ABSTRACT
The GSOs appeared as the result of a temporally unique set of conditions. In that sense, they are a product, if not an accident of history. As a result they have some claim to be the first coherent group of INGOs in the evolution of a global civil society. They appeared only a little later than the earliest of the INGOs. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICORC) traces its conception to the Swiss Henri Dunant’s improvised help to wounded combatants after the Battle of Solferino in 1859 (Moorehead, 1998). Other INGOs were also created during the early part of the last half of the nineteenth century. In this context, the GSOs appear as part of a broader movement. Probably the first among the GSOs was the International Gymnastics Federation (IGF) in 1881, although with other early GSOs it was European in its affinities rather than global.
