ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces some of the core historical forces and rationales that are used to explain why, when and how sport has changed. Vamplew's overview argues that the major contribution that sports history makes is its time dimension, which allows the setting of benchmarks by which change can be analysed. The sociohistorical development of sport provides one of the best antidotes against temporal sporting parochialism and geographical parochialism. The history of sport teaches many things, not least of which is a caution against dogmatic generalisation and theorising. In his history of sport and society since 1945, Polley demonstrates ways in which sport has figured in post-war Britain. He argues that sport has given physical form to debates about gender, class, ethnicity, the nation, the state and commerce. The uses of historiography in exploring comparative physical culture can help us define comparative sporting problems and, more importantly, understand the context.
