Introduction

Abstract

The British have a long history of travelling beyond their Isles. From the eighteenth century they developed a taste for discovery and self-discovery through the exploration — and exploitation — of other lands and peoples, and through their encounters with other societies and civilisations. From the Grand Tour to the package holiday, the British were pioneers and innovators in modern tourism. These developments were intrinsic to the unfolding of the (world’s first) Industrial Revolution, and were a consequence of it, with the export of British tourism practices to Europe and beyond, as the British abroad were ridiculed, revered and emulated, and their tourism cultures mutated to take account of other cultures and social orders. The development into new forms of travel and tourism challenged the perceptions the British had of the world — and the world of the British. These journeys also impacted on the representation and formation of ‘Britishness’, the exploration of national identity by defining a non-British world or a world becoming ‘British’. By encountering the ‘other’ in an era of new relationships between power and knowledge (through experience), the British participated in the representation and politics of a world that moved from traditional to modern, from colonial to post-colonial. This collection of essays is concerned with that experience.