… pugilistic spirit in times of peace. In that perspective, boxing acted as a counter-model to the Enlightenment values of sociability based on a belief in the benefits of trade and luxury in polishing national manners. Furthermore, pugilism … by the rules and the sometimes rowdy nature of audience participation, on the one hand, and the aspiration to a polite sociability brought about by the gentlemanly spectacle was only solved in the second half of the nineteenth century, with … losers, its codes and its brutal violence, its public made of ruffians and gentlemen, mirrors the ambivalence of British sociability in the beginning of the nineteenth century. The debates around boxing bear witness to the role it played, …