French Rugby Football: A Cultural History

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As France's oldest team sport, rugby football has throughout its 125-year history reflected major changes in French society. This book analyzes for the first time the complex variety of motives that have led the French to adopt and remake this rather unlikely British sport in their own image. A major site for the construction of masculine, class-based regional and national identities, France's tradition of 'Champagne rugby' continues to be as subject to dramatic upheavals as the society that produced it. The game's precocious professionalism and endemic violence have not infrequently caused the French to be cast as international pariahs. Such isolation, exacerbated by internal politics, has led the French not only to encourage the extension of the sport beyond its British imperial base (into Italy and Romania, for instance), but also to engage in some uncomfortable tactical alliances, most obviously with apartheid South Africa. Taking his analysis both on and off the field, the author tackles these issues and much more: the relationship of sport and the state (including particularly the Vichy period and the period under de Gaulle); professionalization; the persistence of colonial and postcolonial structures (including the role of ethnic minorities); and gender issues - especially masculine identities. At the same time he links the evolution of the sport to the broader context of French socio-economic, political and cultural history. This book will be essential reading for anyone interested in the cultural analysis of sport or French popular culture.

Reviews

'This admirable book will serve not only rugby fans but a wider academic and general readership immensely well as the authoritative work on its subject.' The Times Higher Education Supplement 'This is an impressive book, the importance of which goes far beyond French rugby. [It mixes] evocation and analysis in crisp prose, with reference to a surprisingly large literature. In Philip Dine French rugby has found a fine historian.' Modern and Contemporary France 'This is one of the definitive works on French Rugby Football . [It is] written with uncompromising scholarship.' Journal of European Studies 'French Rugby Football is written in a lucid and jargon-free style, flowing from chapter to chapter in a way that is reminiscent of the 'champagne' rugby that forms the subject of this book ... I found it astonishing that so much has been included, in highly readable form, into a book of less than 230 pages.' Journal of European Area Studies 'A succinct and engagingly written history of the sport.' H-France 'This is a highly informative, detailed and intriguing study of French rugby. It manages skilfully to place the development of an imported sport within the the context of French society, culture and politics and to show how French approaches to sport in general have informed rugby's growth in France.' French History 'Philip Dine is the master of all he has surveyed and read ... French Rugby Football is a superb contribution not only to sports studies but also to social and cultural history tout court.' The International Journal of the History of Sport

Author Bio

Philip Dine Depart of French National University of Ireland