Europe, 1800 to 1900

Sports and Play

The 19th century saw the rise of competitive sports in both Europe and the United States. Most of the spectator sports we enjoy today have their roots in the period between 1800 and 1900, as does that premier international showcase of athleticism, the Olympic Games.

The development of modern sports was aided not only by the growth of the middle class and changes in how people viewed leisure time but also in the dominant philosophical trends of the period. Romanticism, for example, emphasized communion with nature, helping spur the popularity of outdoor sports like hiking and mountaineering. Classicism was even more influential, given the interest in Greek and Roman principles of the strong body as the necessary adjunct of the strong mind. Millions of young men sought physical perfection in a growing variety of team and individual pursuits.

While some sports, like cycling, were the result of new inventions, the vast majority derived from preexisting sports that found new forms or were introduced to new audiences. What were once purely regional sports now spread out across the continent. Pursuits once open only to the aristocracy or upper class became available to the middle class. Routine pursuits were recast as leisure activities. Team sports became a stand-in for combat in the long, mostly peaceful period between the 1870s and the start of the World War I in 1914.

For centuries, fencing was a sport of the nobility. It was, in the strictest sense, a martial art—a practice that encouraged discipline, athleticism, and the adoption of a strict code of honor, but also had practical applications in combat or in settling issues of “honor” on the dueling field. By the mid-19th century, dueling was on the decline. Rather than abandon the practice, it was slowly shifted to a nonlethal sport, much as children are sent to practice karate or tae kwan do today. Fencing was popular among the upper and middle classes, particularly those who attended private schools, but never really filtered down to the working class. It was prevalent among the French, Germans, Italians, and Hungarians beginning in the early part of the 19th century and was one of the first Olympic sports. The sport's governing body, the Federation Internationale d'Escrime, was established in France at the turn of the 20th century.

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