Sport, Militarism and the Great War: Martial Manliness and Armageddon

The Great War has been largely ignored by historians of sport. However sport was an integral part of cultural conditioning into military efficiency -both physiological and psychological- in the decades leading up to it. It is time this was recorded The Great War also had an influence on subsequent sport in European society. It also is a neglected topic. Militarism, Sport. Masculinity deals with significant aspects of the relationship between sport and war before, during and immediately after the 1914-1918 war. First, it explores the creation and consolidation of the cult of martial heroism and chivalric self -sacrifice in the pre-war eras. Secondly, it examines the consequences of the mingling of soldiers from various nations on later sport, and thirdly, it considers the role of the Great War in the transformation of the leisure of the masses. Finally, it scrutinises most pertinently the links between violence, war and sport and male socialisation. The Great War contributed to a redefinition of masculinity in later decades; reaction. The part sport played in this also receives close attention- a further original perspective Militarism, Sport, Masculinity is in two parts embracing originally two distinct allied cultural emphases which eventually overlapped: the Continental (PartI) and the '¬SAnglo-Saxon'¬ (Part II). No study has adopted this bilateral approach to date. Thus in conception and execution it is original. Considering its totally new focus and the soon-to-come hundred anniversary of the Great War, the book will reach a larger public than scholars. This book was originally published as a special issue of The International Journal of the History of Sport.