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Four Histories about Early Dutch Football, 1910-1920

Constructing Discourses

What is the purpose of history today, and how can sporting research help us understand the world around us? In this stimulating book, Nicholas Piercey constructs four new histories of early Dutch football, exploring urban change, club members, the media, and the diaries of Cornelis Johannes Karel van Aalst, a stadium director, to propose practical examples of how history can become an important democratic tool for the 21st century. Using early Dutch football as a field for experimental thinking about the past, the four histories offer new insights into the lives, interests and passions of those connected to the sport in the 1910s and the cities they lived in. How did the First World War impact on Dutch football? Were new stadia a form of social control? Is the spread of the beautiful game really a good thing? And why was one of the sport’s most prominent figures more concerned with potatoes? These stories of early Dutch football suggest how vital sport and history can be in shaping our lives, perceptions and actions, and why we need to challenge the influence they have today. This book also includes a downloadable appendix. Download it here(.xlsx).

240 pages | 6.14 x 9.21 | © 2016

Free digital open access editions are available to download from UCL Press.

History: General History

Sport and Recreation


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Reviews

". . . an enjoyable read because of the new perspectives on Dutch football history it offers, but even more so for showing how self-reflection, if done right, leads to histories that are innovative, challenging and empathic."

 

Journal of Sport History

Table of Contents

"List of figures and tables

List of abbreviations

List of clubs

A note on images

Street names and organisations

1. Constructing research: in place of an introduction

2. Constructing grounds: spatial change in Rotterdam
and Amsterdam

3. Constructing narratives: football club members in
Rotterdam in 1914

4. Constructing football discourses: the media and early
Dutch football

5. Constructing history: the diaries of Cornelis Johannes
Karel van Aalst, 1914–1918

Epilogue

Notes

References

Appendix

Index "

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