Creating Irish Tourism: The First Century, 1750-1850 (Anthem Studies in Travel)
Although modern tourism did not begin there, by 1750 Ireland was on the path to becoming one of the first counties in which tourism became a defining factor. A contribution to tourism history, this book, based on the accounts of British and Anglo-Irish travelers, charts the development of tourism in Ireland from its origins in the mid-eighteenth century to the country’s emergence as a major European tourist destination a century later. Ireland presents an example of how modern tourism developed as a self-organizing system. There were no tourist boards, no planning commissions, no government grants and no consultants. Apart from some basic infrastructure, such as roads and hostelry, most of the elements needed to support tourism in Ireland emerged without over-arching planning and coordination largely through the interactions of the tourists and the efforts of Irish landlords, entrepreneurs and the peasantry.
Given its scenic attractions and proximity to Great Britain, Ireland’s position as a tourism Mecca might seem inevitable. Yet, tourism there, as anywhere else in the eighteenth century, had to be invented. Thanks to the emerging concepts of the sublime and the picturesque, Ireland’s mountains, lakes and seascapes were reconfigured in the public imagination as tourist sites. Through the descriptive accounts of travel writers, the sites were identified and defined in ways that made them attractive and meaningful to potential visitors. Landlords often opened and organized their estates for visitors. However, the actual activities on the ground, what the tourists saw and did, evolved out of the interaction between the visitors and the veritable army of peasant guides, jarvies, vendors, porters and beggars who greeted and served them. These contacts combined with British stereotypes regarding the Irish to create distinctly “Irish” tourist experiences. A “case study” of Killarney shows how all of these factors came together to create one of Europe’s major tourist sites.
Visiting Ireland meant more than taking in the glories of nature, however. Part the “Irish” experience derived from the long and conflicted historical relationship between Great Britain and Ireland. Many British travelers were intent upon “understanding” this difficult country which, after the Act of Union of 1801, had become a part of the United Kingdom. As a result, the visitor in search of Ireland often incorporated what I call the “Petite Tour” (as opposed to the Continental Grand Tour) of towns, markets, workhouses, churches and even the cottages of the peasantry. Even Irish poverty became a tourist attraction.
Contents: 1, Getting There and Getting About; 2, Tours Grand and Petite; 3, Property, Class and Irish Tourism; 4, The Sublime and the Picturesque in Irish Tourism; 5, Picturesque Tourist Sites in Ireland; 6, The Tourist Experience; 7, Killarney—A Case Study; 8, Tourist Semiotics, Stereotypes and the Search for the Exotic; 9, On the Road—In Search of Ireland; 10, The Famine and After; 11, Conclusion.