Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1 French Cycling: Issues and Themes
- 2 The Early Years: Cycling in Search of an Identity, 1869–1891
- 3 Towards Sporting Modernity: Sport as the Driver of Cycling, 1891–1902
- 4 The Belle Epoque and the First World War: Industry, Sport, Utility and Leisure, 1903–1918
- 5 Cycling between the Wars: Sport, Recreation, Ideology, 1919–1939
- 6 From Defeat to the New France: Sport and Society, Cycling and Everyday Life, 1940–1959
- 7 Cycling's Glory Years and their Mediatization, 1960–1980
- 8 Cycling in Transformation: Industry, Recreation, Sport, 1980–2000
- 9 French Cycling in Quest of a New Identity, 2000–2011
- 10 A Sense of Cycling in France
- Bibliography
- Index
1 - French Cycling: Issues and Themes
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1 French Cycling: Issues and Themes
- 2 The Early Years: Cycling in Search of an Identity, 1869–1891
- 3 Towards Sporting Modernity: Sport as the Driver of Cycling, 1891–1902
- 4 The Belle Epoque and the First World War: Industry, Sport, Utility and Leisure, 1903–1918
- 5 Cycling between the Wars: Sport, Recreation, Ideology, 1919–1939
- 6 From Defeat to the New France: Sport and Society, Cycling and Everyday Life, 1940–1959
- 7 Cycling's Glory Years and their Mediatization, 1960–1980
- 8 Cycling in Transformation: Industry, Recreation, Sport, 1980–2000
- 9 French Cycling in Quest of a New Identity, 2000–2011
- 10 A Sense of Cycling in France
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
French Cycling: A Social and Cultural History aims to provide a balanced and detailed analytical survey of the complex leisure activity, sport and industry that is cycling in France. Identifying key events, practices, stakeholders and institutions in the history of French cycling, the volume presents an interdisciplinary analysis of how cycling has been significant in French society and culture since the late nineteenth century.
Structuring and writing this book has been rather challenging, principally because of the potentially vast scope of material and debate, given the multi-faceted nature of ‘cycling’, and indeed, the chronological range of the period during which cycling has been significant, in whatever ways and in whatever forms to individuals or groups of any kind, in France. It could be argued that providing a fully comprehensive and fully balanced treatment of cycling in France since, say, the 1870s would require a team of researchers, a multi-volume series and the best part of an academic lifetime! Based on the view that few publishers would accept such a project, the approach in this treatment has thus been necessarily selective. In the paragraphs that follow we explain the approach of the book, starting with the question: ‘What to do with the Tour de France?’
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- Information
- French CyclingA Social and Cultural History, pp. 1 - 14Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2012