The Emergence of Football in Nineteenth-Century England: The Historiographic Debate

The work details the history of football that became established in the latter half of the nineteenth century, the view that social and economic changes resulted in football disappearing from the general community, only surviving in the various public schools, who played a codified game. It was these games that were transplanted to the general population, becoming the sports of rugby and soccer. This remained the established history of football until almost the twenty-first century, whence it was replaced by an increased acknowledgement that during the nineteenth century football did not die out. In fact, popularly played football during this period was conducted under strict rules. It is maintained that rugby and soccer were produced in the nineteenth century by a fusion of influences from both the public schools and wider communities.     

The Origins of Football Debate: The Evidence Mounts, 1841–1851

In response to recent articles by Eric Dunning and Graham Curry, this article presents a wide range of new material from the period 1841 to 1851 in the ‘Origins of Football Debate’, using evidence gleaned from the British Library's digitisation of nineteenth-century newspapers. It responds to the charge that the works of ‘revisionist historians’, John Goulstone, Adrian Harvey and Peter Swain, are misleading and have led to hasty conclusions, and rejects their analysis that argues they are part of an academic community seemingly frantic for working-class influence to the detriment of public schoolboys. The article adds extensive evidence that records a much broader footballing culture across the country in mid-century than previously thought. In so doing, it addresses concerns, which have troubled many scholars, of the alleged disappearance of football in the wider community in the mid-nineteenth century, not least because of the sport's rapid expansion amongst the working and middle classes in the 1870s. The evidence presented does suggest that many forms of football other than folk football or games under the influence of public schools or public schoolboys were played, challenging ‘orthodox’ historian's views surrounding the influence of public schools and public schoolboys on the development of the game.     

Sport,Education and Philanthropy in Nineteenth-century Edinburgh: The Emergence of Modern Forms of Football

This paper looks at the way in which an ethos of the importance of sport developed in some of Edinburgh's schools in the early part of the nineteenth century; how football was deliberately encouraged by a group of city schoolmasters to develop manly virtues and a competitive spirit; and how one pioneering city philanthropist set up perhaps the first football club in the world, then passed on his enthusiastic love of the game to some of the poorest children in the city, thereby laying the foundations for some of the city's first football clubs. Many of these developments in Edinburgh took place years, if not decades, before similar events in England, and therefore had a major and previously unrecognized impact on the history of both codes of football in Britain and throughout the world.     

The Origins of Football Debate: The ‘Grander Design and the Involvement of the Lower Classes’, 1818–1840

This article presents extensive new material in ‘the origins of football debate’ by using the British Library's digitisation project of nineteenth-century newspapers. In so doing, it responds to claims from Graham Curry and Eric Dunning that previous works of the ‘revisionist historians’ John Goulstone, Adrian Harvey and Peter Swain are misleading and have led to hasty conclusions. It evidences a football culture beyond the domain of the public schools and highlights the shift in the locus of games from urban areas to paddocks and fields complying with the Highways and Police Acts. This compliance reduced the number of prosecutions covered in newspaper reports of the day but other games, in which misdemeanours took place, are recorded, suggesting that a broad football culture did still exist in this period. The article rejects Curry and Dunning's thesis surrounding a mid-century ‘civilising spurt’ in sport in favour of explanations surrounding the structural changes taking place in the nineteenth century, including increasing industrialisation, urbanisation, population growth, and migrationary movements. It also emphasises the emergence of a horizontally stratified class-based society and an attack on football games from an emerging social and industrial elite who were looking after their property and commercial interests.     

The Origins of Football Debate: Football and Cultural Continuity, 1857–1859

This article seeks to add to the growing volume of evidence of a broad, tenacious and visible footballing culture throughout nineteenth-century Britain. It is argued that football persisted among the general population in a variety of forms, none of which required the assistance or involvement of the public schools or public schoolboys to ensure its survival as some historians had previously believed. Indeed, the sheer number of games, evidenced in a variety of forms and a variety of settings, suggests beyond reasonable doubt that most forms of football being played across the country were not formal matches but small-sided games played on church, works' or schools' outings, at rural fetes, galas and celebrations, or as street or casual football, the latter taking place on meadows, fields and greens. Contrary to orthodox historians, these games did survive through mid-century. Importantly, these were predominantly small-sided games and are the ones which are closest to Association football as it was codified in 1863 and hence of most interest to the debate on origins. Common sense then dictates that football can be seen as a cultural continuity, especially as far as the traditions of male youth are concerned, across the nineteenth century.     

The Power Game: Continued Reflections on the Early Development of Modern Football

In this paper the authors seek to continue the debate on the development of modern football. They note the support offered by Tony Collins to the long-standing reservations of Graham Curry and Eric Dunning regarding the weaknesses of the revisionist case, which has sought to lessen the influence of public schoolboys on the game’s early years. The authors do, however, offer some correctives to Collins’s thoughts, particularly in terms of the complex Sheffield footballing subculture. Curry and Dunning support the need for more research based on local studies and attempt to gather together current thinking in this area.     

Early Football and the Emergence of Modern Soccer: A Reply to Tony Collins

This paper seeks to defend one part of what has become known as the ‘revisionist’ account of the historiography of football in nineteenth-century England. In so doing, it responds to the critique by Tony Collins in his article ‘Early Football and the Emergence of Modern Soccer’ between 1840 and 1880, calling into question the reliance in his arguments of what he describes as ‘legal organized games’ as the only measure of a football culture outside of the public schools. His classification of small-sided games of football as an ‘informal leisure practice or folk custom’ is also interrogated and found wanting. Alternatively, further evidence is presented from 1860 of football games played in a variety of forms, usually alongside other sports, and mainly on church, works’ or schools’ outings, at rural fetes, galas and celebrations, or as street or casual football, the latter taking place in meadows, fields, and greens. Importantly, these were predominantly small-sided games and are, arguably, the ones closest to Association football, as it was codified in 1863, and constituted a broad, tenacious, and increasingly visible football culture that existed amongst the general population across mid-century uninfluenced by the public schools and public school boys.     

The Public Schools and Organized Football in Britain: Fresh Perspectives on Old Paradigms

Modern football, especially soccer, was the product of a fusion of ideas from both the public schools and wider society. In the period between 1830 and 1859 there were far more football teams outside the public schools than those within it, and while the ideas stemming from public schools were important in terms of the code that was established to regulate the game it was only when they were fused and applied with concepts from the wider society that they gained both effectiveness and popularity. The principal creator of this code was the football club at Sheffield, an organization that was easily the most influential and important in the period prior to 1870.     

Football in Australia before Codification, 1820–1860

Though the focus of this article is Australia, it is intended as a contribution to the debate about what was happening in the UK and elsewhere before football was codified by the Football Association in 1863. There is mounting evidence that a football culture existed far beyond the public schools and universities and that small-sided predominantly kicking games, often for monetary or other rewards, were being played by migrants to Australia who drew on their British heritage. Not only that but the game was being presented and encouraged by public authorities who would not have countenanced doing so had there been a risk of a breakdown in public order or violence accompanying the games. The article provides support for the arguments developed by Adrian Harvey in the UK.     

(Association) Football and Newfoundland’s national identity: 1878–1915

This article shows how (Association) football contributed to the development of a Newfoundland national identity in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Some clubs, the Natives and later Terra Nova and Cabot, went even further: they sought to overcome denominational cleavages, something the Newfoundland Natives’ Society had tried to do in the political field in the 1840s. In the end, their effort was unsuccessful because football on the island, in replicating the English model, came to be dominated by clubs formed by the alumni of the local denominational schools.     

Football Club Formation and the Lancashire Leisure Class, 1857–1870

This paper outlines the transition from football games played for occasional amusement to a system of organized football clubs playing regular matches in Lancashire in the mid-nineteenth century. This was led by young men of an emerging Lancashire leisured class being, in the main, the public school educated sons of the northern county’s commercial and industrial elite. These families had accumulated sufficient wealth, especially in the first half of the nineteenth century, to exempt a considerable part of their population from work both at weekends and during the normal working week with football becoming an act of conspicuous consumption. Three case studies of individual clubs and leading individuals within those clubs are presented with detailed archival research carefully avoiding the teleology implicit in much historical writing of the past. It also swells the paucity of good historical material about the organization of sport at levels below national bodies. In so doing, it aims to illuminate some of the shadows in the big picture of the evolution of sport and leisure in Lancashire and Britain itself while informing the ongoing orthodox/revisionist debate into the origins of football in the nineteenth century.     

A Historical Reinterpretation of the Forces Underlying the First State Legislation for Physical Education in the Public Schools of the U.S.

Abstract

During the twentieth century state legislative action has provided a broad base for the positive development of physical education programs in the nation's public schools. State legislation for physical education, extremely limited and often abortive in its infancy during the second half of the nineteenth century, has now reached almost avalanche-like proportions. Prior to the twentieth century few attempts were made by any of the United States to instrument governmental action on the subject of physical education — a subject which, even then, was becoming of increasing concern to educators and certain factions of the lay public. In an investigation of the country's first state laws for physical education, California emerges as the “founding father.” Further, three rather distinct factors underlying the state's pioneer efforts must be considered as having been instrumental in the evolutionary process. They are: (1) John Swett; (2) the early California Turners; and (3) Adele Parot. All three forces combined to lay a foundation and erect a framework for legislation leading to physical education in the nation's public schools.     

Hungarian Football: A Socio-historical Overview

This article provides a brief overview of the history of Hungarian football from the beginning to the years of post-Communist transition. In relying on both sport and more general historical Hungarian and English sources, it explores the political, cultural and social conditions that have had an impact on the development of Hungarian football throughout its history. The chief aim of this article is to draw attention to those historical periods and aspects of Hungarian football, which have not been extensively researched. In doing this, the development of Hungarian football will be outlined and links made with broader historical and social processes. Also, an attempt will be made to explain the ways these processes shaped and used football for various political purposes, from as early as the turn of the nineteenth century.     

The Origins of Football in Spain: From the First Press Appearance to the Constitution of the First Clubs (1868–1903)

This research focuses on the origins of football in Spain and seeks to show how and where it was introduced in the country, to comprehend the historical context, and to understand why it took roots so rapidly despite the rivalry with the well-established tradition of bullfighting. The period of study spans from 1868 (first news piece on football in Spain) to 1903 (celebration of the first football championship in the country). The methodology focused primarily on identifying the primary sources and selecting the secondary sources, followed by the interpretative analysis and the mapping of football associations created in Spain in the sport’s early days. The large urban cities led the process of creating football clubs from 1889: Barcelona (61), Madrid (15), and Bilbao (9) steered the process of legitimization and institutionalization of football in the country. In the last 11 years of the nineteenth century (1889–1899), 29 clubs were created in 12 different cities. In the first four years of the twentieth century (1900–1903), a further 103 clubs mushroomed all over the country. Thus a total of 132 clubs were founded between 1889 and 1903 in Spain, which laid the necessary foundations for the implantation and legitimization of football.     

"An epoch in the annals of national sport": football in Sheffield and the creation of modern soccer and rugby

By the 1860s the two most prominent football cultures in Britain were in London and Sheffield. In 1863 the football culture in London created the Football Association, but within weeks a coup by those members who opposed a game that incorporated elements from that played at Rugby School led to the latter's supporters leaving. The fragmented FA continued to loose both members and influence and by 1867 was on the point of dissolving. By contrast, in terms of both rules and organization, the football culture of Sheffield was remarkably uniform and was the dominant centre of the game. The example set by Sheffield, coupled with the immense support that it provided to the ailing FA, enabled the London-based organization to survive and prosper.     

Cultural Continuity and Football in Nineteenth-century Lancashire

This article outlines the rich local cultural sporting practices endemic in south and east Lancashire from the 1820s through to the 1880s, particularly in the Bolton-Darwen-Blackburn triangle. These included playing football and foot-racing for money and other prizes; links with commercialism via the licensed trade and betting are also stressed. The existence of a localized football culture in this area, in a period when many historians have suggested that football development was confined to the public schools, helps to explain the transition to full professionalism in Lancashire during the 1880s. The transitional links are especially evident in the small-sided games played for money at athletics festivals organized by the newly-formed association clubs from the 1870s and into the early 1880s.     

The Pub,the Drinks Trade and the Early Years of Modern Football

Many people who hunt today, and some prominent fox hunting historians hold the opinion that fox hunting as practised now began in the late eighteenth century, and that Hugo Meynell of the Quorn Hunt in Leicestershire devised this method. There is much printed evidence from medieval and later sources to show that fox hunting was carried out at least from the early fourteenth century and that it was conducted in the same manner as it is now. It certainly became more popular in the eighteenth century as more men acquired enough money to be able to afford leisure pursuits. Hugo Meynell's hunt was at best, very fashionable, but no evidence exists to indicate its excellence, and only after he had died was he singled out as the best ever fox hunter by Charles Apperley, who made his living by writing about hunts and hunting personalities. Although Apperley never saw Meynell or his hounds, the reputation that Meynell acquired from Apperley still exists. This article proposes that Meynell's reputation is a myth and that fox hunting continued as it began, a medieval practice.     

Mixing Business with Leisure? The Football Club Doctor,Sports Medicine and the Voluntary Tradition

The football club doctor has traditionally been a role fulfilled by a local general practitioner on a casual basis over a long period. Since the 1990s, due to football's accelerated commercialization, a number of clubs have appointed full-time doctors with specialist sports medicine knowledge. This article explores the origins and development of this role in its wider social context since the late nineteenth century and argues that initially club doctors were part of a voluntary tradition. In addition, the development of the role has reflected the nature of sports medicine in Britain and more particularly football, as well as highlighting the changing demands and pressures of the job in light of growing commercial demands.     

Sporting Entertainments,Discarded Possibilities and the Case of Football as a Variety Sport, 1905–1906

During the winter of 1905/6, Olympia held a series of spectacular indoor, electrically lit football matches. Organised by the showman Edwin Cleary, the purpose of these matches was to provide entertaining shows to large audiences. Using Pierre Bourdieu's theory of fields, this article argues that such an organisation was a continuation of a longer interaction between sport and the stage that was restricted during the coalescence of the sporting and exercise field in the late nineteenth century. The ultimate failure of the venture, moreover, is attributed to the power of the Football Association in the sub-field of football. The article uses the football games as a case study to demonstrate the usefulness of this theory to the study of sport more broadly.     

The Origins of Football Debate: Comments on Adrian Harvey's Historiography

This article is intended as a reply to Adrian Harvey's recent historiography of football in which he continues to distort the story of the initial development of the game. It not only refutes the revisionist hypothesis of an influential football sub-culture based around public houses but also offers an alternative explanation of the game's past, largely based on the influence of ex-public schoolboys and former university undergraduates. It seeks to push the debate a step further by robustly re-asserting the meagre nature of the revisionist evidence in addition to Adrian Harvey's poor scholarship.