The Rise of ‘The World's Largest Sport and Athletic Outfitter’: A Study of Gamage's of Holborn, 1878–1913

This essay explores the evolution of modern sporting goods retailing through the development of Gamage's (A.W. Gamage Holborn Ltd.) before the First World War. The essay examines how Gamage's exploited new models of fashionable consumerism to create a unique retail environment that directly targeted young male consumers enjoying modern forms of sporting and recreational activities. By the end of the nineteenth century, the so-called ‘People's Popular Emporium’ purported to be the ‘world's largest sport and athletic outfitter’. The essay considers Gamage's rise to prominence in a crucial period in the development of commodity culture. It examines the changing cultural form of shops and shopping in relation to the desires of a burgeoning mass market that sought to express and visibly display its economic, sporting, and social status.     

The Joinville School and the Institutionalization of a French-Style Physical Education, 1852–1939

Since the mid-nineteenth century, the Joinville School in France has worked to promote an innovative method of physical education, the French method, which was strongly marked by ideological and geopolitical challenges. Most of the French actors, whether they be military, doctors, scientists, or teachers, fought to defend France on the move. Physical education and its scholastic responsibility thus represented an original means to serve the national community and to give the country the necessary influence it required on the political and cultural international scene. If during the Second Empire, the Joinville School participated in the development of the physical instruction of French troops, during the third Republic, this officers' training school expanded the promotion of its method for physical education in schools. Among the challenges of this strategy, the actors for French physical education were faced with the organization of a common national teaching method as additional support for the promotion of a method that bore the mark of an eclectic philosophy. Until World War II, the Joinville School was a center for innovation that would spread practical physical education throughout France and Europe.     

The Singapore Football League, 1904–1941: Towards the Institutionalization of Football in the Colonial Port City of Singapore

Abstract

The Singapore Football Association (SFA) was founded in 1892. In 1904, the YMCA initiated the first football league with 12 teams from military and European clubs and School Old Boys’ teams. The first phase from 1904 to 1913 was restricted to European and Eurasian only. The military teams won six out of the nine tournaments. The second phase of the league began in 1917 and from 1921 to 1941. The Straits Chinese Football Association (SCFA) took part in the league and the rejuvenated SFA included a representative from the SCFA. The Singapore Football League started with two divisions 1921 and participating teams from the SCFA in the same year and the Malaya Football Association (MFA) in 1924. The SCFA won the league for the first time in 1925 and subsequently in 1930, 1937, and 1938. In 1929, the SFA was renamed the Singapore Amateur Football Association (SAFA). The MFA won the League for the first time in 1931, and the first local team to win three years in succession from 1931 to 1933. From 1931 to 1941 the local teams won seven league titles out of 11. By 1940 the League grew with 44 teams in three divisions.     

‘Leav[ing] the white[s] … far behind them’: The girls from fort shaw (Montana) Indian School,basketball champions of the 1904 world's fair

In spring 1903, barely a dozen years after the invention of ‘basket ball’, a girls' team from an Indian boarding school in Montana overcame racial and gender barriers to win that state's first basketball championship. Subsequently, these ten young women spent the summer of 1904 attending the government's Model Indian School at the St Louis World's Fair, where their twice-weekly intra-squad exhibition games provided fairgoers with their only glimpse of women's team sports. Having also taken on – and defeated – all challengers, they returned to Montana with a gleaming silver trophy declaring them ‘Basket Ball Champions’ of the 1904 World's Fair.     

Extraterritorial Outlet of Korean Nationalism in the Far Eastern Championship Games, 1913–1934

The Far Eastern Championship Games (FECG), held between 1913 and 1934, were a precursor to the Asian Games and among the first international athletic competitions in the Asian region. The FECG were launched in Manila, the Philippines, and supported by the Young Mens' Christian Association. Three countries participated in the Games: the Philippines, Japan and China. It is noteworthy that Korea, one of most powerful sports entities in Asia now, also participated in the FECG, but as part of the Japanese team. Although Korea was a powerless Japanese colony during the era, this paper argues that Korea's participation in the FECG permitted the colonized country to express its nationalism and become the cornerstone of modern sports development in Korea.     

The Gaelic Athletic Association's Invasion of America, 1888: Travel Narratives,Microhistory and the Irish American ‘Other’

This article explores a little-known event in Irish and American sports history, namely a tour made by the Gaelic Athletic Association to North America in 1888. The article focuses on a newspaper diary kept of the tour by Joseph Whelan, and published in the Irish newspaper Sport. In analysing Whelan's comments, the article seeks to understand how such material can be used to create a microhistory of a specific event such as a sporting tour, and discusses how far the methodology of microhistory can be useful to sports historians. The commentary of Whelan also allows for an exploration of travel narrative. This is a key point with respect to the late-nineteenth-century Irish, as Whelan is a tourist who will return home, rather than an immigrant moving permanently to Ireland. The history of Irish America, and the question of the Irish as 'other', has been dominated by the archives of the immigrant. What the material from the tour allows is an Irish view of America as tourist as opposed to settler. This raises significant questions for the existing historiography of Irish America. In conclusion the article argues that travel narratives of sporting events – tours, tournaments and mega-events – can allow us to approach the history of sport from a fresh angle.     

The Origins of Football Debate: The Continuing Demise of the Dominant Paradigm, 1852–1856

This article presents original and compelling new material in ‘the origins of football debate’, this time from the period 1852–1856, using the British Library's digitisation project of nineteenth-century newspapers. In so doing, it addresses the alleged disappearance of football in the wider community in mid-century, a problem that has troubled a number of scholars, not least because of the rapid expansion in the game amongst the working and lower middle classes from the 1870s onwards. In addressing this allegation it outlines a much broader and more stable footballing culture across the country than hitherto thought, based on games played at church, work and school outings, rural fetes and galas, alongside those played at celebrations and as street football or casual games in meadows, fields or greens, arguing that those historians who have simply looked for formal games were looking for the wrong forms of football in the wrong places, based on twentieth-century notions of what constitutes a ‘game’ of football. Overall, the article has added yet more evidence of the cultural continuity of football across the mid-century and contributed to the continuing demise of the so-called ‘dominant paradigm’ in the ‘origins of football’ debate.     

Christianity and the Rise of Western Physical Education and Sport in Modern China, 1840–1920s

Christianity, as practised by missionary educational institutions and the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) and Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA), was an important means of introducing and popularizing Western physical education and sport in modern China from 1840 to the 1920s. The research investigates how and why missionary educational institutions and the YMCA and YWCA contributed to the rise of physical education and sport in modern China. This analysis examines the activities of missionary educational institutions and the YMCA and YWCA in China during this period to uncover what really contributed to pave the way for Christianity, as well as led to this rise of Western physical education and sport in modern China from 1840 to the 1920s.     

The School Sport Co-ordinator Programme: Changing the Role of the Physical Education Teacher?

Over the last decade or so, young people have increasingly become a focus of UK sport policy. Fuelled in part by concerns such as the increasing levels of childhood inactivity and obesity, and the lack of international success in sport, a plethora of policy initiatives aimed at young people have been developed. In April 2000, the government published its sport strategy document, A Sporting Future for All, pulling together all the threads of recent policies, and in it, restating its commitment to youth sport, sport in education, excellence and sport in the community. One such policy initiative, the School Sport Co-ordinator programme, is the focus of this paper. The School Sport Co-ordinator programme, currently being introduced into schools in England, is an initiative that involves two government departments (sport and education) and a number of other agencies, reflecting the government's current agenda to ensure 'joined up policy' thinking. It aims to develop opportunities for youth sport through co-ordinated links between PE and sport in schools, both within and outside of the formal curriculum, with those in local community sports settings. The essence of the School Sport Co-ordinator programme is to free up nominated teachers in schools from teaching to allow them time for development activities, specifically to encourage schools and community sports providers to work in partnership. This paper draws on data from an ongoing research project examining the implementation of one School Sport Co-ordinator partnership, 'Northbridge'. Drawing on in-depth interviews, it explores the perceptions of the newly established School Sport Co-ordinators of their changing role. The paper highlights some of the initial tensions and challenges for them in their task of working across different educational and sporting contexts.