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This book offers a study of how football became in the 1870s a global sport that was played by high school students on several continents. It provides a horizontal perspective that focusses on the spread of football in the 1870s from its English cradle to Germany, the United States, and Argentina. It will be the very first account of football that does not treat this sport in isolation but brings together the phenomenon of football with the conditions in nineteenth-century high schools and the crisis of urban living and, thereby, explains why this sport was so willingly and quickly accepted into various societies and cultures around the globe.
Football was part of the social reform movement that emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century in response to the social ills of urban life. Adults and children spent more and more time inside badly ventilated buildings. Beginning in the 1870s, social reformers and teachers called for the introduction into school curricula of physical exercises that could be conducted on the meadows and sport fields outside cities.
“The Global Spread of Football is Adam’s final puzzle piece, completing his extensive and insightful work on football and cultural transfer. Rather than writing yet another football history, Adam focuses on the moment the game left England, highlighting the mechanisms that made it a global phenomenon.” —Oliver Knabe, Assistant Professor of German, University of Dayton, USA, and Co-Editor of Football Nation (2023).
“Thomas Adam’s book positions itself at the cutting edge of transnational histories of modern sport. This is a thoroughly researched and original study of the interconnections and complexities that governed the global spread of football in the late nineteenth century.” —Alan McDougall, University of Guelph, Canada.
“A superb global history of football in the late nineteenth century. A must-read for scholars interested in sports or global history as well as everyone who genuinely likes history and football.” —Frank Jacob, Nord University, Norway.
Preface ; Introduction; 1. The English Cradle of Modern Football; 2. From Rugby and Eton to Kornthal, Cannstatt, and Braunschweig; 3. From Rugby and Kornthal to Boston and Yale; 4. From Edinburgh to Buenos Aires; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index