The Routledge Research in Sports History series features leading research in the development and historical significance of sport and physical culture. Including historiographical, regional, and thematic studies, and spanning a variety of periods, sports, and geographical areas, the series showcases ground-breaking, cross-disciplinary work from established and emerging sport historians. Aiming to be global in reach, inclusive of all voices, and reflecting a contemporary social, political, and cultural consciousness, the series represents an important contribution to the broader study of sport and society.
By Peter J. Beck
August 16, 2024
Drawing on wide-ranging archival research, this authoritative new history examines the cultural diplomatic role played by British football in international affairs, British foreign policy, and international football during the 1930s. For British governments, soccer diplomacy emerged as a favoured ...
By Conor Murray
June 17, 2024
This book is the first academic all-island history of either rugby union or association football, two of the three most popular male sporting pastimes in Ireland, across the seven decades that followed the political partition of that country between 1920 and 1922. It moves beyond the occasionally ...
Edited
By Michael J. Gennaro, Brian M. McGowan
May 27, 2024
This is the first book to focus on race, sport, protest, and the Black Atlantic. It brings together innovative scholarship on African, African-American, Afro-European, Afro-Brazilian, and Afro-Caribbean sports in a manner that speaks effectively to the diversity of the African diaspora, its history...
By Marta Kurkowska-Budzan, Marcin Stasiak
December 21, 2023
Using the history of sport in the small towns and local communities of Poland, this book shines new light on the everyday reality of life under a communist regime in Eastern Europe in the 20th century. This book shows how socio-cultural history – ‘history from below’ – that draws on rich sources, ...
Edited
By Dave Day
January 09, 2023
This book explores the historical development of coaching traditions across Europe, placing national approaches to coaching within their cultural and political context. Sports coaching is a social practice that has been shaped by its cultural context, resulting in different countries being ...
By Erica Munkwitz
January 09, 2023
*Shortlisted for the 2022 Lord Aberdare Literary Prize* This book is the first, full-length scholarly examination of British women’s involvement in equestrianism from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries, as well as the corresponding transformations of gender, class, sport, and national ...
By Peter Swain
December 19, 2022
The Emergence of Football fuses sports history into mainstream economic, social and cultural history, setting the development of the people’s game against the backdrop of the Industrial Revolution. The book challenges conventional histories of nineteenth-century football that surrounded mass games ...
By Jean Williams
May 06, 2022
Britain has a long and distinguished history as an Olympic nation. However, most Olympic histories have focused on men’s sport. This is the first book to tell the story of Britain’s Olympic women, how they changed Olympic spectacle and how, in turn, they have reinterpreted the Games. Exploring the...
Edited
By John Carvalho
November 06, 2020
This research collection explores the ongoing interaction between sports, media, and society throughout important periods in history, from the nineteenth century to the present day. It examines both historical moments and broader trends in sports, with an emphasis on the media’s role. ...
Edited
By Fuhua Huang, Fan Hong
June 30, 2020
Chinese martial arts have a long, meaningful history and deep cultural roots. They blend the physical components of combat with strategy, philosophy and tradition, distinguishing them from Western sports. A History of Chinese Martial Arts is the most authoritative study ever written on this topic,...
By Peter Donaldson
March 12, 2020
Spanning the colonial campaigns of the Victorian age to the War on Terror after 9/11, this study explores the role sport was perceived to have played in the lives and work of military personnel, and examines how sporting language and imagery were deployed to shape and reconfigure civilian society’s...
Edited
By Graham Curry
June 17, 2019
This fascinating collection brings together leading football historians and sociologists from the UK, Germany, the USA and Australia to offer fresh perspectives on the early development of football (soccer), not only illuminating our understanding of the early history of the world’s most popular ...