Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-17T03:23:19.340Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Playing for and against the nation: football in interwar Romania

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Florin Faje
Florin Faje*
Affiliation:
Sociology and Social Anthropology, Central European University, Nador Utca, No. 9, Budapest 1051, Hungary
*
*Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The article explores the development of football in interwar Romania, stressing its role in the dissemination and grounding of Romanian nationalism. I show how, due to its modular form, the game of football was deeply involved in the efforts of centralizing, territorializing and naturalizing the Romanian nation-state of the interwar period. The founding of the leading Romanian sports club at the University of Cluj and the selection of the national representative for the Paris Olympics of 1924, in conjunction with the institutional infrastructure developed to nationally regulate and control the game, are used to present the acute tensions between local/regional and national aspirations and projects, with a strong ethnic component, that have shaped the history of the game in Romania. I argue that the increasing calls for the full Romanianization of football in the 1930s have their immediate roots in these tensions and frictions.

Keywords

footballnationalisminterwar Romaniaregionalismsport
Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 43 , Issue 1 , January 2015 , pp. 160 - 177
Copyright
Copyright © 2015 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Bodea, Gheorghe I. 2004. Agora “U” – 85 – 1919–2004. Cluj: Napoca Star.Google Scholar
Bodea, Gheorghe I. 2009. Agora “U” – 90 – II. Cluj: Napoca Star.Google Scholar
Brubaker, Rogers, Feischmidt, Margit, Jon, Fox, and Grancea, Liana. 2006. Nationalist Politics and Everyday Ethnicity in a Transylvanian Town. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Bucur, Maria. 2002. Eugenics and Modernization in Interwar Romania. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.Google Scholar
Case, Holly. 2009. Between States: The Transylvanian Question and the European Idea During World War II. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Cronin, Mike. 2003. “Projecting the Nation through Sport and Culture: Ireland, Aonach Tailteann and the Irish Free State, 1924–32.” Journal of Contemporary History 38 (3): 395–411.Google Scholar
Egry, Gábor. 2013a. “Navigating the Straits. Changing Borders, Changing Rules and Practices of Ethnicity and Loyalty in Romania after 1918.” Hungarian Historical Review 2 (3): 449–476.Google Scholar
Egry, Gábor. 2013b. “A Crossroad of Parallels: Regionalism and Nation-Building in Transylvania in the First Half of the Twentieth Century.” In Hungary and Romania Beyond National Narratives: Comparisons and Entanglements, edited by Anders E. B. Blomqvist, Constantin Iordachi, and Trencsényi, Balázs, 239–276. Oxford: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Goswami, Manu. 2002. “Rethinking the Modular Nation Form: Toward a Sociohistorical Conception of Nationalism.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 44 (4): 770–799.Google Scholar
Goswami, Manu. 2004. Producing India: From Colonial Economy to National Space. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Hadas, Miklós. 2007. “Gentlemen in Competition: Athletics and Masculinities in Nineteenth-century Hungary.” The International Journal of the History of Sport 24 (4): 480–500.Google Scholar
Handelman, Don. 2004. Nationalism and the Israeli State. Oxford: Berg.Google Scholar
Hargreaves, John. 1986. Sport, Power and Culture: A Social and Historical Analysis of Popular Sports in Britain. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
Hobsbawm, Eric, and Ranger, Terrance, eds. 1992. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Holt, Richard. 1981. Sport and Society in Modern France. Hamden: Archon Books.Google Scholar
Livezeanu, Irina. 1990. “Between State and Nation: Romanian Lower-Middle-Class Intellectuals in the Interwar Period.” In Splintered Classes: Politics and the Lower Middle Classes in Interwar Europe, edited by Koshar, Rudy, 164–183. New York: Holmes & Meier.Google Scholar
Livezeanu, Irina. 1995. Cultural Politics in Greater Romania: Regionalism, Nation Building, & Ethnic Struggle, 1918–1930. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Mann, Michael. 1984. “The Autonomous Power of the State: Its Origins, Mechanisms and Results.” European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie 25 (02): 185–213.Google Scholar
McDevitt, Patrick F. 2004. May the Best Man Win: Sport, Masculinity, and Nationalism in Great Britain and the Empire, 1880–1935. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Murgescu, Bogdan Costin. 2010. Romănia şi Europa: acumularea decalajelor economice (1500–2010). Iaşi, Bucureşti: Polirom.Google Scholar
Naul, Roland and Hardman, Ken. 2002. Sport and Physical Education in Germany. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Nolte, Claire Elaine. 2002. The Sokol in the Czech Lands to 1914: Training for the Nation. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Trencsényi, Balázs. 2012. The Politics of “National Character”: A Study in Interwar East European Thought. Milton Park: Routledge.Google Scholar
Verdery, Katherine, and Banac, Ivo, eds. 1995. National Character and National Ideology in Interwar Eastern Europe. New Haven: Yale Center for International and Area Studies.Google Scholar
Weber, Eugen. 1970. “Pierre de Coubertin and the Introduction of Organised Sport in France.” Journal of Contemporary History 5 (2): 3–26.Google Scholar
Weber, Eugen. 1971. “Gymnastics and Sports in Fin-de-Siècle France: Opium of the Classes?” The American Historical Review 76 (1): 70–98.Google Scholar