Sport and Ireland

This is the first history of sport in Ireland, locating the history of sport within Irish political, social, and cultural history, and within the global history of sport. Sport and Ireland demonstrates that there are aspects of Ireland's sporting history that are uniquely Irish and are defined by the peculiarities of life on a small island on the edge of Europe. What is equally apparent, though, is that the Irish sporting world is unique only in part; much of the history of Irish sport is a shared history with that of other societies. Drawing on an unparalleled range of sources - government archives, sporting institutions, private collections, and more than sixty local, national, and international newspapers - this volume offers a unique insight into the history of the British Empire in Ireland and examines the impact that political partition has had on the organization of sport there. Paul Rouse assesses the relationship between sport and national identity, how sport influences policy-making in modern states, and the ways in which sport has been colonized by the media and has colonized it in turn. Each chapter of Sport and Ireland contains new research on the place of sport in Irish life: the playing of hurling matches in London in the eighteenth century, the growth of cricket to become the most important sport in early Victorian Ireland, and the enlistment of thousands of members of the Gaelic Athletic Association as soldiers in the British Army during the Great War. Rouse draws out the significance of animals to the Irish sporting tradition, from the role of horse and dogs in racing and hunting, to the cocks, bulls, and bears that were involved in fighting and baiting.

Paul Rouse is a lecturer in the School of History at University College Dublin. He has written extensively on the history of sport in Ireland for more than twenty years. A former award-winning journalist with Prime Time Investigates on RTÉ television, he regularly contributes to current affairs and sports programmes on radio and television, as well as writing in the press.

- Introduction - Chapter One: Sport before 1800 - i: Inventing the Past: Sport in Medieval Ireland - ii: Hunting before 1800: From Medieval to Modern - iii: The World of Popular Play, 1500-1800 - iv: Sport in Urbanizing Ireland - v: Horseracing and the Modernization of Irish Sport - vi: The Spread of Sporting Clubs - Chapter Two: The Modernization of Irish Sport: 1800-1880 - i: Decline of Traditional Sports - ii: Growing Commercialization of Sport - iii: The Phenomenon of Cricket - iv: The Invention of Modern Football - v: Athletics and Athletes, Old and New - Chapter Three: Contested Sports: Politics, War and Women, 1880-1920 - i: Sport in the Early 1880s - ii: The Founding of the Gaelic Athletic Association - iii: A New Battle: Gaelic Games, Soccer, and Rugby - iv: Sport and Gender - v: Sport and Nationalism - vi: Sport and War - Chapter Four: Sport on a Partitioned Island, 1920- - i: Back to the Future: The Tailteann Games - ii: Flying the Flag: Irish Sport after Partition - iii: The Joy of Sport - iv: Sport in Boom and Bust - v: Sport and the State - Conclusion