Pan-European Discourse and the Development of Modern Travel

This paper will examine the role of pan-European discourse in tourism development from the eighteenth century Grand Tour, in which wealthy landowners in England sent their sons to the Continent to learn languages, make contacts, and develop taste, to the explosion of mass tourism during the twentieth century. The Grand Tour, the birthplace of modern tourism, was consummately transnational in both its execution and influence. Although seaside resorts originated in Britain in the late nineteenth century, the aesthetic and scientific ideas that made beaches desirable emerged through conversation among Dutch painters, English travelers, and both British and Continental scientists and philosophers. Then, when in the latter part of the nineteenth century, leisure travel finally began to include large numbers of the middle and working classes, tourism advocates, in such countries as Ireland and Hungary, looked to England, France, Italy and the United States for ideas. The Nazi leisure organization, Strength through Joy (KdF), was based on an earlier Italian model, the Dopolavoro. World's Fair promoters raided previous fairs in other countries for ideas. European-wide demand and taste helped shape nudist practice in France and beyond. The paper will argue that scholars must contextualize European tourism development within a broadly European and even trans-Atlantic framework.