Billiards and American culture, 1660-1860
Date
2002
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
This thesis investigates the experience of playing billiards in America from the Colonial Era until the Civil War. Making use of diaries, correspondence, public records, published texts, and material evidence, the project argues that the manner in which billiards was played and discussed in America until the Civil War calls into question prevailing ideas about social and cultural division, the impact of reformers upon these divisions, and the evolution of "modem" sport. At the same time, investigation of billiard playing supports conceptions posited by political and economic historians of a central cultural tension between virtue and interest in Early America. ☐ As a result of applying sport history to the general historical narrative instead of applying the narrative to sport history, behaviors appear which contradict the dominant conception of social stratification over time in America. Billiard players came from all ranks of society and played in socially heterogeneous environments. While elite players played at home or in private clubs, evidence also suggests they frequented taverns and public billiard halls throughout the period under consideration. Sharps, criminals, and "unrespectable" folk dressed in their finest and entered "respectable" billiard halls. Social integration during leisure time signifies the choice to mix. and proffers the possibility that social and cultural stratification were neither as complete as historians have depicted nor represented a widespread desire to withdraw in the face of immigration and anonymity in the burgeoning urban milieu. ☐ By taking evidence from the realm of leisure and sport and applying it to the general historical narrative, this thesis hopes to inspire a brand of sport history more concerned with contributing to broader historical understanding than understanding of the evolution of leisure or sport. At the same time, the relative lack of change within the structure of billiards argues against the Weberian dichotomy of "pre-modem" and "modem" sport which forms the basis of evaluation for many sport historians.