Sport in Modern European History: Trajectories,Constellations, Conjunctures1

This essay reviews sport-related articles that have previously appeared in the JHS, alongside a range of other historical works, and in so doing recognizes the importance of persisting themes in the socio-cultural, historical analysis of sport. Such themes have appeared in wide-ranging socio-historical and figurational work, and also underpin the contributions to this special issue: they include the dynamics of cultural importation, diffusion and appropriation; and the cultural significance of sport in wider status and power relations. Emphasizing the compatibility of the historical and the sociological imaginations, and confirming recent positions on the integration of the cultural and the social in historical work, the article goes on to contextualize the place of sport in Europe in the period from the later decades of the nineteenth century into the fourth decade of the twentieth century. Referencing classic debates on historical method and periodization – particularly Braudel's discussions of event, conjuncture, and longue durée– the article identifies core conjunctural features of European sport in the period: internationalism/early globalization; increasing forms of mediatization; emergent individualism; and commercialized consumption and celebrity.