Boules

Boules (/buːl/, French pronunciation: [bul]), or jeu de boules, is a collective name for a wide range of games similar to bowls and bocce in which the objective is to throw or roll heavy balls as closely as possible to a small target ball, called the jack. 'Boules' itself is a French loanword that usually refers to the game especially played in France.

Boules-type games are traditional and popular in many European countries and are also popular in some former French colonies in Africa and Asia. Boules games are often played in open spaces (town squares and parks) in villages and towns. Dedicated playing areas for boules-type games are typically large, level, rectangular courts made of flattened earth, gravel, or crushed stone, enclosed in wooden rails or back boards. To win, a team must reach 15 points, with a few exceptions.

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, trying to have them go as far as possible. The ancient Romans modified the game by adding a target that had to be approached as closely as possible. This Roman variation was brought to Provence by Roman soldiers and sailors. A Roman sepulchre (now in the Campana Collection in the Louvre) shows children playing this game, stooping down to measure the points.

After the Romans, the stone balls were replaced by wooden balls. In the Middle Ages, Erasmus referred to the game as globurum in Latin, but it became commonly known as boules (i.e. 'balls'), and it was played throughout Europe. King Henry III of England banned the playing of the game by his archers – he wanted them to be practicing archery, not playing boules. In the 14th century, Charles IV and Charles V of France forbade the sport to commoners; only in the 17th century was the ban lifted.

By the 19th century, in England the game had become bowls or "lawn bowling". In France it was known as boules and was played throughout the country. The French artist Meissonnier made two paintings showing people playing the game, and Honoré de Balzac described a match in La Comédie Humaine.

In the South of France, the game evolved into jeu provençal (or boule lyonnaise), in which players rolled their boules or ran three steps before throwing a boule. The game was extremely popular in France in the second half of the 19th century (the first official club was established in France in 1854). It was played informally in villages all over Provence, usually on squares of land in the shade of plane trees. Matches of jeu provençal around the start of the 20th century are memorably described in the memoirs of novelist Marcel Pagnol.

In 1910, an offshoot of jeu provençal called pétanque was developed in the town of La Ciotat, in Provence. It eventually became the dominant boules sport in France, and is widely played in other European countries.

Boules games may be sub-divided into two categories based on typical throwing technique: