Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1 French Cycling: Issues and Themes
- 2 The Early Years: Cycling in Search of an Identity, 1869–1891
- 3 Towards Sporting Modernity: Sport as the Driver of Cycling, 1891–1902
- 4 The Belle Epoque and the First World War: Industry, Sport, Utility and Leisure, 1903–1918
- 5 Cycling between the Wars: Sport, Recreation, Ideology, 1919–1939
- 6 From Defeat to the New France: Sport and Society, Cycling and Everyday Life, 1940–1959
- 7 Cycling's Glory Years and their Mediatization, 1960–1980
- 8 Cycling in Transformation: Industry, Recreation, Sport, 1980–2000
- 9 French Cycling in Quest of a New Identity, 2000–2011
- 10 A Sense of Cycling in France
- Bibliography
- Index
3 - Towards Sporting Modernity: Sport as the Driver of Cycling, 1891–1902
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1 French Cycling: Issues and Themes
- 2 The Early Years: Cycling in Search of an Identity, 1869–1891
- 3 Towards Sporting Modernity: Sport as the Driver of Cycling, 1891–1902
- 4 The Belle Epoque and the First World War: Industry, Sport, Utility and Leisure, 1903–1918
- 5 Cycling between the Wars: Sport, Recreation, Ideology, 1919–1939
- 6 From Defeat to the New France: Sport and Society, Cycling and Everyday Life, 1940–1959
- 7 Cycling's Glory Years and their Mediatization, 1960–1980
- 8 Cycling in Transformation: Industry, Recreation, Sport, 1980–2000
- 9 French Cycling in Quest of a New Identity, 2000–2011
- 10 A Sense of Cycling in France
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
France in the 1890s was politically relatively stable, even though the new Third Republic – in the form of the ‘conservative Republic’ defined by Thiers as the form of regime least likely to divide the French people – was still challenged by threats from the extreme right, and was shaken to the core by the national drama of the Dreyfus Affair (1894–99). But the threat of a coup d’état from General Boulanger had been avoided in the late 1880s; parliamentary democracy seemed established, if occasionally questioned. Economically and socially, although France was still concerned at its weakness and slowness of development compared with Britain and particularly Germany, the country was beginning, in the mid-1890s at least, to recover from the economic depression suffered in the 1880s (Démier, 2000: 409). Structures, thinking and technologies in industry were modernizing and facilitating France's economic and social transformation, even though the real explosion in the growth of the economy would not occur until the early years of the twentieth century or even the post-1945 period. Rather than being found in the motors of development of previous years, such as the building of the railways, or the urban building sector, or state investment in general, the drivers of growth during the 1890s were to be found in the renewal of industrial infrastructures and in household consumption. A particular success of French industry during the 1890s was its ability to adapt and adopt the products of the ‘industrial avant garde’ (Démier, 2000: 411–13) at this time, of which one of the most important was the automobile. Building on the vibrancy of the bicycle industry in the 1880s, as French production regained the early dynamism of the late 1860s that had been swept away by the disruptions of the Franco-Prussian war and the Commune, the industrial manufacturing base responded to ongoing demand for bicycles as well as moving into the production of motorcycles and motor cars during the 1890s. With increasing prosperity, increasing literacy, the developing strength of the bourgeoisie and the arriving significance of the industrial working classes in terms of the consumption of products and services of all kinds, sports in general – and cycling in particular – found an environment propitious for their growth.
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- French CyclingA Social and Cultural History, pp. 44 - 74Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2012