Get Lost to Your Island
Hamilton Richardson and the (Re)Presentation of Belonging in Dutch Baseball, 1962–1991
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7170709 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jan Bant (0009-0009-8821-1286, Radboud University Nijmegen, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 42 |
| Issue | 12-13 |
| Pages | 1439-1456 |
| Publication date | 2025-10-21 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The International Journal of the History of Sport (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0952-3367 • E-ISSN: 1743-9035 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/09523367.2025.2481135 |
| OpenAlex | W4409070029 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
Sint Maarten-born baseball player Hamilton Richardson became a pioneering Afro-Caribbean sports star in the 1960s Netherlands, when the country was relatively white and ethnically homogenous. This study examines how he was portrayed by the Dutch press and how he presented himself in the same media between 1962 and 1991. While scholarship on Black athletes in the media focused on external representations, athletes’ own mediated self-presentation remains understudied. Furthermore, scholars have argued that Dutch Caribbean migrants in the Netherlands received little media coverage between the 1960s and 1980s. Both these notions are challenged in this article, since Richardson garnered extensive media attention, while also expressing himself regularly in the Dutch press. In this media discourse, he was represented as not belonging to Dutch society, while he simultaneously actively tried to shape a sense of belonging through his mediated self-presentation. Consequently, studying athletes’ representation and self-presentation in tandem provides new perspectives for understanding negotiations of postcolonial belonging in the Netherlands and Europe
Art · Art history · Cartography · Genealogy · Geography · American Sports and Literature · History · Sport and Mega-Event Impacts · Sports, Gender, and Society
| Citations per year | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |