Sport and National Identity in the Post-War World

This book provides a broad range of international case studies to examine how sport has helped to shape national identities, and how national cultures have shaped sport.

What is the relationship between sport and national identity? What can sport tell us about changing perceptions of national identity?
Bringing together the work of established historians and younger commentators, this illuminating text surveys the last half-century, giving due attention to the place of sport in our social and political history.
It Includes studies of:
· English football and British decline
· Englishness and sport
· Ethnicity and nationalism in Scotland
· Social change and national pride in Wales
· Irish international football and Irishness
· Sport and identity in South Africa
· Cricket and identity crisis in the Caribbean
· Baseball, exceptionalism and American Sport
· Popular mythology surrounding the sporting rivalry between New Zealand and Australia
Sport and National Identity in the Post-War World presents a wealth of original research into contemporary social history and provides illuminating material for historians and sociologists alike.