Puritans And Sport: A Top-Quality Essay For Your Inspiration

The first century of the Massachusetts Puritan colony and the three generations of people that lived in it take on a different view when seen through the perspective of sport in Puritan society at that time. As the article argues, the efforts made by historians to succinctly and sufficiently analyze the role of sport were hardly successful because of the personal bias and perspective of the sources historians relied on in their research.
Taking the Puritan society in Massachusetts Bay as an example, the article suggests that sport can be used in order to observe the changes in institutional and social life. The first generation of citizens who lived in Massachusetts Bay realized the necessity and benefits of “due recreation”, using it as an activity to battle the moral and physical fatigue. Sport was encouraged by church and city institutions, however, sport activities performed without recreational purpose were, at the very least, frowned upon.
The second generation at Massachusetts Bay has seen an economic and social crisis during which the society gravitated away from homogeneousness, which, in terms of sport, was followed by the emergence of many gambling activities, with sport seizing to be a solely recreational activity and turning into what authorities perceived to be a threat to the well-being of the society. This was followed by numerous laws prohibiting many competitive games.
The third generation was developing in an already diverse and fractured society where, however, some of the previous attitude towards sport was retained, mainly through the verbal accusations of city magistrates. However, by this time sport was beginning to become a business venture, actually, bringing profit for people, such as dance teachers, or horse racers. Sport has become as much of a social activity as it was a recreational tool before.