ABSTRACT

This chapter explains that the rise of modern European sport in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries took place in societies deeply divided along the lines of politics, religion and class. The sports boom of the later nineteenth century had two main roots: gymnastics and what were called English sports'. The most influential figure was F. L. Jahn who, in the wake of Prussia's defeat by Napoleon in 1806, had set up a network of gymnastic clubs as part of a patriotic agenda of forming disciplined and physically fit men, able to defend the fatherland. The chapter describes that years around 1870 saw the beginnings in many parts of Europe of mass politics, involving large sections of the male population of all classes, rather than small property-owning and educated elites. At the same time the churches were making vigorous efforts to strengthen their popular base, especially where competition from secular ideologies was strong: in Britain, church-based clubs' and institutes' were already multiplying.