The Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games was the 22nd holding of the quadrennial sporting event for nations that are members of the Commonwealth of Nations, a political association of 56 member states, many of which were formerly part of the British Empire. While the origins of the Games in the British Empire give the nations competing a sense of shared identity and history, they also create an uneasiness based on this history.
From the seventeenth century until the middle of the twentieth century, Britain had the largest Empire in the world, often described as the ‘Empire which the sun never set on’ because of its vast size, which incorporated roughly one third of the world’s population. When military men, diplomats or businessmen (sport was initially only a male preserve) of Britain explored and settled in countries across the world, they took their favourite pastimes with them, most prominently sport.
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