A Social History of Indian Football covers the period 1850-2004. It considers soccer as a derivative sport, creatively and imaginatively adapted to suit modern Indian socio-cultural needs - designed to fulfil political imperatives and satisfy economic aspirations. The book is concerned with the appropriation, assimilation and subversion of sporting ideals in colonial and post-colonial India for nationalist needs. The book assesses the role of soccer in colonial Indian life, to delineate the inter-relationship between those who patronised, promoted, played and viewed the game, to analyse the impact of the colonial context on the games evolution and development and shed light on the diverse nature of trysts with the sport across the country. Throughout this book, soccer is the lens that illuminates India's colonial and post-colonial encounter. This volume was previously published as a special issue of the journal Soccer and Society.

Reaching as far back as ancient times, Ronojoy Sen pairs a novel history of India's engagement with sport and a probing analysis of its cultural and political development under monarchy and colonialism, and as an independent nation. Some sports that originated in India have fallen out of favor, while others, such as cricket, have been adopted and made wholly India's own. Sen's innovative project casts sport less as a natural expression of human competition than as an instructive practice reflecting a unique play with power, morality, aesthetics, identity, and money. Sen follows the transformation of sport from an elite, kingly pastime to a national obsession tied to colonialism, nationalism, and free market liberalization. He pays special attention to two modern phenomena: the dominance of cricket in the Indian consciousness and the chronic failure of a billion-strong nation to compete successfully in international sporting competitions, such as the Olympics. Innovatively incorporating examples from popular media and other unconventional sources, Sen not only captures the political nature of sport in India but also reveals the patterns of patronage, clientage, and institutionalization that have bound this diverse nation together for centuries.

The Olympic movement, including the relevant records and statistics, provides a unique prism to understand the complex evolution of modern Indian society. Drawing on hitherto unused archival sources, this book examines the relations between India's place in the Olympic movement and the country's quest for a national and international identity.

Danish sport has been associated with Europe and the World; not least through I.P. Muller and Niels Bukh and the Danish Gymnastics revolution with its emphasis on male aesthetics and hygiene in the first half of the twentieth century. At the same time, Denmark has stood apart from Europe in the early moments of its history of sport with the rural revolution of the farming communities as a statement of political independence and assertion. However, during the German occupation of Denmark, Danish sport was part of a European collaboration which characterized a number of the occupied countries not least in the Nordic area. After the Second World War, Denmark embraced international body cultures with other European nations in particular Eastern martial arts. Denmark too, as part of trends in the European region and the world, became caught up in sport as a powerful contemporary political statement. This book was previously published as a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport.

Presents comprehensive guidance to the international field of sports history as it has developed as an academic area of study. This book guides readers through the development of the field across a range of thematic and geographical contexts. It is suitable for researchers and students in, and entering, the sports history field.

This book is the first comprehensive study on history, culture, and business of football in Asia. Football has been a symbol of the modern invention, a catalyst of local, national and regional identities, all time favourite among kids and youths, and even a harbinger for cultural globalization and consumerism in Asia. The economic growth and the current proliferation of football culture in Asia make it imperative to examine the complex relationship between the globalization of football and the local appropriation. The essays in the book deal with various topics on football in Asia from history of football in Asia, football and local, national and regional identities, to commercialization of football cultures, global mobility and athletes’ migration, and then new Asianism and football. This book argues that football in Asia contributes to reconfiguring both national and regional identities among football fans in the active interconnection with the global flows of football and cultural globalization without homogenizing Asian identities into a cosmopolitan one. This is the textbook to presents football’s implication and influence on Asian populace and social changes while using football as a lens assessing the modern development and current diversification of Asia. This book was published as a special issue of Soccer and Society.