Ambassadors and athletes: Sport, international relations and diplomacy in the 20th century, a new approach from Sport History

Abstract

This special issue of the journal Materiales para la Historia del Deporte is focused on the study of international relations and sports from a historiographical perspective. One of its main objectives is to present readers with a collection of innovative research that initiates a transnational debate, focusing on themes that have not yet claimed the attention of specialists until now.

In recent years, there has been a noticeable exponential increase in the number of publications focusing on the study of intersections between sport, diplomacy and international relations. As an example of this trend, a search in early 2024 on the website of the prestigious journal in the history of sport, The International Journal of the History of Sport, using descriptors such as ["sport diplomacy" OR "olympic diplomacy" OR "international relations"], yielded a total of 339 articles. Among these, 256 had been published in the period between 2010 and 2023 within this journal.

This international trend has also had a significant impact, albeit at a somewhat slower pace, on the Spanish context, and it can be affirmed that it is currently experiencing a period of considerable growth. This development was evident at the latest congress organized by the Asociación de Historia Contemporánea (AHC) in September 2023, where historians Santiago de Pablo Contreras
and André Gounot coordinated a workshop on the history of sport, featuring thirteen presentations. Notably, six of these presentations were specifically focused on the history of sport and international relations. Nevertheless, it is still observable that there are very few researchers who have undertaken the study of this theme in a substantial portion of the countries in Southern and Eastern Europe, as well as in Latin America.