First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This is the first book to address the gap in the literature linking the physical culture of the ancient world with the beginnings of modern sport, this original book traces the history of the evolution of a variety of sport, games and physical education from 450-1650AD across Western Europe.

Drawing on primary sources, this book takes a thematic approach, looking at the changing nature of geopolitical structures, educational systems, religious institutions and the practice of warfare and medicine and goes on to trace the disappearance of ancient physical culture with its gymnasia,...

Virtually everywhere, directly or indirectly, modern men are prepared for war through sport. It has been no different in the past. Throughout history a constant imperative has been a moral commitment to defend the society. Sport has played its part in the inculcation of this commitment. However, sport has also been considered both a substitute for war and an antidote to war. This collection of essays explores the relationship between sport and war, bringing together established authors that include Peter Beck, Hans Bonde, Vassil Girginov, Donald Kyle, J.A. Mangan, John McClelland and Gertrud...

Challenging the respectable image of Victorian society, this collection explores the sinful side of middle-class Victorian leisure, highlighting the problematic relationship between public respectability and private pleasure.

The 2003 World Cup was of vital importance to the participating countries. For India, a world cup triumph would make cricket the nation's leading industry; for the host, South Africa, a successful campaign might realize its dream of political unity.
Dealing with themes of racial/political unification, commercialization, the media and globalisation, this book explores the role of cricket and sport in each of the competing nations.
Looking at recent developments such as match-fixing, the abolition of the quota system and the performances of the South African national team, the collection...

Women's soccer is one of the world's fastest-growing sports but has been subjected to little academic scrutiny. This collection considers women's football in a global context and analyses its progress, and the challenges and problems it has faced. It shows how women's football has made a significant contribution to the emancipation of women's football in many countries. It also traces the evolution of women's football in face of resistance, rejection and prejudice and describes women footballer's struggle for equal rights in a male dominated football world.

The collection examines cases of discrimination directed at individuals or groups, resulting in their exclusion from full participation in sport and their consequent struggle for inclusion. It shows how ethnic and national identity are sources of

As sport has grown, progressively replacing religion in its power to excite passion, provide emotional escape, and offer fraternal and sororital bonding, it has come to loom larger and larger in the lives of Europeans and others. It has become an inescapable reality linking public environment with intimate experience and thus offers the historian an opportunity to inspect and attempt to grasp all the dimensions of the recent past and their relative share in individual and collective experience. These essays consider the evolution of modern sport in Europe and examine its relationship with...

This is a study of masculinity as a metaphor and especially of the muscular male body as a moral symbol. It explores the Nazi's preoccupation with the male body as an icon of political power, and the ideology and theories which propelled it.

This volume dealing with the male body in the iconography of fascism reflects an ambition rather than an achievement. The supremacy of the global fascist superman never became a reality but was certainly an intention. This work explores the use of the image of the male body for this purpose in European, American and Asian fascism of varying degrees and various interpretations, and the differences and similarities involved. Among the similarities isthe fact that sport in all the cases in this volume was at the centre of the induction of the male body (and mind) into martial self-sacrifice....