Industrialization, Nationalism, and Internationalism in 19th-Century Sports

One unexpected but powerful result the Industrial Revolution and of growing trade connections and cultural interchange in the 19th century was the beginning of a globalization of athletics—a process that has continued vigorously to the present day. The sports involved were Western in origin, soccer football heading the list. Their dissemination was a function of Western power and prestige. Western businessmen and diplomats played their familiar games on foreign soil—colonies and non-colonies alike—and gradually local residents sought to emulate what seemed to be part of a superior, or at least very attractive, way of life.

Sports history in 19th-century Western Europe and the United States was itself a vital development. At the beginning of the century few organized sports existed. Village games and individual athletic pastimes abounded, but overall patterns were haphazard. Industrialization spurred a set of changes in sports. First, many urban people began to see the need to exercise to make up for sedentary jobs, and they also valued the social contact sports provided. Middle-class and working-class teams developed on this basis. Schools seized on sports as a diversion but also as building character: Upper-class schools first trumpeted the glories of sports, but lower-class education soon followed their lead. In this context, by the 1850s and 1860s, entrepreneurs saw new ways to make money from sports. There was new equipment to sell, much of it based on the vulcanization of rubber. There were commercial teams to organize, to draw spectators into new stadiums (which would be reached by equally novel tramways). Initial professional teams emerged in English soccer and American baseball. All these developments gave sports an unprecedented importance in modern life. They also changed sports: Athletics became more regulated, with standardized rules of play enforced by a new monitor, the official; consciousness of speed and recordkeeping increased; specialization affected sports, with different team members assigned distinct responsibilities.

The internationalization of sports brought some of the same qualities occurring in the West to a variety of other societies—starting with tremendous enthusiasm among young athletes and a wide range of spectators. Teams built by imitation and contact included a range of Latin American soccer groups, formed initially on the example of local British players. The first Buenos Aires football club, copied from British residents in the city, was founded in 1867, and a national network of teams had fanned out by the 1890s. Argentine soccer style was more exuberant and individualistic than the European version, showing a kind of cultural fusion even as imitation occurred. Japanese students began playing baseball by the 1890s and in 1896 proudly defeated a team of American sailors. At the same time, not all sports spread equally wide. The United States remained addicted to some parochial interests, like American football, not widely shared elsewhere. South Asians were interested in more individual sports, such as badminton and tennis, rather than team sports, with the exception of polo and cricket. Nevertheless, the rapid dissemination of sports as international currency constitutes a major development in world history.

The first document I would like you to read (you can read both documents by clicking here) picks up a formal aspect of sport internationalization: the revival of the Olympics in the 1890s, under the leadership of a French nobleman, Baron de Coubertin. An educational reformer, Coubertin had seen the importance of sports in American and British schools. He formed an International Olympic Congress 1894 to push for a revival of the old Greek games, but now on an international basis: His hope was that sports would transcend national conflicts. On his death he ordered that his heart be sent to Greece and buried on Mt. Olympus. His comments in the document reflect on the first modern games, held in Athens in 1896. Obviously, the movement he launched has become a major reflection of and spur to sports internationalism, although some of the initial reliance on amateurism and avoidance of nationalistic rivalries has not proved durable. At the same time some of the limitations of Coubertin’s vision have lifted as well: His statement reflects a transition in sports internationalism that hardly embraced most of the world directly. Progressively in the 20th century, but particularly after World War II, the Olympics would do steadily better as a genuinely global assemblage.

The second document I would like you to read (well, pair of documents) conveys the initial atmosphere of the introduction of soccer into Latin America. One document describes the setting for one of the first matches in which Latin Americans were confident enough to invite a British team to play against them. Elite Buenos Aires society turned out, including General Julio Roca, the president of the Republic (football had just been introduced to the Argentine army). The British team, Southampton, savaged the Argentine team and several others during the visit. The other document is from a poem by Ana Amélia (entitled “The Leap”) to the goalie of the Brazilian team, Fluminense, around 1910, again suggesting the early days of Latin American soccer in which young men from good families displayed their masculine qualities to admiring young women of the same class. The subject of her poem, Marcos de Mendonça, played for the Brazilian national team in 1919 and also became a prominent banker and industrialist. He married Ana Amélia.

Finally, I’d like you to take a moment to study the picture above (you can enlarge it by clicking on it). This sketch appeared in newspaper accounts of the Games. Along with Pierre de Coubertin’s account of the first Games, it helps determine what the organizers of the games sought to convey about the purposes of the new international competition. The parade is headed by a Greek evzone, a soldier dressed in traditional (though not ancient) Greek garb. This sketch also invites comparisons with the way Olympic Games have evolved over the ensuing century-plus. Some aspects of the Games have remained remarkably constant, but many others have changed greatly. You might want to search out a website picture of a more recent Olympic parade (the 2006 Winter Games were held in Torino, Italy and the 2008 Summer Games were held in Beijing, China) for comparison.

Once you have read and studied the documents, I would like you to reflect on and discuss the following: What was Coubertin’s idea of internationalism? What problems did he encounter in trying to internationalize sports, and how did he handle them? What “world” was represented at the first Olympics? Why might a European find the representation an impressive demonstration of internationalism, in the context of the 1890s? How did Coubertin suggest a belief that sports might be a particularly European strength? What did Coubertin think the results of international sports might be in Greece? What does his approach suggest about belief in the larger meaning of modern sports? Why were British sports popular in Argentina? What kinds of Argentineans were first interested, and why? Are there any connections with the motivations involved in the revival of the Olympics? Can the chronology of the international spread of football organizations be explained in terms of patterns of European influence? Why have sports become such an important part of modern global culture? In reference to the picture above, is this sketch meant to favor or criticize the first modern Olympics? How can you tell? How does the representation compare with de Coubertin’s glowing description? How did the Games conceive of internationalism? What does this sketch suggest about the social characteristics of the first Games? How did the first Games compare with contemporary Olympic meets? What are the main differences? Are there any continuities? Your thoughts…