DBQ. AGH.

By 1870, Europeans began to have more free time in their day-to-day schedule. Due to people in society having more free time they started grouping together and participating in organized sports. Between the 19th and 20th centuries organized sports initiated multiple opinions from Europeans, they saw sports as creating a symbol of nationalism, as a way to stay healthy, and a means to still degrade women in certain ways.

Organized sports created a feeling of nationalism with the people of each country, sports allowed the nation to come together as a whole and truly work together. In document 1, Miroslav Tyrs a cofounder of the Czech National Gymnastics Organization, cemented the idea of nationalism within sports. He compared the sport teams to creating a new race, a superior race, he talked about morphing Slavs into docile yet bold creatures that could set up an impenetrable defense and shatter their enemies. Not only is this an extreme surge of nationalism, however it is also wrapped around the idea of social Darwinism with the idea of creating a superior race. In document 4 an African delegate of a British colony gave a speech to the African Political Association. In it, he stated how in rugby players have to come together as one inseparable whole, with perfect union. They must achieve this to more forward and work together in order to do well in the game. This unit coming together shows how the team came together to form one, which is in a way resembles nationalism. The team comes together as one so that no other force can break it apart; the coming together in rugby is like the nation of the team, coming together. In Document 5, Martin Berner, a Berlin journalist, demonstrated perfectly the view of nationalism being a part of sports. He describes how the Olympics games are essentially a “war.” Many of the participants offer years of their lives for training in order to consume a victory for their fatherland. However, it has to be questioned whether or not Berner had traveled the world and seen such training going on, it is possible that athletes in Berlin were only this dedicated and he was simply basing his opinion off of what he had seen in his own country. In Document 9, a Japanese traveler explained his travels in Denmark from a high school gymnastics exhibition. He stated that when the gymnasts were done with their set they gathered into a circle and bore the Danish flag before them. This shows how close the gymnasts were to their country. They were not required to propagandize their country in their own high school in Denmark; however, they did it because as a team together they believed that they were representing the country, and so they visualized that union with the flag. Finally, in Document 6 there is a World War I recruitment poster. It has an army man with the British flag behind him and smaller images of many men performing different types of sports. There are the words “The Game of War. Join Together, Train Together, Embark Together, Fight Together. Enlist in the Sportsmen’s 1000. Play up, Play up & Play the Game” This poster brings the idea of fighting for your country and sports together, it says that fighting for your country is essentially a sport. The poster gives the viewer a sense of “if you play the game and help your country win the war, you are the ultimate sportsman.” The creator of the poster more than likely made the poster so up beat and sports related because they believed the war would “be over by Christmas”, therefore it would not entirely be a battlefield, but more like a sports field.