Routledge Research in Sports History
About the Book Series
The Routledge Research in Sports History series features leading research in the development and historical significance of sport and physical culture. Including historiographical, regional, and thematic studies, and spanning a variety of periods, sports, and geographical areas, the series showcases ground-breaking, cross-disciplinary work from established and emerging sport historians. Aiming to be global in reach, inclusive of all voices, and reflecting a contemporary social, political, and cultural consciousness, the series represents an important contribution to the broader study of sport and society.
Cricket and Cape Society
1st Edition
By Francois Johannes Cleophas
February 25, 2026
Cricket and Cape Society is a critical and comprehensive historical examination of St Augustine Cricket Club. The club is used as a powerful lens to explore the intricate relationship between cricket, history and South African society. Several South African cricket histories and biographies have ...
Rugby, Soccer and Irish Society: 1921-1990
1st Edition
By Conor Murray
January 19, 2026
This book is the first academic all-island history of either rugby union or association football, two of the three most popular male sporting pastimes in Ireland, across the seven decades that followed the political partition of that country between 1920 and 1922. It moves beyond the occasionally ...
International Football as Cultural Diplomacy: Britain Versus the Dictators in the 1930s
1st Edition
By Peter J. Beck
December 26, 2025
Drawing on wide-ranging archival research, this authoritative new history examines the cultural diplomatic role played by British football in international affairs, British foreign policy, and international football during the 1930s. For British governments, soccer diplomacy emerged as a ...
California and the Making of Modern Sport
1st Edition
By Joel S. Franks
September 30, 2025
This book examines the importance of California - a socio-cultural, economic and political powerhouse - in the history of modern sport. It argues that California has had a profound influence, for better or worse, on the way that not only America but also the wider world plays sport and spends money...
Sport and Polish Society in the Communist Era: Small Towns and History from Below
1st Edition
By Marta Kurkowska-Budzan, Marcin Stasiak
May 06, 2025
Using the history of sport in the small towns and local communities of Poland, this book shines new light on the everyday reality of life under a communist regime in Eastern Europe in the 20th century. This book shows how socio-cultural history – ‘history from below’ – that draws on rich sources, ...
Olympic Opening Ceremonies: Memory and Modernity
1st Edition
By Daniel Malanski
April 25, 2025
This is the first book to unpack the history and significance of the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, the frontispiece of the most watched event on Earth. Covering the period from the Moscow Olympics in 1980 to Tokyo 2020, the book examines when, how and why the Olympic opening ceremonies’ ...
Sport and Protest in the Black Atlantic
1st Edition
Edited
By Michael J. Gennaro, Brian M. McGowan
May 27, 2024
*Winner of the North American Society for Sport History 2024 Anthology Book Award* This is the first book to focus on race, sport, protest, and the Black Atlantic. It brings together innovative scholarship on African, African-American, Afro-European, Afro-Brazilian, and Afro-Caribbean sports in a ...
Sports Coaching in Europe: Cultural Histories
1st Edition
Edited
By Dave Day
January 09, 2023
This book explores the historical development of coaching traditions across Europe, placing national approaches to coaching within their cultural and political context. Sports coaching is a social practice that has been shaped by its cultural context, resulting in different countries being ...
Women, Horse Sports and Liberation: Equestrianism and Britain from the 18th to the 20th Centuries
1st Edition
By Erica Munkwitz
January 09, 2023
*Shortlisted for the 2022 Lord Aberdare Literary Prize* This book is the first, full-length scholarly examination of British women’s involvement in equestrianism from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries, as well as the corresponding transformations of gender, class, sport, and national ...
The Emergence of Football: Sport, Culture and Society in the Nineteenth Century
1st Edition
By Peter Swain
December 19, 2022
The Emergence of Football fuses sports history into mainstream economic, social and cultural history, setting the development of the people’s game against the backdrop of the Industrial Revolution. The book challenges conventional histories of nineteenth-century football that surrounded mass games ...
Britain’s Olympic Women: A History
1st Edition
By Jean Williams
May 06, 2022
Britain has a long and distinguished history as an Olympic nation. However, most Olympic histories have focused on men’s sport. This is the first book to tell the story of Britain’s Olympic women, how they changed Olympic spectacle and how, in turn, they have reinterpreted the Games. Exploring the...
Sport, War and the British: 1850 to the Present
1st Edition
By Peter Donaldson
December 13, 2021
Spanning the colonial campaigns of the Victorian age to the War on Terror after 9/11, this study explores the role sport was perceived to have played in the lives and work of military personnel, and examines how sporting language and imagery were deployed to shape and reconfigure civilian society’s...