British Football on Continental Tour, 1904-1939

Madgwick Lawton, Jake (2026) British Football on Continental Tour, 1904-1939. Doctoral thesis, Liverpool Hope University.

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Abstract

This thesis examines the role of football tours within the development of international football in Europe prior to the Second World War. While previous football histories have examined the creation of governing institutions, international competitions, and the ways diplomacy has shaped the game, this study shows how the internationalisation of football occurred through the movement of teams, players, and officials across national borders. Football tours created sustained encounters between different nations and sporting cultures, forming Europe-wide networks while simultaneously reflecting the wider social and political transformations of the early twentieth century.

Drawing upon newspapers, club records, governing body archives, and contemporary commentary, this thesis analyses football touring as a form of transnational mobility, demonstrating how tours functioned as cultural and political encounters shaped by national identity, diplomacy, and ideology. Early tours undertaken by British amateur and professional clubs facilitated the spread of football during the Belle Époque, while the First World War redirected the movement of the game through the infrastructures of military mobilisation and prisoner-of-war camps. In the interwar period, football touring intersected with processes of commemoration, reconciliation, and international competition as European football became increasingly institutionalised. Football tours were embedded within the ideological conflicts that shaped interwar Europe. British footballers’ encounters with communist and fascist sporting cultures reveal how international football could be a site of tension as well as exchange.

International football developed through networks of mobility, with communities across Europe connected in sporting circuits and competition. Examining these encounters across a wide range of social actors, including professional clubs, amateur teams, works sides, and women’s teams, the study expands upon existing scholarship and shifts focus from national teams and elite-level sport to the experiences and perspectives of varied historical actors. Tours acted as vehicles of cultural exchange, instruments of diplomacy, and arenas in which new political conflicts could be observed. In examining British Football on Continental Tour 1904-1939, this study offers a new perspective on the relationship between sport, politics, and international society in the first half of the twentieth century.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Additional Information and Comments:	Copyright © The Author 2026. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request.
Faculty / Department:	Faculty of Creative Arts & Humanities > School of Humanities
SWORD Depositor:	RISE Symplectic
Depositing User:	RISE Symplectic
Date Deposited:	28 Oct 2026 14:13
Last Modified:	28 Oct 2026 14:13
URI:	https://hira.hope.ac.uk/id/eprint/5011

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