ABSTRACT This article traces the origins of chess activity at Oxford University between 1810 and 1872, based on research into new historical documents, all available historical sources and detailed research into the earliest chess magazines, chess columns and journals of the period. The paper gives a brief history of the first chess club at Brasenose College in 1810 and the subsequent period up to 1846. The following section outlines, on the basis of previously unknown information, the origins and activities of the Oxford Hermes Club (1847) until its demise sometime in the mid-1850s, followed by a description of the decline of Oxford chess activities in the late 1850s and early 1860s. The article concludes with an analysis of the formation of the new Oxford University Chess Club in 1869 and its chess activities until the introduction of inter-university matches with Cambridge in 1873, after which a new chapter in university chess history began.

ABSTRACT In the nineteenth century, British culture and sport were held in high esteem abroad as models of progress and modernity. British-organised sports gained prestige in European societies, and their practice became a symbol of social class development and progress. In contrast to the Polish population living under Austrian and Russian rule, the Polish population of the Prussian-controlled Grand Duchy of Posen had the opportunity to practise, or at least passively enjoy, steeplechasing, which originated in the British Isles. This was made possible by the Society for the Improvement of Horse, Cattle and Sheep Breeding in the Grand Duchy of Posen. Unlike the British steeplechase, the Society's jump races were free of betting and focused more on utilitarian aspects by promoting the improvement of horse breeding and the benefits of horse ownership. Despite the socio-political differences, they were very similar to their British counterparts. This makes the steeplechase races in the western Polish territories annexed by Prussia significant events and, in some ways, pioneering contributions to the development of the sport in Continental Europe. With the establishment of English sporting fashions, the steeplechase became one of the components of a long-term process of introducing various British sports to Poland.

ABSTRACT The reasons for cockfighting's relatively successful legal suppression by Act of Parliament in 1835 were complex, subtle and nuanced. This study begins by placing cockfighting's social and cultural functioning across the period from c. 1750 to 1835 in far clearer historical context, stressing the centrality of wagering. During this period, cocking had a key place in the cultural wars that increasingly focused on so called ‘blood sports' and animal-human relationships. Opposition to cockfighting came from two directions: concerns about animal suffering and the behaviour of attenders. There was a decline in plebeian cockfight reportage after 1800 but cockfighting continued to enjoy support amongst some groups, most importantly within the elite, up to and beyond 1835. There was increased humanitarian concern about cocks’ treatment, although such concerns were still not widely accepted. The success of reformers was less due to worries about cruelty to animals per se, than to their ability to link cockfighting to human behaviour and notions of moral degeneration such as gambling or drinking. Increased attacks on these aspects from the 1770s led by local magistrates, more pressure on Parliament from the 1820s, and wider social changes in the early 1830s, finally led to the Act.

ABSTRACT This article continues previous research examining the entanglement of the chess-player with urban and literary culture in the early-to-mid nineteenth century. It examines nineteenth-century chess-player and writer George Walker’s 1843 essay ‘The Battles of M’Donnell and De La Bourdonnais’ in which Walker mused on the 1834 contests between two great players of the age – Louis-Charles Mahé de La Bourdonnais and Alexander McDonnell. Two contending narrative forms are evident within the text: the first framed the chess world as an imagined community beyond nationalistic contest and commemorated the passing of time whilst the second detailed the chronicling of the exact moves of McDonnell and Bourdonnais’ chess games undertaken by William Greenwood Walker. Both narrative forms emerged from the intersection of the game’s increasingly prevalent literary presence with its physical presence in the nineteenth-century city. Both narrative forms exposed a fragility in the historical record-keeping process. And, both narrative forms reveal how chess-play can be experienced as both an ordered, linear chronology and a disordered archive of chess-play experienced non chronologically and non-linearly.

ABSTRACT For decades, China has dominated international table tennis, with its ‘ping-pong diplomacy’ even credited with thawing relations during the Cold War. This historical study focuses on the relations between the French Federation of Table Tennis (FFTT) and the Chinese Table Tennis Association from the 1950s until the end of the 1980s and examines how Chinese supremacy in the sport was viewed in France over the decades. Based on an analysis of the archives of the magazine France Tennis de Table (1945–1988), the FFTT’s official journal, the minutes of the FFTT (1945–1983) as well as the magazine of the Association of French Table Tennis Coaches (1972–1980), the study reveals three key chronological periods, beginning with the FFTT’s inspiration by the rise of Chinese players in the sport, leading to formal sports exchanges to benefit from Chinese playing and training methods. This would ultimately gave rise to curiosity but also a form of mistrust towards Chinese hegemony at both sporting and institutional levels.

ABSTRACT The rise and development of standardised physical education in South Africa was forged within the context of the nation’s colonial and segregationist pasts. While the country’s long history of formal physical education can be traced back to the eighteenth century, this paper is interested in a nuanced dissection of the cross-institutional implementation of physical education from 1920 to 1947. In considering South Africa’s broader socio-political context, the paper seeks to track the progression of physical education as a practical subject designed to train the body and a research area that sought to employ physical education as a civilising agent. In mapping the spread of physical education, the paper will investigate foundational moves toward national standardisation that occurred from the 1920s onward. Moreover, the article will explore the expansion of the physical education discourse, which began to reflect a medicalised and remedial ethos. As the paper seeks to examine the shifting contours of the physical education movement in South Africa, the article is interested in examining the ways in which physical education became an essential building block of nation building.

ABSTRACT The Water Polo Club (WC) Jug is a highly recognised team in Croatia that constitutes a significant determinant of the modern identity of the city of Dubrovnik. Established in December 1923, the club held its first official water polo match six months later. Since then, WC Jug has not only solidified its position in water sports but has garnered the unwavering support of the Dubrovnik community as a formidable sports team. This study aims to reveal the history of WC Jug based on an analysis of archival documents, literature, media publications, and club statistics, highlighting its achievements and the pivotal role of water polo in shaping Dubrovnik‘s sports identity. It examines the factors contributing to the club‘s performance fluctuations and identifies the key phases in its century-long history.

ABSTRACT The Nietzschean Übermensch or ‘superman’ was frequently invoked in sports-writing of the early twentieth century. While the misappropriation of this figure by the Nazis and Fascists in their programmes of national or racial renewal is well known, the superman appeared in other, less familiar contexts too. This article explores the various roles that the ‘superman’ played in Anglophone as well as German-speaking discourse prior to 1933, as a way of expressing, and interrogating, the ideals that shaped modern athletic culture and of framing long-standing debates in the history of sport: on professionalism and amateurism, national identity, commercialisation and specialisation.

ABSTRACT British baseball had two periods when it developed professional leagues, in 1890 and the 1930s. A key element of the emergence of a professional game was transnational linkages provided by business, individuals and religion. Social and industrial links between the United States and Britain facilitated professional baseball. In the 1930s the enthusiasm for baseball by the industrialist John Moores saw the game rapidly develop from an amateur base in Liverpool to professional leagues in Lancashire, London and Yorkshire. It has been argued that, faced with hostility from elements of the media and established sports, especially cricket, establishing baseball as a professional spectator sport was challenging. The hiatus caused by World War Two left a shallow-rooted sport particularly vulnerable and it failed to re-emerge as a professional game. But the professional leagues inspired an amateur game, most notably in the city of Hull, which developed a substantial amateur league, encompassing four divisions and a women’s section by 1939. In Hull amateur baseball survived the conflict, it re-emerged with a multi-divisional format that continued into the 1960s. However, as the generation enthused by professional baseball retired from active involvement, the game receded to minuscule levels of participation.

ABSTRACT Videogames are a still understudied component of sports history despite their growing importance in sporting and leisure fields. Videogames help engage and include sporting fans, are more interactive than spectating and, in some ways, help solidify sporting narratives. As videogames grew in popularity and marketability in the 2000s, developers sought ways to connect their games with their respective sports’ histories. This is most notably seen in the inclusion of ‘classic’ or ‘legends’ teams within videogames. Since the early 2000s, football, rugby, cricket, and wrestling, among others, have begun to include legendary athletes and teams within their games. Studying the popular FIFA videogame franchise produced by Electronic Arts (EA), this article brings together several strands of research to examine the use, and abuse, of history within the franchise. In doing so, it argues that EA has largely used history problematically for profit motives. While superficially, history is used in an anodyne manner in these games, the kinds of history told, and the linking of historical athletes to in-play purchases, create various problems for how history is told among popular sporting audiences.