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The history and geography of sports in nineteenth- and twentieth-century France have been studied intensively during the last thirty years but one sport – that of pigeon racing – has received virtually no attention. This paper ventures into a largely unexplored field. After describing briefly the general history of homing pigeons and the specific geography of pigeon racing clubs in France in 1890, it focuses on the departement of Pas-de-Calais in northern France. Pas-de-Calais and the adjacent departement of Nord together accounted for more than half of the just over 400 pigeon racing clubs identified in France in 1890. Within the context of the rapid development between 1870 and 1914 of its population, society and economy (and especially its coalmining industry), Pas-de-Calais saw the creation of more than one thousand recreational societies, especially sports clubs, among them numerous pigeon racing clubs. Three hundred pigeon racing clubs in one of the departement's six arrondissements – that of Bethune – are examined closely from surviving but fragmentary sources. The aims, names, membership and racing activities of these societies are studied from their unpublished records. They are shown to have developed in close association with the growth of coalmining communities and in particular with the role of Belgian immigrants in those communities.

The latest meeting in the series of International Conferences of Historical Geographers was held in Kyoto in 2009. The series originated in a meeting of Canadian and British historical geographers held in Kingston, Ontario, in 1975. Four subsequent meetings held in Britain, Canada and the USA saw an increasingly international participation and the sixth meeting, held in 1986, was accorded the title of the Sixth International Conference of Historical Geographers. Eight further such conferences have been held since then, some in locations well beyond Britain and North America. This paper records the basic historical and geographical characteristics of all of the meetings between 1975 and 2009.

This paper examines the development and spread, and the structure, function and evolution, of one particular set of fraternal association—the corps de sapeurs-pompiers (fire-fighting brigades) in one French departement (Loir-et-Cher) during the nineteenth century. From a mass of unpublished records is reconstructed the historical evolution and the geographical diffusion of brigades. An uneven pattern of brigade development in time and over space is analysed in relation to the stimuli promoting the formation of brigades, to their rules and practices, and to the social tensions and spatial problems of funding and recruitment which affected their evolution. Although the State was involved at the outset in the creation of corps de sapeurs-pompiers, the role of fire brigades as fraternal associations dependent for their existence upon the goodwill of their individual members and upon a sense of solidarity is also demonstrated. Especially within remote rural communes, brigades were established and functioned in at least partial ignorance of the legal framework within which they were officially embedded. Gradually during the nineteenth century the State came to exercise a greater degree of control over fire brigades and their role as voluntary associations was correspondingly reduced. The corps de sapeurs-pompiers were simultaneously fraternal associations and —increasingly during the nineteenth century—part of the extending apparatus of the State.

Class consciousness, it has been argued, emerged in France during the nineteenth century, encouraged by the creation of new forms of fraternal association. This paper examines the development and role of unions of woodcutters in Loir-et-Cher between 1852 and 1914, considering especially the extent to which this section of the rural proletariat developed a collective consciousness during this period and the degree to which the spirit of solidarity was either formulated spontaneously by woodcutters themselves or orchestrated by outsiders in attempts at social control. Woodcutters' unions in Loir-et-Cher were products of Prefectoral paternalism, radical socialism, and workers' federalism. The limited successes and ultimate failures of these attempts to create woodcutters' unions are attributed to their lack of spontaneity, to their exogenous rather than indigenous origins.

Debate over the orgins and development of field systems in the British Isles continues within the framework provided by a collection of studies published in 1973. Some of the criticisms made by reviewers of that collective volume are answered here but this discussion paper focuses principally on two sets of arguments which have given a different emphasis to the debate on field systems during the past six years. This paper considers first McCloskey's view of open fields as products of behaviour towards risk and then Dodgshon's re-interpretation of the evolution of field systems in relation to changes in law.

The development and spread of new ideas within rural France during the late-nineteenth century was essentially effected within an old pattern of rural settlements. In general, this paper considers the basic dichotomy between nucleated and dispersed settlements and its influence on the spatial patterning of a particular rural ideology, agricultural syndicalism. It also examines the role of the basic conflict between urban and rural attitudes in the transformation of ideas about the organization of agricultural activity. More specifically, this paper analyses the relationships between the clustering of populations, proximity to urban centres, literacy levels and the spatial diffusion of agricultural syndicalism in Loir-et-Cher during the late-nineteenth century. It concludes that the character of rural settlements was not a directly moulding influence on the spread of agricultural syndicalism, that the transformation of rural ideologies was essentially achieved under urban influence and that generalizations about agricultural syndicalism applicable at one scale are not necessarily applicable at another scale.

During the nineteenth century in France traditional modes of sociability declined and there gradually emerged a new kind, based upon a range of fraternal associations. This paper examines the historical development and geographical distribution of one set of such associations, musical societies, between 1815 and 1914 in Loir-et-Cher. Both quantitative analyses and qualitative interpretations are offered for the temporal and spatial diffusion and for the social significance of these societies, a few of which were choirs but most of which were brass bands ( fanfares ). Musical societies in Loir-et-Cher are shown as having mushroomed during the 1870s and 1880s, especially in those communes with larger and more clustered populations in the Loire valley and particularly where viticulfure was important. Consideration of the objectives, organization and functioning of these societies suggests that they played a portentous social role, in providing channels for the expression of both political control and conflict and in creating outlets for both personal abilities and antagonisms. The significance of musical societies in Loir-et-Cher during the nineteenth century, hitherto ignored, is shown to have been considerable in general terms and differentiated specifically by period, place and people.