Sport and UK soft power: The case of Mount Everest
| Author | Richard Woodward |
| DOI | 10.1177/1369148120908502 |
| Published date | 01 May 2020 |
| Date | 01 May 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Original Articles |
908502BPI0010.1177/1369148120908502The British Journal of Politics and International RelationsWoodward
research-article2020
Original Article
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
Sport and UK soft power: The
2020, Vol. 22(2) 274 –292
© The Author(s) 2020
case of Mount Everest
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https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148120908502
DOI: 10.1177/1369148120908502
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Richard Woodward
Abstract
Sport is widely acknowledged as an important contributor to the United Kingdom’s soft power
resources. This article aims to broaden and deepen our understanding of sport and soft power
in the United Kingdom through a case study of British expeditions to, and the eventual conquest
of, Mount Everest. Based on original archival research, the article demonstrates that British state
institutions intervened systematically and strategically to expedite, and massage the story of, the
ascent of Everest to burnish British prestige and present a favourable image to the world. In
doing so, the article provides evidence that sport has been intrinsic to the United Kingdom’s
diplomatic repertoire and soft power assets for considerably longer than existing accounts discern.
Moreover, the Everest case offers important cues for contemporary policymakers. In particular, it
demonstrates the need for the United Kingdom to project a clear, credible and consistent image
if it is to profit from its soft power resources.
Keywords
international prestige, mega-events, Mount Everest, public diplomacy, soft power, sport
Introduction
On the morning of 29 May 1953 two men, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, inched
their way up Mount Everest’s southeast summit ridge. Their successful ascent marked the
climax of over 30 years of British expeditions devoted to scaling the world’s highest
mountain. News of the triumph, breaking felicitously on Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation
day, was acclaimed worldwide. This apparent serendipity was, to an extent, a coincidence
choreographed by the British state in its on-going struggles to squeeze what has become
known as ‘soft power’ (Nye, 1990) from the Everest saga.
Accumulating soft power, the notion that interests in world politics can be advanced
by cultivating and projecting a favourable image that attracts others and persuades them
to your point of view, is now a central foreign policy objective of most leading states. Few
countries illustrate this better than the United Kingdom where the ambition ‘to be the
leading soft power nation’ (HM Government, 2015: 47) is enshrined in the National
Security Strategy. References to the concept likewise punctuate the speeches of the
School of Strategy and Leadership, Coventry University, Coventry, UK
Corresponding author:
Richard Woodward, School of Strategy and Leadership, Coventry University, Coventry CV1 5DL, UK.
Email: ac0956@coventry.ac.uk
Woodward
275
United Kingdom’s political and diplomatic figures (Hunt, 2019; Johnson, 2017), stimu-
lating a spate of studies devoted to detecting and mapping the wellsprings of UK soft
power and the techniques through which it can be harnessed. These investigations pin-
point a portfolio of UK soft power assets encompassing British institutions; norms and
values; educational establishments; business brands; cultural, creative and broadcasting
industries; scientific aptitude; language; and, the main theme of this article, sport (British
Council, 2013, 2018: 33–36; Hill and Beadle, 2014; House of Lords Select Committee on
Soft Power and the UK’s Influence, 2014; Institute for International Cultural Relations,
2017; ResPublica, 2017).
The political science literature conventionally argues that the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office’s (FCO) ‘embrace of sport as an element in its soft power rep-
ertoire is both recent and tentative’ (Grix and Houlihan, 2014: 584), reaching its apogee
with the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. A more exhaustive audit of the writing
on sport and politics in the United Kingdom however, encompassing work by histori-
ans, sociologists and sports scientists, indicates that attempts by the FCO and its prede-
cessors1 to profit from sport’s soft power potential predate this. Although their interest
was intermittent and their attitude ambivalent, this article contributes to the mounting
evidence that during the first half of the 20th century the United Kingdom’s foreign
policymakers haltingly acclimatised to the idea that sport could be appropriated to
amplify diplomatic messages.
The retreat of the United Kingdom’s hard power after 1945 accentuated the FCO’s
appreciation of assets such as sport as vehicles to convey messages about Britain to audi-
ences overseas (Beck, 2005). Yet the story of how the United Kingdom’s foreign policy
establishment sought soft power from winning the race to conquer Mount Everest, argu-
ably the United Kingdom’s preeminent postwar sporting feat, has gone untold. At a time
when the state’s involvement in sporting matters was more ‘inadvertent than planned’
(Grix et al., 2015: 472), key organs of the United Kingdom’s foreign policy machinery
were intervening systematically to expedite a British success on Everest. Indeed decades
before it was a staple of the political lexicon; British officials were describing the Everest
expeditions in language legible to modern scholars and practitioners of soft power. The
FCO likewise chaperoned the aftermath of the conquest with the ambition of burnishing
the United Kingdom’s prestige overseas.
Based on primary documents consulted at the Royal Geographical Society (RGS), the
British Library (BL) and The National Archives (TNA), this article analyses the British
state’s attempts to exploit Mount Everest, especially its eventual ascent, for soft power
purposes. The article’s empirical backbone draws upon official FCO documentation
detailing the discussions between those responsible for discharging UK diplomacy in
south Asia and their interactions with those overseeing Everest expeditions. Housed in
paper form at the BL, the paramount source of interwar data are approximately 400 tele-
grams, cables, letters, minute papers and notes pertaining to the Everest expeditions con-
tained in the files of the Political and Secret Department of the India Office. The account
of the UK government’s disposition towards sport, and specifically the Everest expedi-
tions, after 1945 rests chiefly on an examination of around 250 original hard-copy docu-
ments accessed at TNA. The overwhelming majority of these files derive from the Foreign
Office Political Department with smaller numbers from the War Office and the Cabinet
Office. The government documents recounting the diplomatic dance incited by the expe-
ditions were cross-referenced with the RGS Everest Expedition papers. Covering the
period from 1918 to 1955, these records encompass the work of the RGS committees that
276
The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 22(2)
planned the Everest expeditions and, crucially, their correspondence with the FCO. The
collection’s size (over 20,000 items in 150 boxes) and, until a current digitisation project
is completed, the fact that most pieces are not catalogued at an individual level (Royal
Geographical Society (RGS), 1924) make it a more challenging proposition for research-
ers. The author sifted over 800 items mainly from boxes 59–99 of the collection, which
hold hard copies of postwar expedition materials. A smaller tranche of digitalised docu-
ments concerning the interwar expeditions were accessed online at the RGS.
The article’s contribution is threefold. First, by broadening the literature beyond its
current fixation with the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, it refines our understand-
ing of the relationship between sport and soft power in the United Kingdom. Second, it
demonstrates that sport has formed part of the FCO’s soft power arsenal for considerably
longer than existing accounts discern. Finally, despite today’s drastically different con-
text, the Everest episode offers important cues to the United Kingdom’s contemporary
foreign policymakers. In particular, if the United Kingdom is to profit from its soft power
resources, it must project a clear, credible and consistent image.
Sport and (soft) power
According to Nye (2008: 94), power ‘is the ability to affect others to obtain the outcomes
you want’. Typically, international relations scholars equate power with material capa-
bilities. The deployment of these ‘hard’ power resources, for example, military force,
helps states to reap their desired objectives by coercing or inducing others to adjust their
position. In the 21st century, however, it is largely accepted that states have a comple-
mentary suite of intangible ‘soft’ power assets. For Nye (2004, 2008), culture, institu-
tions, political ideals and foreign policies form the central pillars of a state’s soft power.
Attraction rather than coercion is the currency of soft power, with these assets convert-
ing into power for a state when others admire and wish to emulate their example. States
possessing soft power sculpt the preferences of others in ways that make them more
amenable to their agenda. In short, soft power is about ‘getting others to want what you
want’ (Nye, 2002: 9).
Some dissenting voices notwithstanding (Li, 2018), soft power is widely acknowl-
edged to wield an important influence over the conduct of world politics. Consequently,
...
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