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CHANGES AWHEEL:
TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE
SOCIAL AND CULTURAL
MEANINGS OF CYCLING IN
BELGIUM, 1900-1914
Stijn Knuts, PhD
Policy in Sports and Physical Activity Research Group
KU Leuven
Sports and Leisure on the Eve of the First World War
Manchester Metropolitan University
Crewe, 28 June 2014
Introduction
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A new era approaching
fast: Belgium, the
bicycle and the Belle
Epoque
Introduction
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The 1897 Brussels World Fair,
one of the many occasions for
Belgium to boost its cultural
presence on the world stage
Introduction
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Wheels of change: cycling
history as a new perspective
on the Belgian Belle-Epoque
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Belgian and Flemish identities inscribed on a bicycle frame
A mostly bourgeois affair
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• Vélocipède (1860s)
• Ordinary (1870s-1880s)
• Safety bicycle / bicyclette (1885)
A mostly bourgeois affair
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Belgian King
Leopold II on his
tricycle at the
Belgian coast
A mostly bourgeois affair
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Learning to ride the
safety: catalyst for an
international and
Belgian bicycle craze
A mostly bourgeois affair
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Excursioning on safety
and Ordinary in the
Belgian Ardennes, 1880s
Democracy’s horse ascendent
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New cycling faces in the 1900s:
an illustration of the bicycle’s
fast democratisation
Democracy’s horse ascendent
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11
A bicycle advert in De Volksstem from
1913: just 196 francs with the option to
buy on credit
Democracy’s horse ascendent
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Imagining a changing mobility culture in the automobile and cycling press,
1903
Democracy’s horse ascendent
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A bicycle tax plate for Liége province,
1909: battleground and laboratory for
cycling’s changing social connotations
Democracy’s horse ascendent
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Receipt confirming that
Henri Simon of Liège has
paid his provincial bicycle
tax for 1902 (Musée de la
Vie Wallonne, Liège)
From international success to
domestic crisis in racing
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A bicycle race on the
vélodrome of Liége
during the 1890s
From international success to
domestic crisis in racing
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Robert Protin (right)
and Hubert Houben
(left): two
protagonists of
Belgian international
racing during the
1890s
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Present, but decidedly less so: advertising
a bicycle race in Brussels in 1900
From international success to
domestic crisis in racing
A contested ‘people’s sport’
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Cyriel Van
Hauwaert at the
start of Bordeaux-
Paris in 1909
A contested ‘people’s sport’
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Cyriel Van
Hauwaert, winner
of Bordeaux-Paris
(1907) and Paris-
Roubaix (1908):
herald of a new
cycling sport
A contested ‘people’s sport’
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An advertisement for the
La Francaise bicycle
brand using Van
Hauwaert
A contested ‘people’s sport’
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Rough, dirty and quite possibly
dangerous: an unknown racer victorious
in a pre-war race
Waving tricolores and lion-flags
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The celebration of
Odiel Defraeye, the
first Belgian winner
of the Tour de
France, in Brussels
in 1912
Waving tricolores and lion-flags
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Encircling the nation: the
trajectory of the Tour of
Belgium for professionals,
1908
Waving tricolores and lion-flags
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New periodicals for a new sport: a sample of Flemish and francophone
sport magazines founded from 1908 onwards
Waving tricolores and lion-flags
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The first issue of
Sportwereld
(1912) and its
editor, Karel van
Wijnendaele
Waving tricolores and lion-flags
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Marcel Buysse
(left) and Jules
Masselis (right),
two other pre-war
Flemish racing
icons
Waving tricolores and lion-flags
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The ‘farmer-racer’ as
a source of Flemish
pride: Van Hauwaert
and his colleagues
in a rural setting
Waving tricolores and lion-flags
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Constructing Flemish racing
genealogies: a tree of Flemish ‘lions’
with Van Hauwaert as its root
Epilogue
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Dark clouds gathering: a race on Brussels’ Karreveld track in the summer of 1914
Bibliography • Stijn Knuts, Converging and competing courses of identity
construction: shaping and imagining society through cycling and bicycle racing in Belgium before World War Two. Unpublished PhD Diss., KU Leuven, 2014.
• Stijn Knuts and Pascal Delheye, ‘Roughnecks, Revolutionaries, Role Models. Sport, Work and the Practice and Representation of the Professional Bicycle Racer in Belgium, 1907-1940’; History Workshop Journal (2014, accepted)
• Stijn Knuts and Pascal Delheye, ‘Borderless Sport? Imagining and organising bicycle racing in Belgium, 1869-1914’, European Review of History / Revue Européenne d'Histoire (2014, in print).
• Stijn Knuts and Pascal Delheye, ‘Roughnecks, Revolutionaries, Role Models. Sport, Work and the Practice and Representation of the Professional Bicycle Racer in Belgium, 1907-1940’, History Workshop Journal (2014, accepted for publication).
• Stijn Knuts and Pascal Delheye, ‘Connecting City and Countryside? Faces of Cycling Mobility in Belgium, 1890-1914’, Dutch Crossing, 37/3 (2013), 240-259.
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Contact details
• https://kuleuven.academia.edu/StijnKnuts
• Thank you for your attention!
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