The Balkan Games resulted on the one hand from the growth of modern European sport and the unsatisfactory performances of the Balkan athletes at national and international level, and on the other hand, from a desire to bring the Balkan peoples together in peace and concord. The Games were initiated in Athens in 1929 and increasingly became an integral part of the political, cultural and social life of the area. The common global reality is that when an athletic event is staged, attempted friendship seldom receives priority. In the 1930s, however, the Balkan Games provided a rare example of...

In most accounts of Olympic history across the world, India's Olympic journey is a mere footnote. This book is a corrective. Drawing on newly available and hitherto unused archival sources, it demonstrates that India was an important strategic outpost in the Olympic movement that started as a global phenomenon at the turn of the twentieth century. Among the questions the authors answer are: When and how did the Olympic ideology take root in India? Who were the early players and why did they appropriate Olympic sport to further their political ambitions? What explains India's eight...

Not only does this book deal with some of the most important driving factors of sport’s global attractiveness, but it also tackles important positive and negative impacts of sport as a global business on local and global communities of sport’s (potential) fans and participants.

This interdisciplinary exploration provides much needed insights into the relationships between the dominant impulses of identity formation, cultural change, political mobilisation, religious movements and subaltern modes of communication that define modern Gujarat.

This book was published as a special issue of South Asian History and Culture.