After France was defeated in 1870, the country saw a huge spike in English sports. Why? Especially since both countries were not on the friendliest of terms at the time.
Why too we’re they English sports and not German sports?
Were there any further implications of the adoption of English sports for the country?
The concept of "sports" in nineteenth century Europe was different from the current one, with roughly two competing approaches:
Both models had similar social ends such as harnessing young (male) energies, but the first approach was elitist and (to some extent) individualistic, while the second was collective and meant to create national or civic sense (Weber, 1971).
In the second third of the nineteenth century, France chose the second model, due to lingering fears about the degeneration of the "race" and a growing concern about hygiene, notably in the urban bourgeoisie. Gymnastics were imported by German and Swiss nationals and grew in popularity throughout the 1840-1860s.
But it was the traumatic defeat of 1871 that turned gymnastics into a social phenomenon and mass movement: if France was to take revenge on Prussia, it was necessary to "regenerate the race" and build a new kind of Frenchman, a strong, virile, and healthy soldier-citizen (women would be included much later). The motto of the French Union of Gymnastic Societies (1873) was « Patrie, courage, moralité » (Motherland, Courage, Morality) (Terret, 2019). In 1880, gymnastic training was made compulsory in all public boys' schools: four half-hours of physical training and military exercises every week (Weber, 1971).
The English model was brought to France in the 1870s by British expatriates, first in spa resorts, and later by British traders in Paris and Bordeaux: rowing, running, lawn-tennis, golf, skating... French upper class students in Paris soon created their own English-style clubs, notably the Racing Club de France (1882) and the Stade français (1883), and they started playing association football and rugby, and organized athletic competitions. Those anglophiles had a particular interest in English public schools, to which they attributed Britain's success. Less motivated by patriotism than the promoters of gymnastics, they were trying to create a modern type of 'gentleman'. They also believed that "sport contributed effectively to the development of imperialism, by creating an informal network of influence linking businessmen, public administrators and politicians" (Holt, 2011). This newborn movement benefited from the good image of Britain as a modern and prosperous nation. The young Pierre de Coubertin wrote a book titled L'Education en Angleterre (1888) where he praised English education for its use of sports. The Union des sociétés françaises de sports athlétiques (USFSA) was created in 1889, with Coubertin among its first leaders (Terret, 2019).
Still, the elite's anglophilia had to contend with widespread anglophobia (Republican textbooks of the time made clear that the English were France's sworn enemies, cf. Joan of Arc). Partisans of gymnastics decried the "anglomania" of the likes of Coubertin, and found "English" sports to be violent, dangerous and antipatriotic. The elite French sportsmen found gymnastics boring and turned up their noses at its conformism, social equality, and outrageous display of nationalism (parades, flag-waving). However, notwithstanding its early elitism, the USFSA started making inroads in French schools, due to its rich catalogue of fun games and sports that were appealing to students and educators, notably team sports. Anglophobia regressed, and the Entente Cordiale of 1904 put an end to the centuries-old Anglo-French rivalry.
Perhaps more importantly, as they become popular, sports started losing their "Englishness" and were fully appropriated by the French. Two remarkable cases are the development of rugby in Southwest France, and the transformation of bike racing (initially an English sport using English technology) into a national French sport thanks to the Tour de France. The growth of the French sports movement at the turn of the century is impressive: the USFSA included 13 sport associations with less than 2,000 members in 1890; these numbers had grown to 1,700 and 300,000 members respectively on the eve of the First World War. By then, other sports federations, with competing political or ideological goals, were also powerful, and sports in the modern sense had definitively entered French culture.
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