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Throughout its history, Finland’s relations with Russia have generally been determined by Russian attempts to secure control over the eastern part of the Baltic Sea region. In medieval times, it was mainly about the control of trade routes, especially between Novgorod, and Western Europe and Byzantium. After the founding of the new city of St. Petersburg by Peter the Great in 1703, the rulers of Russia were faced with the problem of ensuring security to that city. From a Russian point of view, it became vitally important to gain control over lands on the eastern side of the Baltic Sea. When Finland became a Russian province in 1809, it seemed that the Baltic security dilemmas of Russia had fi nally been resolved. However, the collapse of Tsarist Russia in 1917 changed that particular situation. Finland became independent, and Russia’s border moved east to the outskirts of St. Petersburg (renamed Petrograd during World War I). For the leaders of the Soviet Union, which had replaced the Romanov Empire, World War II provided an opportunity to try to regain lost Finnish territories. Although the Red Army did not manage to conquer Finland, during two wars (occurring between 1939–1940 and 1941–1944), the post war settlement saw the Soviet-Finnish border shift back westwards. Finland also had to reckon with the requirements of the USSR’s security policy and make it a priority of its own foreign policyAfter the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Finland modified its policy of neutrality and adopted a doctrine of non-alignment that has remained in place to this day. However, the increase of tensions in international relations in recent years, due to Russia’s aggressive foreign policy threatening its neighbours, has forced Finnish statesmen to rethink their country’s security policy. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Finland, together with Sweden, decided to apply for NATO membership. The ratification procedure is ongoing. The aim of this paper is to analyse, in a longer historical perspective, what Finland’s place was as regards the Russian and Soviet security policy, from Peter the Great to our times. The methodological approach refl ects the chronology of events which have occurred in the eastern part of the Baltic Sea region in the last 300 years. They are described to provide readers with necessary facts, and create the background for conclusions on the reasons for the Russian/Soviet policy towards Finland and, in a broader sense, the northern coasts of the Gulf of Finland.

This article aimes to shed light on the rich, but rather enigmatic relationship between Finland and the Mediterranean world. These interactions have been approached since Antiquity, but this paper’s focus has been on 19th and 20th centuries and especially on the last three decades. About thirty years ago, when Finland was preparing itself to join the European Union, it also had to build up a real Mediterranean policy of its own. It was in the Corfu European Council in June 1994 when the then-president realised that the country needed such a policy. Thus, in 1995, when Finland joined the EU, it also participated in the Barcelona Euro-Mediterranean Conference and signed the Barcelona Declaration that established the Barcelona Process forming the structures for European Union cooperation with the southern and eastern Mediterranean countries. The participation into this structural process was felt important for Finland mainly for two reasons. Firstly, the country wanted to be a full and active member of the EU and thus contribute to every fi eld of activity that are important for the union. Secondly, we Finns realised that if we wanted the southern European countries to understand and to cooperate with our own ambitions in the northern part of Europe, we needed to show solidarity towards the aims and needs of our southern partners in the Mediterranean. All this resulted in Finland being surprisingly active in all Euro-Mediterranean cooperation environments. This concerned not only offi cial state activities, but also other public sectors as well as civil society actors and NGOs. These EuroMediterranean activities became so many and so multiform that we can deal only with a few of them here as examples.

In Frankreich und Deutschland war Abtreibung über Jahrhunderte hinweg als Straftat kodifiziert. Zwar setzten die Auseinandersetzungen um die selbstbestimmte Mutterschaft schon im 19. Jahrhundert ein, doch bis zur Liberalisierung sollte es noch lange dauern. Dieser Beitrag nimmt die entscheidenden Entwicklungen des Abtreibungsrechts in den 1970er-Jahren in den Blick und zeigt, unter welchen gesellschaftlichen und politischen Gegebenheiten es in Frankreich und der BRD zu rechtlichen Veränderungen kam. Dabei werden die Akteure, ihre Zielsetzungen und Aktionsformen analysiert und es kommen (rechts)historische und rechtsvergleichende Methoden zur Anwendung. Das Jahr 1971 ist als 'Schaltjahr' zu sehen. Abortion was codified as a criminal offence for centuries in France and West Germany. The controversy over self-determined motherhood began as early as the 19th century, but legislation was not liberalized until decades later. This article looks at key developments in abortion law at the beginning of the 1970s and shows the social and political circumstances under which legal changes occurred in France and West Germany. Using comparative legal history and social history methods, the article explores the actors, their objectives and forms of actions. In this respect, the year 1971 can be regarded as a crucial moment in history.

The debate on urban commons yields relevance for shared histories and heritage in divided and post-conflict societies. Albeit memory is always subjective, heritage management tends to engender a linear view of the past that suggests a preconceived future development. Where the past is denigrated to prove the impossibility of ethnoreligious communities’ coexistence even though they have lived together peacefully for centuries, it risks corroborating us-them divisions for posterity and undermines reconciliation and peacebuilding. In this historically informed article, we argue that urban change in Lahore since 1947 has gone hand in hand with the purposive destruction of the common heritage shared by India and Pakistan. This interpretation of the past for the future reflects different forms of violence that surface in heritage management. Based on empirical data collected on heritage practices in the Old City of Lahore, Pakistan, we analyse the approach of the Walled City of Lahore Authority towards heritage management. Our focus on ignored dimensions and objects of heritage sheds light on the systematic denial of a shared history with Hindus and Sikhs before and during the 1947 partition of British India. This partial ignorance and the intentional neglect, for instance, of housing premises inhabited once by Hindus and other non-Muslim minorities, prevent any constructive confrontation with the past. By scrutinising the relationship between urban change, nostalgia, memory and heritage, this article points out that heritage management needs to be subjected to a constructive confrontation with the past to pave the ground for future reconciliation.

Die größte Herausforderung politischer Systeme liegt in ihrer Fähigkeit, den inneren sozialen Frieden zu bewahren. Anhand historischer Beispiele zeigt Jürgen Neyer, dass es in der europäischen Geschichte ein wiederkehrendes Muster sozialer Konflikte, übermäßiger Machtkonzentrationen und politischen Verfalls gibt – und dass die Europäische Union auf dem besten Weg ist, dieses Muster zu wiederholen. Mit einer Mischung aus theoretischen Reflexionen, historischen Darlegungen und aktuellen politischen Analysen weisen seine Rekonstruktionen einen Weg zu einem europäischen Neustart.Die größte Herausforderung politischer Systeme liegt in ihrer Fähigkeit, den inneren sozialen Frieden zu bewahren. Anhand historischer Beispiele zeigt Jürgen Neyer, dass es in der europäischen Geschichte ein wiederkehrendes Muster sozialer Konflikte, übermäßiger Machtkonzentrationen und politischen Verfalls gibt – und dass die Europäische Union auf dem besten Weg ist, dieses Muster zu wiederholen. Mit einer Mischung aus theoretischen Reflexionen, historischen Darlegungen und aktuellen politischen Analysen weisen seine Rekonstruktionen einen Weg zu einem europäischen Neustart.

The establishment of phosphate mines and processing plants by Italian entrepreneurs in el-Quseir in 1912 revitalized a town that had faced a steady decline after the opening of the Suez Canal and re-linked it to the world economy. To this day, the now defunct industrial site occupies a large section of physical el-Quseir and plays a key role in its identity. In this article, we explore the impact of the company’s successive industrialization and deindustrialization based on archival research, interviews, and mapping. By tracing physical changes on-site and in the city of el-Quseir from the founding of its phosphate industry until today, as well as the historical and current interactions of citizens with the industrial facilities, we hope to better understand the “cluster value” of the industrial plant in quotidian life and the effect of the vacuum left behind after the termination of production. As machinery and buildings are slowly eroding in the absence of expressed interest by the former Italian and current Egyptian owners, we aim to discuss the relationship between the citizens and their el-Quseir phosphate plant as a crucial element of its heritage value at the local level.

In this article I reconstruct the place narrative of the Rum community (Greeks of Turkey) in Fener, Istanbul through unrest, displacement, and gentrification, and how the urban fabric, everyday life, and encounters transformed through different phases of urban change. Fener was a neighbourhood where cultural groups coexisted with mutual respect. This environment started to deteriorate when societal unrest towards non-Muslims resulted in a city-wide assault in 1955 and a subsequent displacement of many non-Muslims from the neighbourhood. The neighbourhood decayed and later became an attractive spot for gentrifiers because of its multicultural history. This implicated a massive physical change after an unimplemented regeneration project leading to gentrification. I theorize this narrative mainly based on Whitehead’s “permanences,” the stabilities in the physical and non-physical presence of Rums in Fener and Bhabha’s “in-between temporalities” as complements of permanences, defining space-time envelopes that signify both adjustment and resilience, but also amnesia as a result of urban unrest through social and physical change. The Rum urban narrative provides a complex story of challenged community identity; therefore, it necessitates the use of several qualitative research methods: interviews with older residents, historical investigation with documentation, and personal observation. The study results show that the Rum community’s daily practices and placeworlds were lost; however, the community remembers permanences better than in-between temporalities. Linking fragmented narratives by reconstructing them fights cultural amnesia and leads to a better connection with place and past contexts.

Der Datensatz besteht aus 131 XLSX-Tabellen mit über 1.100 Zeitreihen zu verschiedenen Themen für Deutschland in den verschiedenen Grenzen, beginnend frühestens 1834, der Gründung des Zollvereins. Anlass war eine in Zusammenarbeit mit der Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung erstellte Publikation "Deutschland in Daten". Das Projekt beschränkte sich dabei auf die Zusammenstellung publizierter Daten 1. in langer Zeitreihenperspektive und 2. ohne regionale Differenzierung. Ziel des Projektes war es, verstreut vorhandene historische Zeitreihen zu identifizieren und zusammenzustellen und bei vertretbarem Aufwand diese zu ergänzen bzw. zu aktualisieren. Dabei sollten die bestmöglichen bzw. wichtigsten Daten zusammengestellt werden. Es sollten dabei nur solche Zeitreihen aufgenommen werden, für die zumindest theoretisch für den gesamten Zeitraum ab 1834 Werte vorhanden sein können. Wesentlicher Aspekt des Konzeptes war die Kombination der Zusammenstellung der Daten mit einer kritischen Kommentierung und Begleitung des Auswahlprozesses durch ausgewiesene Experten. Die Daten wurden von über 40 Personen an 25 Standorten bearbeitet und zusammengestellt. Insgesamt wurden 24 Themen bearbeitet (in Klammern die verantwortlichen Autoren): 1. Umwelt, Klima und Natur (Paul Erker) 2. Bevölkerung, Haushalte, Familien (Georg Fertig/Franz Rothenbacher) 3. Migration (Jochen Oltmer) 4. Bildung und Wissenschaft (Volker Müller-Benedict) 5. esundheitswesen (Reinhard Spree) 6. Sozialleistungen (Marcel Boldorf) 7. Öffentliche Finanzen und Steuern (Mark Spoerer) 8. Politische Partizipation (Marc Debus) 9. Kriminalität (Dietrich Oberwittler) 10.Erwerbsarbeit, Lebensstandard und Konsum (Toni Pierenkemper) 11.Kultur,Tourismus und Sport (Heike Wolter/Bernd Wedemeyer-Kolwe) 12.Religion (Thomas Großbölting/Markus Goldbeck) 13.Volkswirtschaftliche Gesamtrechnungen (Thomas Rahlf) 14.Preise (Rainer Metz) 15.Geld und Kredit (Richard Tilly) 16.Verkehr und Kommunikation (Christopher Kopper) 17.Land- und Forstwirtschaft (Michael Kopsidis) 18.Unternehmen, Industrie und Handwerk (Alfred Reckendrees) 19.Bauen und Wohnen (Günther Schulz) 20.Handel (Markus Lampe/Nikolaus Wolf) 21.Zahlungsbilanz (Nikolaus Wolf) 22.Internationale Vergleiche (Herman de Jong/Joerg Baten) 23.Einkommen, Vermögen und ökonomische Ungleichheit (Charlotte Bartels/Jan-Otmar Hesse) 24.Gender (Rainer Fattman / Sibylle Lehmann-Hasemeyer / Mark Spoerer) Dokumentation zur Buch-Publikation: Rahlf, Thomas (Hg.), Deutschland in Daten. Zeitreihen zur Historischen Statistik, Bonn: Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung, 2. Aufl. 2022. ISBN 978-3-8389-7133-9. Die Dokumentation nennt die verwendeten Quellen., The dataset comprises 131 XLSX-tables with a total of more than 1.100 time series of 24 different topics for Germany in its different borders from 1834, the foundation of the Customs Union (Zollverein). The current purpose to compile the data was a publication issued in cooperation with the German Federal Agency for Civic Education (Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung). The project was limited to the compilation of published data, in the perspective of long time series and without regional differentiation within Germany. The aim of the project was to identify and compile scattered existing historical time series, and to complement or update them at reasonable expense. In doing so, the best possible or most important data should be compiled. Time series were only to be included, if data for the entire period was at least theoretically available. An integral aspect of the concept of our project is the combination of data with critical commentaries of the time series by established expert scientists. The following themes are covered (authors in parentheses): 1. Environment, Climate and Nature (Paul Erker) 2. Population, Households, Families (Georg Fertig/Franz Rothenbacher) 3. Migration (Jochen Oltmer) 4. Education and Science (Volker Müller-Benedict) 5. Health Service (Reinhard Spree) 6. Social Policy (Marcel Boldorf) 7. Public Finance and Taxation (Mark Spoerer) 8. Political Participation (Marc Debus) 9. Crime and Justice (Dietrich Oberwittler) 10.Work and Emloyment, Standard of Living and Consumption(Toni Pierenkemper) 11.Culture, Tourism, and Sports (Heike Wolter/Bernd Wedemeyer-Kolwe) 12.Religion (Thomas Großbölting/Markus Goldbeck) 13.National Accounts (Thomas Rahlf) 14.Prices (Rainer Metz) 15.Money and Credit (Richard Tilly) 16.Transport and Communication (Christopher Kopper) 17.Agriculture (Michael Kopsidis) 18.Business, Industry, and Craft (Alfred Reckendrees) 19.Building and Housing (Günther Schulz) 20.Trade (Markus Lampe/Nikolaus Wolf) 21.Balance of Payments (Nikolaus Wolf) 22.International Comparisons (Herman de Jong/Joerg Baten). 23.Income, Wealth and Economic Inequality (Charlotte Bartels/Jan-Otmar Hesse)). 24.Gender (Rainer Fattman / Sibylle Lehmann-Hasemeyer / Mark Spoerer). Documentation for: Thomas Rahlf, ed. 2022. Deutschland in Daten. Zeitreihen zur Historischen Statistik. Bonn: Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung. 2nd ed. ISBN 978-3-8389-7133-9. The documentation lists all used sources., Historical Social Research, Transition (Online Supplement)

Placeboeffekte sind mehr als nur ungewöhnliche Heilungsprozesse oder als Störung abgetane Nebenfolgen ärztlicher Behandlungen. Sie ermöglichen vielmehr neue Perspektiven auf die grundlegenden Aspekte der menschlichen Existenz. Uwe Heyll zeigt auf, dass hinter den Placeboeffekten Funktionen des Erkennens stehen, die Geist und Körper zu einer untrennbaren Einheit verschmelzen lassen: Sie erzeugen ein Erleben, in dem sich das menschliche Selbst als Ausdruck der eigenen Persönlichkeit ausbildet. Auf dem Weg zur wissenschaftlichen Medizin wurden diese Funktionen jedoch schrittweise ausgesondert, so dass Placeboeffekte die Erscheinung einer wissenschaftlichen Anomalie angenommen haben.

In 20th century Western societies, the question if human beings could "master" their sleep and sleeping time became increasingly relevant. Scientists from several fields set out to find the principles of basic body rhythms, debating about the effects of "cosmic forces," the influence of light and temperature, and the power of will and habits. To conduct their experiments, these researchers turned places like hospital rooms, caves, or bunkers into chronobiology laboratories. It is argued that the now dominant concept of a "clock" inside the body regulating the alternating phases of sleeping and waking was only one of various possible answers to the question of the how, why, and when of sleep. In the course of the 20th century, experts found very diverse, even contradictory explanations for diurnal rhythms, depending on the context they lived in and technologies they worked with. By conceptualizing experimental spaces not as neutral instances of verification, but as epistemically productive, it is pointed out that the science of sleep did not follow a linear path towards a biological truth called "body clocks" but contributed to the sometimes contingent "making" of scientific concepts that generated reliability only within a specific historical context., Historical Social Research Vol. 48, No. 2 (2023)

Urban heritage is at the core of the process of many changes observable in the cities today. The pace of urban change in heritage contexts, however, differs widely across the globe. In some areas, it goes slowly, in others it is astonishingly rapid. In some cases, change is coupled with risks of erosion of heritage and urban areas of value and in others change is synonymous with prosperity and positive impacts. Change in urban heritage areas is not only confined to the physical and tangible aspects, but needs to be regarded as mirroring changes related socio-political practices, economic implications, and cultural impacts. In this regard, the present thematic issue looks at various patterns of the interrelationship between heritage and urban change from both the physical and the non-physical perspectives. This editorial presents the topic of urban heritage and patterns of physical and non-physical transformation in urban heritage contexts and introduces the thematic issue “Urban Heritage and Patterns of Change: Spatial Practices of Physical and Non-Physical Transformation.”

This article analyses the evolution of civil-military relations in Spain from 1923 to 2021. The research defi nes the role of the military organisation during two authoritarian regimes in the 20th century along with the country’s democratic transition. After a historical overview, the military change process known as Experimental Brigade 2035 is selected as a case study to determine whether its origin is civilian or military in nature. The results of the research evidence the civilian infl uence in budgetary issues and limits in performance. At the same time, the military has a certain autonomy to implement modernisation plans in the framework of assigned competences.

The Great Kanto Earthquake and Second World War Fire Bombings have left contemporary Tokyo with almost no monuments from the past. One of the areas that has been spared in both destructions is Yanesen, part of the three neighbourhoods Yanaka, Nezu, and Sendagi located in northeast central Tokyo. Nezu has a peculiar urban character that persists despite the lack of conservation and constant change in its built environment. Its unique character is defined by a sense of local, domestic, and neighbourhood closeness and is linked to the traditional identity of Shitamachi. This article hypothesizes that the main element that preserves the character of Shitamachi in Nezu is based on the relationships rather than on objects that need to be preserved. The analysis focuses on the relationships between public and private spaces and captures changes in the built environment in Nezu over six years. The comparative analysis applied mapping and a photographic survey of the public-private interface. The results showed how the persistence of the urban character is supported by a dynamic change in the built environment which functions as a complex system. The relationships between elements of the built environment are demonstrating non-linear causality at the public-private interface and contribute to Nezu’s enduring character.

Die folgende Analyse unternimmt den Versuch, die gegenwärtige russische Elite zu beschreiben, ihre Genese, ihre Beziehung zum System bis hin zu ihrem verbindenden Element. Dabei kann festgehalten werden, dass die derzeitige Elite in Russland stark integriert und eng differenziert ist. Folglich schafft es das Regime nur äußerst spärlich, die Vielfalt gesellschaftlicher Gruppen zu repräsentieren. Zudem gelang es, die Elite durch Jahrzehnte eines auferlegten Konsenses und umfangreicher wirtschaftlicher Ressourcen, die durch Staatsunternehmen erlangt und durch staatliche Institutionen verteilt wurden, zu integrieren. Allerdings kann diese feste Integration der Elite nur eine formale sein, und ist gewissermaßen nur eine geschickte Imitation. Machtkämpfe im System sind eine Frage der Zeit.

This paper asks both whether it is possible to identify a clear shape or trajectory to human history as a whole and what significance or meaning we can attach to such a trajectory. It will argue that modern historical research within many different disciplines does indeed allow us to identify some striking shapes to the history of our species. It will also argue that those shapes are full of meaning for understanding the nature and significance of our strange species. Finally, it will end with some speculative ideas about how human history may evolve in the distant future in an attempt to see if we can perhaps glimpse what human history will look like when the human story has ended., Historical Social Research Vol. 48, No. 1 (2023)

Gesellschaftliche Umbrüche bedeuten für Migrierende und ihre Familien eine besondere Herausforderung; zusätzlich zur meist notwendigen Neuaushandlung der Beziehungen nach der Migration eines Familienmitglieds. Die biographisch angelegte Fallstudie untersucht diesen Prozess in grenzübergreifend organisierten ecuadorianischen Familien und schaut besonders auf sich verschiebende Machtbalancen. Die Bedeutung der jüngsten Wirtschaftskrise im Ankunftsland Spanien wird dabei vor dem Hintergrund eines mehrere Jahrzehnte andauernden familialen Wandlungsprozesses erschlossen. Im Ergebnis erweist sich die Krise als weniger einschneidend wie zuvor angenommen, wobei die Resilienz familialer Machtverhältnisse als ambivalent bewertet wird.

Leseprobe ----- Bibliographie: Schmeiser, Martin: Vom „statistischen Kleingemalde“ zur „Lebensgeschichte“. Die Entwicklung von Biographie- und Lebensverlaufsforschung in der fruhen deutschen Soziologie [BIOS 17 (2004), Heft 1, 69-94], BIOS – Zeitschrift fur Biographieforschung, Oral History und Lebensverlaufsanalysen, 1+2-2019, S. 324-349. ----- Open-Access-Lizenz: Dieser Beitrag ist ab dem 16.11.2023 im Open Access unter der Creative-Commons-Lizenz CC BY 4.0 (Namensnennung 4.0 International) verfugbar. Weitere Informationen zur Lizenz und den Nutzungsbedingungen finden Sie hier .

The aim of the paper is to present issues related to the approach to the integration of immigrants in Poland in the last three decades. The article is seeking an answer to the question of how the approach to immigrant integration has evolved? Does the evolving approach reflect the rising tide of change taking place in Europe? First, the article discusses the issues of migration to Poland. It is essential to consider cultural conditions related to the national identity and migration history of a given country in an attempt to explain the evolution of the integration policy. The subsequent parts analyze the Polish integration policy until 2015 and the integration policy after 2015. The results of the research show that in Poland, the approach to the integration of immigrants has evolved in a short time: from the “strategy of abandonment” to “integration” understood as a two-way process of adaptation to the concept of assimilation.

Kulturelles Erbe spielt in Grenzregionen nicht nur im Kontext von Beheimatung eine zentrale Rolle, es kommt auch in energieindustriell bedingten Transformationsprozessen zum Tragen: so etwa im Wendland als ehemaligem »Zonenrandgebiet« und in der Lausitz als Nachbar zu Polen seit dem Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs. Seinen zugrunde liegenden historischen Entwicklungen und aktuellen Handlungsräumen geht Jenny Hagemann in ihrer interdisziplinären Studie nach, indem sie historischen Vergleich, Diskursanalyse und qualitative Interviews miteinander verbindet. Sie liefert neue Erkenntnisse für Heritage Studies und Regionalgeschichte gleichermaßen und bietet erstmals Vorschläge zur Konzeptionalisierung von »regionalem Heritage« an.

This article focuses on the public German higher education sector as a site upon and through which coloniality is enacted. This status quo indicates exclusionary effects and merits interrogation. We briefly discuss the history of German colonialism to understand how coloniality pervades higher educational structures in the German context today. Two proposals addressing coloniality in German higher education are made: the development of structures centering diverse faculty and the support of ethnic and identity studies.

Women’s football in Ireland started in 1895 when the British Ladies’ Football Club (BLFC) visited Belfast for the first time and was followed by a tour the next year, which included some matches labelled ‘Ireland vs. England’. After two decades of silence, World War I saw the restart of women’s football, thanks to Mrs Walter Scott, and this time it was played seriously. Right from the start, the focus was not only on local exhibition matches but also on international selective matches. On Boxing Day in 1917, women’s football history was written, with the first international match of two selected teams in Belfast. After the war, Ireland became part of the international women’s football boom, played several international matches and had close ties to the French Federation. After some years of decline, the 1930s saw the most flourishing years in Irish women’s football before World War II, culminating in the first Irish full international in France, against France, in 1936. After the war, Irish women’s football was back on the international scene again. In this piece, I will show that Ireland—like France, Belgium, Austria and England—was one of the key international players in women’s football history up to the early 1950s. As soon as serious football was played by women, starting in World War I, the Irish ladies were part of the international movement and played international selective matches. This distinguished them from other nations in the 20s and 30s, where women’s football was seen as a show-act and not as a serious sport.

This article looks at the early development of women’s football in Ireland, examining the cultural impact of the first women’s matches, and how this early heritage has laid foundations for future developments. Women took to playing association football not long after it was first established as a male bastion during the latter half of the nineteenth century. These early matches attracted large crowds, public and press criticism, and in some instances social disorder. The article first examines how the Irish press presented this sporting innovation and the first exposure to actual matches when the British Ladies Club arrived to play in Belfast in early June 1895. Beyond the expected disapproval, there is evidence that debate took place on women’s general role in society, and in particular how females could engage in sport. Also examined is the way British Ladies Club presented themselves as upper-middle-class, and how this contrasted with the way they were portrayed in the press. New research is presented, which casts doubt on the club’s middle-class image and shows how friction between the club and its main sponsor arose when a true picture of the players’ backgrounds came to light. In conclusion, the author contrasts the Irish response to the British Ladies Football Club with the women’s sides that played during World War I and the post-war period. It is shown that the early matches of the 1890s paved the way for a more appreciative and accepting audience.