World of Sport by Taylor, Matthew;

Short description:

World of Sport examines the development of modern sport from the mid-nineteenth century to the 1960s in the light of transnational approaches to history.

Long description:

World of Sport examines the development of modern sport from the mid-nineteenth century to the 1960s in the light of transnational approaches to history.

Critically probing existing studies and offering new insights, this volume demonstrates that while sport was a national and international phenomenon, it was invariably constructed transnationally. Taking in topics ranging from the dissemination of football codes to transpacific surfing cultures, and the touring lives of baseball and hockey players to the contact zones of international competition, it emphasises the importance of transnational perspectives in the way people around the globe experience sport. Like other forms of popular culture, sport cannot be properly understood without reference to the cross-national connections that helped to disseminate rules and regulations, circulated styles of play and performance, and drove forward regional and international competition.   

Drawing on case studies that range time periods and continents, World of Sport is a must-read for students and researchers interested in the place of sport in the interconnected modern world and the transnational origins of the global sporting order in the twenty-first century. 

'World of Sport is sports history at its best, where sport’s chequered past is brought to life and we come closer to understand the most important of all the unessential but wonderful things humans dedicates their time to.'

Hans Bolling, idrottsforum.org (2025)

Table of Contents:

Introduction  Part 1: Transnational and Connected Histories, c.1850–1945  Chapter 1: Migration  Chapter 2: Touring  Chapter 3: Communications  Chapter 4: Competition  Part 2: Transnational and Connected Histories, 1945-c.1970  Chapter 5: Connections and Disconnections in the Post-War World  Conclusion