Reformers Sport Modernizers

A record of the role of selected middle-class individuals across Europe who made notable contributions to the early evolution of modern sport and who saw success in modern sport as an expression of human qualities to be admired, applauded and encouraged. They viewed sport, sometimes self-interestedly but not always self-interestedly, as a medium of personal, collective and national virtue. It is the first general consideration of a selection of these innovatory pioneers and proselytisers who placed Europe at the forefront of major developments in contemporary world sport - now a phenomenon of global significance.

Danish sport has been associated with Europe and the World; not least through I.P. Muller and Niels Bukh and the Danish Gymnastics revolution with its emphasis on male aesthetics and hygiene in the first half of the twentieth century. At the same time, Denmark has stood apart from Europe in the early moments of its history of sport with the rural revolution of the farming communities as a statement of political independence and assertion. However, during the German occupation of Denmark, Danish sport was part of a European collaboration which characterized a number of the occupied countries not least in the Nordic area. After the Second World War, Denmark embraced international body cultures with other European nations in particular Eastern martial arts. Denmark too, as part of trends in the European region and the world, became caught up in sport as a powerful contemporary political statement. This book was previously published as a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport.

The Great War has been largely ignored by historians of sport. However sport was an integral part of cultural conditioning into both physiological and psychological military efficiency in the decades leading up to it. It is time to acknowledge that the Great War also had an influence on sport in post-war European culture. Both are neglected topics. Sport, Militarism and the Great War deals with four significant aspects of the relationship between sport and war before, during and immediately after the 1914-1918 conflict. First, it explores the creation and consolidation of the cult of martial heroism and chivalric self-sacrifice in the pre-war era. Second, it examines the consequences of the mingling of soldiers from various nations on later sport. Third, it considers the role of the Great War in the transformation of the leisure of the masses. Finally, it examines the links between war, sport and male socialisation. The Great War contributed to a redefinition of European masculinity in the post-war period. The part sport played in this redefinition receives attention. Sport, Militarism and the Great War is in two parts: the Continental (Part I) and the "Anglo-Saxon" (Part II). No study has adopted this bilateral approach to date. Thus, in conception and execution, it is original. With its originality of content and the approaching centenary of the advent of the Great War in 2014, it is anticipated that the book will capture a wide audience. This book was originally published as a special issue of The International Journal of the History of Sport.

With essays covering all aspects of sports history, this volume is a tribute to the scholarship of Professor Tony Mangan. Regarded by many as a pioneer and mentor, Professor Mangan's foundational work has sustained the field for decades.

This is the first history of sport in Ireland, locating the history of sport within Irish political, social, and cultural history, and within the global history of sport. Sport and Ireland demonstrates that there are aspects of Ireland's sporting history that are uniquely Irish and are defined by the peculiarities of life on a small island on the edge of Europe. What is equally apparent, though, is that the Irish sporting world is unique only in part; much of the history of Irish sport is a shared history with that of other societies. Drawing on an unparalleled range of sources - government archives, sporting institutions, private collections, and more than sixty local, national, and international newspapers - this volume offers a unique insight into the history of the British Empire in Ireland and examines the impact that political partition has had on the organization of sport there. Paul Rouse assesses the relationship between sport and national identity, how sport influences policy-making in modern states, and the ways in which sport has been colonized by the media and has colonized it in turn. Each chapter of Sport and Ireland contains new research on the place of sport in Irish life: the playing of hurling matches in London in the eighteenth century, the growth of cricket to become the most important sport in early Victorian Ireland, and the enlistment of thousands of members of the Gaelic Athletic Association as soldiers in the British Army during the Great War. Rouse draws out the significance of animals to the Irish sporting tradition, from the role of horse and dogs in racing and hunting, to the cocks, bulls, and bears that were involved in fighting and baiting.

"An examination of the development of the Olympic movement in Puerto Rico in the context of national and political identity"--

Many of the sports that have spread across the world, from athletics and boxing to golf and tennis, had their origins in nineteenth-century Britain. They were exported around the world by the British Empire, and Britain's influence in the world led to many of its sports being adopted in other countries. (Americans, however, liked to show their independence by rejecting cricket for baseball.) The Victorians and Sport is a highly readable account of the role sport played in both Victorian Britain and its empire. Major sports attracted mass followings and were widely reported in the press. Great sporting celebrities, such as the cricketer Dr W.G. Grace, were the best-known people in the country, and sporting rivalries provoked strong loyalties and passionate emotions. Mike Huggins provides fascinating details of individual sports and sportsmen. He also shows how sport was an important part of society and of many people's lives.

"In only 138 pages Schirato manages a broad sweep across sports history and culture... he brings the eye of a critical fan to his analysis of sport, treating it seriously as a social practice and as a social institution... A useful, provocative and non-dogmatic text that should be useful to undergraduate and graduate sport studies programmes." - Malcolm MacLean, Sport in History Understanding Sport Culture traces and analyzes the development of the modern field of sport from its ancient and medieval precursors (the festivals of Greece and Rome, and games such as folk football), through to its inception in the mid-nineteenth century as a set of activities designed to instill character and discipline in students in exclusive British public schools, up to its transformation into a global institution and popular spectacle. The narrative also focuses on and provides a detailed account of the gradual coming together of sport and the media. It explains how this relationship has accentuated sport′s status as one of the most important sites in contemporary culture, while simultaneously threatening its existence. As part of the Understanding Contemporary Culture series this book is aimed at a broad range of students from undergraduate to graduate level, who want to know more and be fully informed on sport, its relationship to the media, and its cultural dynamics.