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A brief history of BadmintonBadminton as it is played today was probably invented by British army officers in India in the 19th century, which is also when it was first played competitively. In a possible early Chinese predecessor, players would try and use their hands to keep a shuttlecock (of a different kind than the one used for badminton today) in the air for as long as possible.
Notwithstanding this supposedly unsophisticated predecessor, the game of badminton as we know it today appealed to the English nobility, too. In the 19th century, British Army officers in India invented a game similar to today's badminton. This was also when a net was used for the first time. The game, at that time still called Poona (after the city where is was invented), was brought back to England by returning soldiers in the 1850s. There, the Duke of Beaufort was so taken in by the sport that it became a regular form of entertainment at his estate in Gloucestershire: Badminton House. From there, the game, which was soon to take the name of the manor where it first became sociable in England, spread throughout the country. The first official set of rules was written by the Bath Badminton Club - not far away from Badminton House - as early as 1877. Less than two decades later - in 1893 - the Badminton Association of England was established. Another six years later, the first official international championship took place: the All England Badminton Championships in 1899. More than a century after that, this annual tournament is still regarded as the biggest and most prestigious badminton competition in the world. Return to the general introduction to Badminton. 1Picture originally published by Punch magazine in 1854, taken from www.wikipedia.co.uk |
Slightly closer to today's sport is a popular children's game played from Medieval to Victorian times in England. "Battledore and Shuttles" involved using paddles to hit the shuttle. The aim of the game was to keep the shuttle in the air for as long as possible. Sounds remotely familiar... However, as opposed to today's game, "Battledore and Shuttle" was played outside. As the drawing on the right (from an 1854 edition of Punch magazine1) suggests, the streets of London were a popular venue for the game - seemingly much to the annoyance of the nobler folk whose reason for strolling through the capital's thoroughfares was not to amuse themselves playing a game, but to transport themselves from A to B... 