Dealing in Chances—An Introduction

In 1934, the French historian Marc Bloch identified what was both a hitherto neglected and a potentially promising field of scholarly interest: “Gambling [le jeu], although an activity on the margin of economic life, surely does not merit the virtuous disdain generally shown by historians.” ¹ Also in the early 1930s, the Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences featured entries on gambling and lotteries, calling the latter “a problem of almost all branches of the social sciences.” ² Academics were not completely blind to this. From the 1880s to the 1930s a limited range of studies took up the issue of chance games. But as late as 1967 sociologist Roger Caillois, one of the most influential games theorists, could reasonably deplore the small number of historians and sociologists dealing with the issue. For Caillois, gambling and lottery studies were exposed to a modern version of ostracism. ³