The genesis of the international sports federations that we know today remains an almost
virgin historiographical field for the period before 1914. Apart from the monographs devoted
to the two major federations, FIFA and the IAAF, this history is generally left to scholars or
journalists in the context of commemorative works at the request of the ISFs themselves. This
special issue project is therefore completely new and makes a major contribution to the
institutional history of supranational sports organisations, to the history of the globalisation
of sport since the middle of the 19th century and, more broadly, to the history of the economic
and cultural integration of North Atlantic societies.