Bibliographical Essay

In contrast to many of the other topics covered in this volume on the history of violence, scholars have not previously identified violence in sport as a discrete area of inquiry.

Animal combat sports such as cockfighting and bullfighting have attracted some scholarly attention in recent years, though the literature is not extensive. The following works explore aspects of blood sports in Europe, the USA and China: Timothy J. Mitchell, Blood Sport: A Social History of Spanish Bullfighting (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991), Emma Griffin, England's Revelry: A History of Popular Sports and Pastimes, 1660-1830 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), Jon Griffin Donlon, Bayou Country Bloodsport: The Culture of Cockfighting in Southern Louisiana (Jefferson: McFarland, 2013) and Robert Joe Cutter, The Brush and the Spur: Chinese Culture and the Cockfight (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1989).

The history of hunting has generally attracted more scholarly attention than blood sports, but this is not usually worked around the concept of violence. For an introduction see Emma Griffin, Blood Sport: Hunting in Britain since 1066 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007) and Richard Hummel, Hunting and Fishing for Sport: Commerce, Controversy, Popular Culture (Bowling Green, KY: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1994).

The literature on the history of human combat sports is more extensive, though not all of it is academic in nature.

West may be found in John Sugden, Boxing and Society: An International Analysis (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996) and Kasia Boddy, Boxing: A Cultural History (London: Reaktion Books, 2008). A good study on the history of women in boxing may be found in Malissa Smith, A History of Women's Boxing (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014). For sumo wrestling in Japan see P. L. Cuyler, Sumo from Rite to Sport (New York: Weatherhill, 1979) and Harold Bolitho, ‘Sumo and Popular Culture: The Tokugawa Period', in Gavan McCormack and Yoshio Sugimoto (eds.), Modernisation and Beyond: The Japanese Trajectory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 17-32. Like so much of the history of sport, Chinese martial arts have not attracted extensive scholarly attention in recent years, though articles by Stanley E. Henning provide an introduction. See, for example, Stanley E. Henning, ‘The Chinese Martial Arts in Historical Perspective', Military Affairs 45.4 (1981), 173-9 and Henning, ‘Chinese Martial Arts', in Naomi Standen (ed.), Demystifying China: New Understandings of Chinese History (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012).