Coubertin: Patronage and Paternalistic Discourses of Olympism (1887–1937)

While discourse on matters Olympic did not begin with Coubertin, for our purposes in reviewing the development of ideas about Olympism, Coubertin and his work represent a compelling start point for evaluating the changing meaning of Olympism from the 1894 Olympic Congress at the Sorbonne up to the present day. In this chapter we identify the implications of Coubertin’s speech and actions for the ways in which Olympism and Olympic sport were conceptualised in late nineteenth-century Europe, as well as in and beyond Europe in the twentieth century (1887–1937). The chapter seeks to examine and understand Coubertin’s shaping of the discourse of Olympism and the interests it promoted as expressed in the founder’s correspondence, publications and personal records. As Coubertin’s conception of Olympism was an outcome of processes which started before the Sorbonne Congress in 1894, we begin by considering the precursors of Olympism (1887–1894). Then we move to discourse around the official establishment of the IOC and the early years of the development of Olympism (1894–1918), and finally we conclude with the years of the expansion of the movement beyond Europe (and Coubertin’s death in 1937).