually. Now, I'm drawing largely here on a really interesting article by John Gillingham about women and children in warfare in the Middle Ages, where he argues that in the early Middle Ages, women and children suffer horrifically in warfare, but quite deliberately, not as collateral damage, but as intended victims. That in this kind of warfare, the whole point is to completely destroy a society, the society that you're attacking. You kill all the men and you harm the women and children as much as you can, and you economically do pretty well out of it because you send most of them off to be enslaved. So, for example, Henry of Livonia describes for us an expedition against the heathen Estonians. This is late 12th, early 13th centuries. And he says, we burned and devastated everything, killed all the males, captured the women and children and drove off their horses, cattle and sheep. And this is emphatically something he's really proud of, a kind of celebration of the fact that children were caught up and made to suffer here. But really interestingly, he's writing at what seems to be quite a transitional moment. This moment, sort of late 12th, early 13th century, sees a shift from women and children being kind of intended targets in warfare to being seen instead as collateral damage. That you don't aim to destroy these people or to harm them as much as possible, but they might well be harmed whilst you're doing whatever else is required by your military campaign. So that over the course of Middle Ages, we then see extraordinary levels of suffering of children, for example, in the Hundred Years war in the 14th and 15th centuries. And there's many, many pieces of appalling evidence about what children go through, but they're not the targets. And there's this really important distinction between intended targets and collateral damage. If we then jump over many, many centuries into the late 20th century, the UN commissioned a report in 1996 from Greta Mattel about the effect of warfare on children and children caught up in warfare. And what she drew on in that report, really strikingly, was precisely this distinction between children as intended victims of warfare and children as kind of collateral damage warfare, both of which are utterly, utterly appalling and horrific. And what she pointed to in that report was perhaps a sense that that distinction, which I'm suggesting perhaps emerged in the Middle Ages following John Gillingham, that that distinction was becoming muddied again in the second half of the 20th century, and that it's not clear now when children are collateral damage and when they're the intended victims. And I think it's a distinction which, thinking about this historically, actually has quite a lot to show us in terms of the ethics of this and in terms of highlighting the sheer levels of tragedy involved.
- [22:28]
C
It's a fascinating set of thoughts there over a long period of time as well. First of all, the children's crusade. It's a phrase that many people have heard, but it's great to have it explained in that way. I also found myself thinking hard when you mentioned Henry of Livonia. I got back a few days ago from Latvia, which of course is the successor state of Livonia, and Gladys State seems to be a bit more of a peaceful place these days. Of course, the Baltics are a little bit on the front line when it comes to contemporary geopolitics as well. But I had a question. You brought up a really interesting distinction from the article you've mentioned between children as intended victims and children as collateral. I found myself wondering where and how does the definition, if there is one of who counts as children changing? Because, of course, there is this long tradition, particularly in early modern European history, I think of, you know, what some people call invention of childhood. That's probably a bit, you know, kind of over the top in certain ways. But the question of at what age, you know, you attain adulthood thinking about child soldiers, you know, again, is there a perception in that earlier period that some children who actually end up bearing arms are actually children? Or is that a retrospective projection that we have in terms of our understanding of when people achieve maturity and age? How does that perception of childhood change over time, would you say?
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B
Yeah, it's a really interesting question. And there's an ongoing debate about how people are thinking about childhood in a pre modern period. I think so. There was a famous book some time ago by Philippe Aries about the idea of childhood, where he suggested that in the Middle Ages there wasn't really a concept of childhood per se, that children are just mini adults in a sense, sort of borne out by iconography. In the Middle Ages where children do look like mini adults half the time, they, you know, the proportions are just exactly like adult proportions. They're just smaller. Anyway, clearly he's wrong. There really is a very distinctive sense that children are different, that they have different capabilities and different vulnerabilities and different needs from those of adults. So I think that the sort of concept itself is absolutely there in the Middle Ages. It's precisely what is then kind of mobilized in sort of growing commentaries about how children should not be made the targets of warfare. For example, Papal Legate makes King David of Scotland promise in his campaign to spare women and children. He's able to make this point to King David because David wants to sort of portray himself as a kind of civilized ruler. And increasingly, showing yourself to be a civilized ruler means showing that you conduct warfare in a particular way. And that means, according to the Papal Legate, sparing children and their children is used as a sort of generalized category. So clearly they really are thinking about children as they having sort of particular vulnerabilities and particular rights and particular needs in terms of what age one becomes a child as opposed to an infant, and what age one becomes an adolescent as opposed to a child. That does look a little different from now, and it is a little younger. But I think there is most definitely a sense that anybody under the age of 12 or 13 counts as a child, even if they are in general living in much harsher conditions than we are now. And interestingly, incidentally, much of the current UN commentaries around children in warfare uses the age of 15 as the cutoff point, which I think is very striking. I would have assumed it would be 18, so I think there's a lot of nebulousness around what we think of as children in different periods, But a.
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C
Reminder that whatever age, as you know you've been pointing out, they can be and so often are victims of wars that have not been started through any fault of their own. And you know, that's one thing that perhaps has remained constant over centuries, let alone decades.
- [26:20]
B
Yeah, exactly. And these are histories which are utterly heart rending and really should be. You chose to hit play on this podcast today. Smart choice. Progressive loves to help people make smart choices. That's why they offer a tool called Auto Quote Explorer that allows you to compare your progressive car insurance quote with rates from other companies so you save time on the research and can enjoy savings when you choose the best rate for you. Give it a try. After this episode@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates number not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy.
- [26:57]
C
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- [27:27]
A
Moving ahead to a much lighter subject, the end of July saw the England women's football team win their second UEFA European Women's Championship in a row, defeating Spain on penalties. Hannah, what historical parallels leapt out at you for this story?
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B
I was so delighted to read a positive headline and have something to celebrate. It was extremely exciting and I think we all want to congratulate the lionesses on their wonderful success. The history of football is really, really fun and really fascinating and surprisingly lengthy as well. So there are little scraps of evidence here and there in the Middle Ages about football being played in various contexts. And most of that evidence gives a real sense of the joy of football as well, which is lovely. And by football, I should say we're not referring to the rules of association football. We're referring to something played probably with a pig's bladder being kicked across many, many fields extremely brutally. William Fitzstephen from 1174 talks about basically parents watching younger people playing football. He says the older citizens come to watch. You can see their inner passions aroused as they get caught up in the action. So that's the late 12th century, this lovely sense of spectatorship and excitement and enthusiasm and parents getting really excited, excited about what their young people are up to as well. A little bit of information about what that early version of football might have involved. I mentioned pigs bladders. Quite often football seems to have been played, particularly at Shrovetide, partly because that's a moment of celebration, but also because that's a moment when pigs are being slaughtered and cooked for banquets. Anyway, so there's a great poem by Alexander Berkeley from 1518 where he talks about when men be busied in killing of swine, they get the bladder and they blow it great and thin with many beans and peas and put within. And then he talks about running and leaping. They drive away the cold, the sturdy ploughman, lusty, strong and bold overcometh the winter with driving the football, Forgetting labour and many a grievous fall. So, again, there's a real sense of the kind of fun and joy and exuberance of all of this. I think with these little vignettes, we could be forgiven for thinking that football was an entirely male actually activity. So Alexander Berkeley is talking about the Lusty Ploughman, and I'm sure we kind of are envisaging young men running around playing football. And certainly it's an extremely brutal kind of game, extremely physically demanding. Therefore, all the more interesting that so many women seem to actually been involved in football from quite an early stage, too. So, again, really just tidbits of evidence here and there. Manuscript illuminations, for example, sometimes give us images of women playing football or other sports. There's a lovely manuscript in the Bodleian Library in Oxford showing a Franciscan friar holding a little bat and a Benedictine nun catching the ball which he's batting to her. So not football, but some rather nondescript kind of batting game. There's some quite patchy evidence about annual football matches in the medieval period in Scotland, involving one team of single women playing another team of married women, which sounds interesting. And the history of women's football really sort of gathers pace then in the late 19th century, interestingly, of course, at the same kind of moment when men's football is also gathering pace and gathering more rules. I think 1863 is seen as a kind of key moment for men's association football. And the first kind of formal records of a match for women's football are 1881. So 7 May 1881, a team of English women played a team of Scottish women in Edinburgh, and everybody had a great time. It was a great success. Two more matches were organised, one in Glasgow, one in Manchester. But just as the kind of success of this took off, so the backlash began. So those two matches were in fact cancelled because of kind of violent protest. The British Ladies Football Club was founded in 1884 by the brilliantly named Nettie Honeyball, who I think might be my new kind of historical heroine. She sounds amazing and she wrote, I founded the association with the fixed resolve of proving to the world that women are not the ornamental and useless creatures men have pictured. I must confess, my convictions on all matters where the sexes are so widely divided are all on the side of emancipation. And I look forward to the time when ladies may sit in Parliament and have a voice in the direction of affairs, especially those which concern them most. What's really interesting in that little commentary from Nettie Honeywell in the 1880s is how she's tying the kind of birth of formalised women's football into a kind of wider history of women's emancipation and the franchise and so on. And it's very striking, actually, that during the First World War, a moment at which, of course, women's political voice is significantly amplified, women's football also really takes off. So, for example, in the northeast of England, in the munitions factories, the. There are some kind of formal football matches organised for women which were extremely popular. But just as women's football seems to kind of mirror that kind of move towards women's rights, so the backlash takes a very similar kind of trajectory. So after the end of the First World War, there's a real sort of clampdown on women's football. And in 1921, the FA banned it entirely. So they banned women using official referees from using official pitches. And extraordinarily, that ban, starting in 1921, lasted until 1971. It was a 50 year ban on women's football. It's not until 1984 that the first UEFA Women's Euros took place, but there weren't enough teams competing for it to have official status. And it's not until 2009 that the FA introduced central contracts for women. And at that point, once kind of professionalized football was possible, audiences once again grew and this became a kind of mainstream phenomenon. But it's an astonishingly recent history. I'm really fascinated by the backlash against this, why, why anyone would feel the need to ban women's football, as if it's somehow horrifically dangerous. It's completely extraordinary, a half century band ban. And I think it's rather interesting and telling actually to compare that ban and the stated reasons for it with bans on men's football in previous periods. So in my own period in the Middle Ages, the kind of. The authorities generally have very ambivalent attitudes towards sport generally, and football comes in for a number of prohibitions as well. So, for example, 1314, the city of London bans football on the basis that it causes tumults, tumults arising from the striking of great footballs in the fields of the public. So they're worried that it might get people so excited that it could kind of be linked to violent protest. In 1331, Edward III banned football once again, and this was because he was preparing for an invasion of Scotland. So there, there's a sense that you mustn't let people play football because they're directing their energies in the wrong directions and they should be saving, conserving their energies for fighting the Scots in 1921. When the FA bans women's football, the reasoning given there is nothing to do with, like, the national interest or, I don't know, fighting the Scottish. It's specifically, apparently, because of women's fragile bodies that it is inappropriate for women to be playing football. It's that emphasis on bodies which is so striking, I think, in terms of how that's conceptualised and marks this apart from any ban on men's football that was placed at any point in history. Branagh, I think you'd been thinking about the role of bodies and how people think about bodies in 20th century sport.
- [35:24]
C
I have, Hannah, not just because, like you, I was absolutely celebrating the lioness victory again, sort of, you know, biting fingernails and so forth. I was biting fingernails, particularly because I was watching it during my aforementioned trip to Latvia. So it was actually on Riga television with a Latvian language commentary, since the British rights were not available in Latvia. So I had to basically use a combination of pictures and the level of pitched excitement in the voice of the Latvian commentators to work out what's going on. Anyway, I think that it definitely put me in mind of the wider history again, that got us to, you know, that extraordinary, detailed history that you gave us of women's football. And I'd say that there are a couple of things that came to mind. One is the intersection of class with gender in terms of women's football. But also, as you point out, the kind of rough and rowdy nature of football over the centuries and what people made of it, I mean, for a very long time seen as a working class game, as opposed to, say, cricket, which was actually in many ways also working class game, but was defined in many cases as if it weren't. So that distinction between gentlemen and players, which you got for a very long time, and women's cricket, cricket also, I think, was subjected. It wasn't until, I think, the 1980s that you get the rise in England of women's cricket. Rachel Hayhoe Flint and other people who pioneered that particular set of developments at that, at that time. But I think also, as well as the fragility of the body, I think there's something more basic going on here. Again, feel free to, you know, push back, but I'll put this forward as a. As at least a theory here. There's a great phrase you get from this mid 20th century, I think, which is the idea that horses sweat, men perspire and ladies Gently glow. In other words, it's not so much the fragility of the body, it's more the fact that women who are playing, you know, hard and top level, or even not at top level for a sport like football, of course, you know, they'll sweat, they'll run around, they'll look quotes unladylike. And I wonder how much of this might have been part of a kind of restriction of the idea that this isn't the way that you want to see your daughters actually growing up and that the combination of that with the idea that it's a working class game. I wonder if there was a certain element of class and gender stereotyping going on during that period. But it also had a double irony for me because actually the period we're talking about in terms of the 50 year ban, was a period when around the world, certainly actually in the Western world, but actually in the, in the wider world as well, Asia and beyond that actually the idea of the female body was being rethought in all sorts of ways around the world. One thing that you see, for instance, is that women's sports, when it comes to gymnastics, becomes much more prominent at that time. I mean, again, China, it's clear that for instance, the appearance of female athletes at the Olympics and the 1930s and, and beyond is one of the ways in which of course, Chinese women compete. But also, of course, it's a way of showcasing a phenomenon that became known worldwide as the phenomenon of the new woman. In other words, someone who was no longer bound by the conventions or the social and economic restrictions of an old, pre modern way of life. But in a China, or even indeed in India or other country that was being shaped by industrialization and modernity. Showing yourself as being a new woman, a modern woman, could take many forms. Going out to work, for instance, would be one obvious part of that, but also basically showcasing the body. I would again take one very literal example. All the way into the late 19th century, in some cases even the early 20th Chinese women, most of them, not all, but many Chinese women, would have had bound feet. And of course, the ending of that particular and horrific practice through a combination of Chinese middle class pressure and also missionary Christian influence, led instead to the emergence of, in many cases, a celebration of the body. The idea that young women, like young men who could leap, who could undertake the kind of, you know, the full use of the body in gymnastic display, this was something very neat. The traditional Confucian way of thinking about the body was first of all, that it was usually gendered very male. That's not exclusive to China, of course, but also very languid in many ways. If you're going to be a Confucian scholar, a gentleman, you wouldn't be running around getting sweaty. You would be very much lying back, you know, reclining, reading the words of Confucius and, you know, thinking about how to project yourself as a proper gentleman. So Mao, Mao Zedong, Chairman Mao was one of the first people who really wrote pieces advocating that people should undertake personal exercise plans. They should get sweaty, they should ride bareback on a horse through the valley of the mountains. And he would have argued, I mean, he did argue in his early years that women should also be given these opportunities as well as men, even though he turned into something of an oppressor of women in his later years, I would say. But in those early years, that sort of feminism that was in Mao's writing was often very explicit and quite tied to the body as well. In India, too, perhaps less tied to athletics. But you have the idea of the new woman emerging in the early 20th century as well. And so that sort of celebration of the idea of the tanned, healthy body, sometimes actually not in sports, but more perhaps in terms of artistry, the nude body as well. The emergence of the nude was something that, you know, prior to that, that in. In many of those sorts of artworks have been seen more as something for private consumption, maybe even something in the erotic world. This would be true, say, of prints in. In Japan. But by the 20th century, you get the emergence of the idea that the nude, as opposed to simply the naked body, was a sign of confidence and nudism. Naturism actually kind of, you know, enjoying the sunshine became something that young Chinese seekers after a sort of more healthy lifestyle would undertake in the 1920s as well. So I might just end with the brief words translated of Hiratsuko Raich, one of the Japanese anarchist poets of the era. I don't think she was, I hasten to add, I'm not aware of any interest in nudism, but she was very interested in projecting the idea of young Japanese women as being at the forefront of modernity. And she wrote a poem, poem that simply read, I am a new woman. Every day I strive to become more and more a new woman. I am the sun. And in that sense of confidence, that sense of wanting to take opportunities unashamedly and positively and with pride. Maybe it's a bit of a stretch to the Euro 2025 victory, but I for one, am happy to make that stretch at this particular point.
- [42:16]
B
I love it. Thank you.
- [42:17]
A
And with that, the whistle has gone for full time on this month's podcast. Hannah and Rana, thank you both so much as always for your time. We'll be back next.