Sport

Neither physical education nor organized games became truly central to the French imperial project. However, the Republican mission civilisatrice was undoubtedly susceptible to expression through sports. Thus, the contemporary success of French sportsmen and sportswomen with strong family and/or community connections with the formerly colonized territories –such as the so-called Black-Blanc-Beur football team that won a historic first World Cup in 1998 and the similarly multicultural side that triumphed again in 2018– has deep roots in the nation’s colonial past. Such varied activities as horse racing, motor sport, boxing, cycling and athletics, as well as football, contributed to a process of sporting mobilization that could take both pro-colonial and anti-colonial forms, up to and including revolutionary struggle. The contrasting memorial responses to this conflictual history highlight the processes of selection involved in the sporting sphere, as in so many others.