The Commonwealth Games: A History

The Commonwealth Games are the most visible sporting expression of the Commonwealth of Nations, and they have been a useful barometer of the organisation’s character: imperial, post-imperial, anti-apartheid, and now uncertain. The Games, held every four years (with three exceptions) since 1930, are a peculiar institution. They are not an Olympic-style meritocracy, because the entry list is restricted to Commonwealth countries; they are not a strictly imperial pageant, because independent states have competed since 1930. They sit somewhere in between, and the tension has produced some of the most politically charged moments in the history of international sport.

The Origins of the Games

The first British Empire Games were held in Hamilton, Ontario, from 16 to 23 August 1930, organised by the athletic official Astley Cooper. The Hamilton Games drew around 400 athletes from 11 countries and six sports: athletics, boxing, lawn bowls, rowing, swimming, and wrestling. The 1934 London Games and the 1938 Sydney Games consolidated the format; the Sydney Games introduced the first women’s events, a fact that bears repeating when the imperial inheritance is discussed without qualification. The Second World War forced the cancellation of the 1942 Games, and post-war austerity delayed the resumption until 1950.

From Empire to Commonwealth

The 1950 Auckland Games were the first post-war edition, with 590 athletes from 12 countries, including India, Pakistan, and South Africa. The participating states now reflected the new Commonwealth rather than the older British Empire, and the politics of the event were changing with it. The Games were renamed the British Empire and Commonwealth Games in 1954, the British Commonwealth Games in 1970 (the Edinburgh edition), and the Commonwealth Games in 1974 (the Christchurch edition). The three-step renaming is, in miniature, the political history of the modern Commonwealth.

The 1966 Kingston Games in Jamaica were the first held in a developing country. The 1982 Brisbane Games were the largest yet, with 1,459 athletes from 46 countries. The 1994 Victoria Games featured the post-apartheid return of South Africa to the Commonwealth, a symbolic moment that the organisers underlined by allowing South African teams to compete under the new flag. The 2002 Manchester Games, with 3,679 athletes from 72 countries, were the largest edition to date.

The 1986 Edinburgh Boycott

The most consequential political episode in the history of the Games was the 1986 Edinburgh boycott. Thirty-two countries — almost all of them Black Commonwealth members — pulled out in protest at the Thatcher government’s refusal to impose sanctions on apartheid South Africa, and in deference to the position of the Commonwealth’s Non-Aligned members. The Games went ahead with perhaps one-third of the expected field; the spectacle of “white” Commonwealth sport proceeding without the African and Caribbean majority was a devastating political defeat for British policy and a vindication of the principle, established in the 1977 Gleneagles Agreement, that Commonwealth members would use sport against apartheid. The Scottish organisers, led by the journalist and former athlete Sandy Duncan, used the boycott to argue for a “Scottish games” that would treat the cultural question on its own terms. The episode is the closest the Games have come to a constitutional crisis.

The Modern Games

The 2010 Delhi Games, the first held in India, were shadowed by reports of corruption in the organising committee and by a small but persistent Dalit rights protest. The 2014 Glasgow Games were a national celebration; the 2018 Gold Coast Games were the first to feature an equal number of men’s and women’s medal events. The 2022 Birmingham Games, awarded in 2017 after Durban was stripped of hosting rights over financial non-compliance, included para-sport as a fully integrated part of the programme for the first time. The decision to award the 2026 Games to Glasgow, after Victoria, Canada, withdrew in 2023, is a sign of the financial strain that the four-year cycle now places on mid-sized host cities. The 2026 programme has been slimmed down to 10 sports, the smallest since 1930, in part to reduce costs.

The Politics and the Future

The Games have always been a vehicle for imperial memory — the cricket test, the lawn bowls, the shared anthem at the closing ceremony. They have also been a vehicle for anti-colonial argument: the 1986 Edinburgh boycott is the most obvious example, but the integration of para-sport and the gender parity of the medal programme show how the Games have absorbed the politics of the contemporary Commonwealth. Critics have questioned the cost of hosting and the relevance of the four-year cycle; defenders argue that the Games are an important expression of Commonwealth values in a fragmented world. The Glasgow 2026 Games will be a test of the event’s viability. The Australian state of Victoria pulled out of the 2026 Games in 2023 over cost concerns, and the Canadian province of Alberta withdrew from the 2030 Games in 2025 for the same reason. The future of the Commonwealth Games as a regularly scheduled event is no longer certain.

Historiographical Note

The scholarly literature on the Commonwealth Games is thin but growing. The standard works remain the official histories by G. P. D. Harper and the essays collected in Sport and the British World (2014), edited by Erik Nielsen and James Smith. Recent work by Damion Thomas on the politicisation of Black sport, and by Rob Hess and Brian Stoddart on Australian sport and empire, has read the Games as a vehicle for imperial memory and anti-imperial argument. The Edinburgh boycott has been examined in detail by Peter Hain and by the historians of the 1986 End Conscription Campaign. What is missing is a serious history of the Games from the perspective of the Caribbean and African athletes, who made the modern Commonwealth Games both politically significant and competitively credible.

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