Skiing Before 1914 in France: A Means of Diffusing National Identity

Abstract

This study attempts to analyse the means by which winter sports were spread in France. I look more specifically at the political factors that promoted the development of skiing, within the context of international tension that prevailed during the years prior to World War I. My analysis strives to demonstrate the importance of discourse and actions centred on patriotism, and to point out the factors that brought skiing into people's everyday lives and helped them acquire a sense of national affiliation. My approach consists of analysing the justifications given for the promotion of skiing on France's mountain ranges, particularly those aimed at its mountain populations. The forms of legitimacy used to justify the development of skiing, its close-knit relations with the army, the institutional framework selected under the influence of the French Alpine Club, the staging of practices and forms of sociability maintained for each targeted population – all of these phenomena help grasp the ways in which new norms dictating social behaviours were disseminated and internalised in the mountains of France.