Martin Johnes
Biographic Data
| ID | 1405715 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Martin Johnes |
| GIVEN NAMES | Martin |
| FAMILY NAME | Johnes |
| SIGNATURE | JOHNES M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Swansea University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9700-5120 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 33 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 71 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 32 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Humbug and a ‘Welsh Hindoo’
In 1849, a Liverpool newspaper printed a letter about an encounter with a lascar who was selling hymn sheets. The same newspaper had recently reported the arrest of someone similar for drunkenness and the letter writer, a migrant from Wales, confronted the hymn seller angrily in Welsh. To his surprise, the man responded in the same language and eventually confessed to being from Anglesey rather than Bombay. Much about the incident is unclear. Had…
Masculinity, Modernity and Male Baldness, c.1880‐1939
Male baldness was a very common experience but it has rarely been considered by historians of any period or place. This article argues that baldness reveals a precariousness and vanity to masculinity in late nineteenth‐ and early twentieth‐century Britain. Baldness limited men's ability to self‐fashion their appearance. It made them the target of jokes, marked the fact they were getting older, undermined their looks and, perhaps, made them less a…
Race, Archival Silences, and a Black Footballer Between the Wars
The relative absence of colour in archival sources has led the British historiography of race to concentrate too much on the reactions of white Britons and not enough on black experiences. With some notable exceptions, this has created an analytical emphasis on racism and discrimination rather than the agency of black men and women to resist prejudices and live meaningful lives. This article explores the life of Welsh footballer Eddie Parris in o…
Boxing, Race, and British Identity, 1945–1962
With a formal colour bar on British championships operating until 1948, boxing had long been a site of racial discrimination. The abolition of the sport's colour bar was recognition of the wrongness of racial exclusion and it was followed by a celebration of black fighters as local and national heroes. The sport became a rare space where black men could be spoken about, discussed, and celebrated without primary reference to their colour. However,…
Race, National Identity, and Responses to Muhammad Ali in 1960s Britain
Muhammad Ali fought in the UK three times in the 1960s, each time to the accompaniment of significant media coverage that made him into a public figure. On his first fight in 1963, his unusual personality both delighted and reviled. Many of the criticisms were rooted in a dislike of American culture but beneath them were also racial stereotypes that encouraged a view of him as brash and immature. By his second and third fights in 1966, he was a d…
Consuming Popular Music
Historians have maintained that popular music had an influence upon individuals and in turn society. Yet the historiography of popular music has focused far more on bands and wider social reactions to the music than on understanding how and why fans consumed music. This article demonstrates how a more fan-centric approach can allow for more subtle understandings of the influence and role of popular music in the twentieth century. During the 1970s…
Resist and survive
This article explores Welsh protests against chief policies of the British nuclear state, especially nuclear deterrence, civil defence and its close relationship with the USA. It contributes to the social, cultural and political histories of the post-war British nuclear state by further demonstrating the plural character of protests across and within the British nations. It shows that, while local authorities, individuals and extra-parliamentary …
People, Places and Passions—‘Pain and Pleasure’
There was a time when the historiography of modern Wales was rather narrow. Its domain was the fortunes of the Liberals and Labour, the impact of trade unions and protest, and the cultural realms of nonconformity and the Welsh language. This was not surprising—all emergent fields start with the big topics and the big questions—but it did give much of Welsh academic history a rather particular flavour. It was institutional and male, and yet still …
Archives and Historians of Sport
Archives and the documents within them are at the heart of the practice of history and the occupational culture of historians. A majority of historical work has been characterized and defined by research in archives of varying kinds. Yet, the material within archives is both partial and political and using it is never straightforward. For historians of sport, the material available in archives can be especially limited but, with some careful read…
History and the Making and Remaking of Wales
History – in the sense of both the past itself and representations of that past – has been employed over the centuries to assert a Welsh identity. Indeed, by the early twentieth century, history was a defining constituent of national identity in Wales. This article explores how history continued to be used to promote Welsh identity after the Second World War, a practice that grew, particularly in education, as concerns over the future of traditio…
M4 to Wales - and prosper!' A history of a motorway
The M4 is integral to the south Wales economy, shapes the area's mental geography and contributes to the sense people in and outside Wales have of the Welsh nation being somewhere that is both part of Britain but at the same time ‘other’. Moreover, the motorway's history is the history of modern Wales: a reliance on the state, tensions over nationalism, administrative devolution and regional rivalries, the marginalization of working-class communi…
Sport, History, and Heritage, Studies in Public Representation
Heritage is a curious word. Its meaning is rather imprecise, ranging from some form of historic capital that might be physical or imagined to a descriptor of the industry and services built about p
What's the Point of Sports History
The humanities in higher education are under attack. There may not be a deliberate and concerted effort to undermine their provision and development within universities but the direction of current policy is certainly undermining their stability and well being as an intellectual pursuit. Using the example of sports history, this paper considers whether public expenditure on academic history is justified and it explores some of the ways the subdis…
Sport and the Military
The Duke of Wellington did not claim that the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton, but the myth was widely repeated because it was believable. As Tony Mason and Eliza Riedi’s excellent book demonstrates, there has been a powerful relationship between organised sport and the military since the former developed into an integral part of British popular culture in the late Victorian period. Indeed, so powerful was this relationsh…
Cardiff
Capital cities are never static entities and their status is often contested or the subject of resentment elsewhere. Any history of capitals should thus extend beyond considering the built environment that has dominated its historiography and root itself in an understanding of popular attitudes and local political processes. Only then can the reality and significance of being a capital be properly understood. Cardiff's claim, attainment and devel…
This Rugby Spellbound People’
‘This Rugby Spellbound People’: Rugby Football in Nineteenth-Century Cardiff and South Wales, by Gwyn Prescott, Cardiff, Welsh Academic Press, 2011, 192 pp., notes and index, £48 (hbk), ISBN 978-18
Boxing in History
This issue of Sport in History is the product of a symposium entitled ‘Boxing, History and Culture: New Themes and Perspectives’ held in June 2010 at De Montfort University and organized by the International Centre for Sports History and Culture. The symposium was an attempt to highlight and reflect upon a notable increase in recent years in scholarly research on the culture and history of boxing. It brought together academics from a range of dis…
Looking Back on Sport and the British
I can't remember if Sport and the British was the first piece of academic sports history that I read, but it certainly influenced me more than the other books I read in my early days as a PhD stude
Stories of a Post-industrial Hero
Boxing is widely seen as a deeply symbolic sport. Perhaps at no time was that truer than when Welsh boxer Johnny Owen died after being knocked out in a world title bout in 1980. Owen's likeable personality, his commitment to his family, community and nation and his skinny appearance all exacerbated the widespread feeling that someone special had been lost in tragic circumstances. His death led to debates about whether boxing should be banned but …
For Class and Nation
Welsh identity has often centred on tensions between labour and political/cultural nationalist traditions. Those tensions have influenced writing about the history of modern Wales to the extent where Welsh history might even be thought to be justifying different interpretations of Wales. But both nationalist and labour interpretations of Wales actually overlap and both have played their part in strengthening a sense of Welsh identity. This paper …
A Prince, a King, and a Referendum
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Archives, Truths and the Historian at Work
In his article ‘Sites of Truth or Metaphors of Power? Refiguring the Archive’ 1 1. Douglas Booth, ‘Sites of truth or metaphors of power? Refiguring the archive’, Sport in History, 26 (1) (2006), pp. 91–109. Douglas Booth calls for ‘a more cautious engagement with archived materials’ and suggests that traditional historians ‘conceptualize archives as simple, straightforward neutral sites of knowledge’. In reply, this article argues that all good h…
Pigeon Racing And Working-Class Culture in Britain, C . 1870–1950
Pigeon racing was immensely popular amongst male industrial workers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This article offers an overview of the history of pigeon racing in this period before moving on to explore the sport's multiple meanings for those who took part. Pigeon racing offered not only the thrills and excitement of racing but also the more sedate and intellectual rewards of breeding and rearing the birds. The pigeon loft wa…
The 1953 FA Cup Final
The 1953 FA Cup final was more than just a memorable game of football. It was the first cup final to reach a mass television audience. It was a match where a national hero, Stanley Matthews, finally won a winner's medal for a competition that itself was a national institution. It was also a match that was intertwined with the ideas of modernity and tradition that ran through British culture in the early 1950s. The new Queen, present at the game, …
Soccer and Disaster
The word disaster is much used in the world of soccer - conceding a penalty, a sending off, an untimely defeat. Comparing these with real life disasters puts things into perspective and the results of the games become insignificant. Soccer is not more important than life or death!For the first time, real life tragedies in the world of soccer are explored in one volume. From the loss of life of talented young players in the Munich and Zambian air …
Eighty minute patriots? National identity and sport in modern Wales
(2000). Eighty minute patriots? National identity and sport in modern Wales. The International Journal of the History of Sport: Vol. 17, No. 4, pp. 93-110
Sport, History, and Heritage, Studies in Public Representation
Heritage is a curious word. Its meaning is rather imprecise, ranging from some form of historic capital that might be physical or imagined to a descriptor of the industry and services built about p
Cardiff
Capital cities are never static entities and their status is often contested or the subject of resentment elsewhere. Any history of capitals should thus extend beyond considering the built environment that has dominated its historiography and root itself in an understanding of popular attitudes and local political processes. Only then can the reality and significance of being a capital be properly understood. Cardiff's claim, attainment and devel…
Heads in the Sand’
Over the course of the twentieth century, 276 people lost their lives in disasters at UK football grounds.2Yet it is surprising that such tragedies did not occur more frequently. The rapid speed with which the game's popularity developed in the late nineteenth century meant that football grounds were built quickly and crudely. Any profits that clubs made were usually invested in players rather than spectators' facilities. Eager to see their teams…
Aberfan and the Management of Trauma
This paper is a case study of the management of post-disaster trauma in 1960s Britain. It explores the traumatic aftermath of the 1966 Aberfan disaster (where 116 children and 28 adults were killed when a colliery spoil heap collapsed on top of a school in a small Welsh mining community) which had a devastating impact on the village. The professional and voluntary services made available to help the bereaved, survivors and wider community are doc…
A Prince, a King, and a Referendum
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Archives and Historians of Sport
Archives and the documents within them are at the heart of the practice of history and the occupational culture of historians. A majority of historical work has been characterized and defined by research in archives of varying kinds. Yet, the material within archives is both partial and political and using it is never straightforward. For historians of sport, the material available in archives can be especially limited but, with some careful read…
Resist and survive
This article explores Welsh protests against chief policies of the British nuclear state, especially nuclear deterrence, civil defence and its close relationship with the USA. It contributes to the social, cultural and political histories of the post-war British nuclear state by further demonstrating the plural character of protests across and within the British nations. It shows that, while local authorities, individuals and extra-parliamentary …
Soccer, Public History and the National Football Museum
(2003). Soccer, Public History and the National Football Museum. Sport in History: Vol. 23, No. 1, pp. 115-131
Poor man's cricket’
Regulation Run Mad’
Race, National Identity, and Responses to Muhammad Ali in 1960s Britain
Muhammad Ali fought in the UK three times in the 1960s, each time to the accompaniment of significant media coverage that made him into a public figure. On his first fight in 1963, his unusual personality both delighted and reviled. Many of the criticisms were rooted in a dislike of American culture but beneath them were also racial stereotypes that encouraged a view of him as brash and immature. By his second and third fights in 1966, he was a d…
History and the Making and Remaking of Wales
History – in the sense of both the past itself and representations of that past – has been employed over the centuries to assert a Welsh identity. Indeed, by the early twentieth century, history was a defining constituent of national identity in Wales. This article explores how history continued to be used to promote Welsh identity after the Second World War, a practice that grew, particularly in education, as concerns over the future of traditio…
Boxing in History
This issue of Sport in History is the product of a symposium entitled ‘Boxing, History and Culture: New Themes and Perspectives’ held in June 2010 at De Montfort University and organized by the International Centre for Sports History and Culture. The symposium was an attempt to highlight and reflect upon a notable increase in recent years in scholarly research on the culture and history of boxing. It brought together academics from a range of dis…
For Class and Nation
Welsh identity has often centred on tensions between labour and political/cultural nationalist traditions. Those tensions have influenced writing about the history of modern Wales to the extent where Welsh history might even be thought to be justifying different interpretations of Wales. But both nationalist and labour interpretations of Wales actually overlap and both have played their part in strengthening a sense of Welsh identity. This paper …
Archives, Truths and the Historian at Work
In his article ‘Sites of Truth or Metaphors of Power? Refiguring the Archive’ 1 1. Douglas Booth, ‘Sites of truth or metaphors of power? Refiguring the archive’, Sport in History, 26 (1) (2006), pp. 91–109. Douglas Booth calls for ‘a more cautious engagement with archived materials’ and suggests that traditional historians ‘conceptualize archives as simple, straightforward neutral sites of knowledge’. In reply, this article argues that all good h…
Pigeon Racing And Working-Class Culture in Britain, C . 1870–1950
Pigeon racing was immensely popular amongst male industrial workers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This article offers an overview of the history of pigeon racing in this period before moving on to explore the sport's multiple meanings for those who took part. Pigeon racing offered not only the thrills and excitement of racing but also the more sedate and intellectual rewards of breeding and rearing the birds. The pigeon loft wa…
The 1953 FA Cup Final
The 1953 FA Cup final was more than just a memorable game of football. It was the first cup final to reach a mass television audience. It was a match where a national hero, Stanley Matthews, finally won a winner's medal for a competition that itself was a national institution. It was also a match that was intertwined with the ideas of modernity and tradition that ran through British culture in the early 1950s. The new Queen, present at the game, …
Masculinity, Modernity and Male Baldness, c.1880‐1939
Male baldness was a very common experience but it has rarely been considered by historians of any period or place. This article argues that baldness reveals a precariousness and vanity to masculinity in late nineteenth‐ and early twentieth‐century Britain. Baldness limited men's ability to self‐fashion their appearance. It made them the target of jokes, marked the fact they were getting older, undermined their looks and, perhaps, made them less a…
Boxing, Race, and British Identity, 1945–1962
With a formal colour bar on British championships operating until 1948, boxing had long been a site of racial discrimination. The abolition of the sport's colour bar was recognition of the wrongness of racial exclusion and it was followed by a celebration of black fighters as local and national heroes. The sport became a rare space where black men could be spoken about, discussed, and celebrated without primary reference to their colour. However,…
Hooligans and barrackers
Drawing upon an extensive search of the local press, this article offers a quantitative and qualitative analysis of incidents of crowd disorder at soccer matches in South Wales in the period 1906‐39. As well as contributing to the existing academic debate on the extent of football hooliganism in this period, it develops that debate through firmly situating the trouble in the class and cultural values of those who witnessed and perpetuated it. The…
Hooligans and barrackers
Drawing upon an extensive search of the local press, this article offers a quantitative and qualitative analysis of incidents of crowd disorder at soccer matches in South Wales in the period 1906‐39. As well as contributing to the existing academic debate on the extent of football hooliganism in this period, it develops that debate through firmly situating the trouble in the class and cultural values of those who witnessed and perpetuated it. The…
Eighty minute patriots? National identity and sport in modern Wales
(2000). Eighty minute patriots? National identity and sport in modern Wales. The International Journal of the History of Sport: Vol. 17, No. 4, pp. 93-110
Poor man's cricket’
Regulation Run Mad’
Aberfan and the Management of Trauma
This paper is a case study of the management of post-disaster trauma in 1960s Britain. It explores the traumatic aftermath of the 1966 Aberfan disaster (where 116 children and 28 adults were killed when a colliery spoil heap collapsed on top of a school in a small Welsh mining community) which had a devastating impact on the village. The professional and voluntary services made available to help the bereaved, survivors and wider community are doc…
Soccer, Public History and the National Football Museum
(2003). Soccer, Public History and the National Football Museum. Sport in History: Vol. 23, No. 1, pp. 115-131
Soccer and Disaster
The word disaster is much used in the world of soccer - conceding a penalty, a sending off, an untimely defeat. Comparing these with real life disasters puts things into perspective and the results of the games become insignificant. Soccer is not more important than life or death!For the first time, real life tragedies in the world of soccer are explored in one volume. From the loss of life of talented young players in the Munich and Zambian air …
Heads in the Sand’
Over the course of the twentieth century, 276 people lost their lives in disasters at UK football grounds.2Yet it is surprising that such tragedies did not occur more frequently. The rapid speed with which the game's popularity developed in the late nineteenth century meant that football grounds were built quickly and crudely. Any profits that clubs made were usually invested in players rather than spectators' facilities. Eager to see their teams…
Archery, Romance and Elite Culture in England and Wales, c .1780–1840
During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the longbow was rendered redundant as a weapon of war by technological developments such as the musket. Yet at the end of the eighteenth century, archery was revived as a fashionable pastime amongst the English aristocracy thanks to a nostalgic taste for the gothic and medieval. Archery societies were set up across the country, each with its own strict entry criteria, outlandish costumes and extrava…
The 1953 FA Cup Final
The 1953 FA Cup final was more than just a memorable game of football. It was the first cup final to reach a mass television audience. It was a match where a national hero, Stanley Matthews, finally won a winner's medal for a competition that itself was a national institution. It was also a match that was intertwined with the ideas of modernity and tradition that ran through British culture in the early 1950s. The new Queen, present at the game, …
Archives, Truths and the Historian at Work
In his article ‘Sites of Truth or Metaphors of Power? Refiguring the Archive’ 1 1. Douglas Booth, ‘Sites of truth or metaphors of power? Refiguring the archive’, Sport in History, 26 (1) (2006), pp. 91–109. Douglas Booth calls for ‘a more cautious engagement with archived materials’ and suggests that traditional historians ‘conceptualize archives as simple, straightforward neutral sites of knowledge’. In reply, this article argues that all good h…
Pigeon Racing And Working-Class Culture in Britain, C . 1870–1950
Pigeon racing was immensely popular amongst male industrial workers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This article offers an overview of the history of pigeon racing in this period before moving on to explore the sport's multiple meanings for those who took part. Pigeon racing offered not only the thrills and excitement of racing but also the more sedate and intellectual rewards of breeding and rearing the birds. The pigeon loft wa…
A Prince, a King, and a Referendum
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
For Class and Nation
Welsh identity has often centred on tensions between labour and political/cultural nationalist traditions. Those tensions have influenced writing about the history of modern Wales to the extent where Welsh history might even be thought to be justifying different interpretations of Wales. But both nationalist and labour interpretations of Wales actually overlap and both have played their part in strengthening a sense of Welsh identity. This paper …
Boxing in History
This issue of Sport in History is the product of a symposium entitled ‘Boxing, History and Culture: New Themes and Perspectives’ held in June 2010 at De Montfort University and organized by the International Centre for Sports History and Culture. The symposium was an attempt to highlight and reflect upon a notable increase in recent years in scholarly research on the culture and history of boxing. It brought together academics from a range of dis…
Looking Back on Sport and the British
I can't remember if Sport and the British was the first piece of academic sports history that I read, but it certainly influenced me more than the other books I read in my early days as a PhD stude
Stories of a Post-industrial Hero
Boxing is widely seen as a deeply symbolic sport. Perhaps at no time was that truer than when Welsh boxer Johnny Owen died after being knocked out in a world title bout in 1980. Owen's likeable personality, his commitment to his family, community and nation and his skinny appearance all exacerbated the widespread feeling that someone special had been lost in tragic circumstances. His death led to debates about whether boxing should be banned but …
Cardiff
Capital cities are never static entities and their status is often contested or the subject of resentment elsewhere. Any history of capitals should thus extend beyond considering the built environment that has dominated its historiography and root itself in an understanding of popular attitudes and local political processes. Only then can the reality and significance of being a capital be properly understood. Cardiff's claim, attainment and devel…
This Rugby Spellbound People’
‘This Rugby Spellbound People’: Rugby Football in Nineteenth-Century Cardiff and South Wales, by Gwyn Prescott, Cardiff, Welsh Academic Press, 2011, 192 pp., notes and index, £48 (hbk), ISBN 978-18
Sport, History, and Heritage, Studies in Public Representation
Heritage is a curious word. Its meaning is rather imprecise, ranging from some form of historic capital that might be physical or imagined to a descriptor of the industry and services built about p
What's the Point of Sports History
The humanities in higher education are under attack. There may not be a deliberate and concerted effort to undermine their provision and development within universities but the direction of current policy is certainly undermining their stability and well being as an intellectual pursuit. Using the example of sports history, this paper considers whether public expenditure on academic history is justified and it explores some of the ways the subdis…
Sport and the Military
The Duke of Wellington did not claim that the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton, but the myth was widely repeated because it was believable. As Tony Mason and Eliza Riedi’s excellent book demonstrates, there has been a powerful relationship between organised sport and the military since the former developed into an integral part of British popular culture in the late Victorian period. Indeed, so powerful was this relationsh…
M4 to Wales - and prosper!' A history of a motorway
The M4 is integral to the south Wales economy, shapes the area's mental geography and contributes to the sense people in and outside Wales have of the Welsh nation being somewhere that is both part of Britain but at the same time ‘other’. Moreover, the motorway's history is the history of modern Wales: a reliance on the state, tensions over nationalism, administrative devolution and regional rivalries, the marginalization of working-class communi…
Archives and Historians of Sport
Archives and the documents within them are at the heart of the practice of history and the occupational culture of historians. A majority of historical work has been characterized and defined by research in archives of varying kinds. Yet, the material within archives is both partial and political and using it is never straightforward. For historians of sport, the material available in archives can be especially limited but, with some careful read…
History and the Making and Remaking of Wales
History – in the sense of both the past itself and representations of that past – has been employed over the centuries to assert a Welsh identity. Indeed, by the early twentieth century, history was a defining constituent of national identity in Wales. This article explores how history continued to be used to promote Welsh identity after the Second World War, a practice that grew, particularly in education, as concerns over the future of traditio…
Sociology (28 works) · History (27 works) · History (26 works) · Political science (25 works) · Law (22 works) · Law (22 works) · Art (18 works) · Sports, Gender, and Society (16 works) · Aesthetics (15 works) · Politics (15 works)