Before the Institutionalization of Sport in France

This article examines a collection of letters written by the mayors of the municipalities of the Bouches-du-Rhône district (France) between 1820 and 1825, which provide precise information on certain traditional sporting games that constituted the daily life of village festivals in the Marseille region and, more generally, on the Mediterranean shore of France at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The article presents the collection of letters and explores the diversity of games they mention. Then it focuses on the characteristics of the games, successively considering their place in the annual calendar, the methods of their organization, their financing, and their audience. Lastly, it examines the context within which the letters were written, showing how the knowledge of local mayors contributed to building a specific image of sport a few decades before the advent of modern institutional sports

Archaeology · Geography · Institutionalisation · Political science · Regional science · Shore · Social science · Sociology · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · Law · Sport and Mega-Event Impacts · Sports, Gender, and Society