History of Petanque

Origins of Petanque

As early as the 6th century BC the ancient Greeks are recorded to have played a game of tossing coins, then flat stones and later stone balls, called spheristics.   The ancient Romans modified the game by adding a target that had to be reached as closely as possible and this variation was brought to France by Roman soldiers and sailors.   After the Romans, the stone balls were replaced by wooden balls and in the Middle Ages, it was referred to as Globurum, but became commonly known as Boules (i.e. 'balls').    

In the 14th century, Charles IV and Charles V of France forbade the sport to commoners and this ban was only lifted in the 17th century.   

By the 19th century, in England the game had become "bowls" or "lawn bowling", but in France the game evolved into Jeu Provencal, (the JP part of FIPJP!)  similar to today's petanque, except the length of the playing area was longer and players ran three steps before throwing. 

History of Petanque

The current form of Petanque originated in 1907 in La Ciotat, in Provence, France in what is now called the Jules Lenoir Boulodrome.  It was invented by Ernest Pitiot, a local cafe owner, to accommodate a French jeu provencal player named Jules Lenoir, whose rheumatism prevented him from running before he threw the ball.   In the new game, the length of the pitch or field was reduced by roughly half, and a player no longer engaged in a run-up while throwing a ball, but stood, stationary, in a circle.

The first petanque tournament with the new rules was organized in 1910 by the brothers Ernest and Joseph Pitiot.  After that the game spread quickly and soon became the most popular form of boules in France.   

Before the mid-1800s, European boules games were played with solid wooden balls, usually made from boxwood root, a very hardwood. The late 1800s saw the introduction of cheap mass-manufactured nails, and wooden boules gradually began to be covered with nails, producing boules cloutées ("nailed boules").    After World War I, cannonball manufacturing technology was adapted to allow the manufacture of hollow, all-metal boules.  The first all-metal boule, la Boule Integrale, was introduced in the mid-1920s by Paul Courtieu. The Integrale was cast in a single piece from a bronze-aluminum alloy.  Shortly thereafter Jean Blanc invented a process of manufacturing steel boules by stamping two steel blanks into hemispheres and then welding the two hemispheres together to create a boule. With this technological advance, hollow all-metal balls rapidly became the norm.

The global spread of the game

After the development of the all-metal boule, petanque spread rapidly from Provence to the rest of France, then to the rest of Europe, and then to Francophone colonies and countries around the globe.   Today there are National Federations throughout the world and Petanque is actively played in most countries in the world.

The International governing body of petanque is the Fédération Internationale de Pétanque et Jeu Provençal (FIPJP). It was founded in 1958 in Marseille and now has 112 national federations in 112 countries.   Petanque is universal, present on the five continents and in the largest countries (Argentina, Australia, China, USA, India, Japan, Russia), but is also in very small states (Brunei, Djibouti, Haiti, Monaco, Seychelles, Vanuatu).   It is present both in islands (Malta, Mauritius, Comoros) and the foothills of the Himalayas (Bhutan, Nepal).  It is played in the warmer countries (Qatar, Polynesia) and in the colder regions (Canada, Mongolia).