Making the European tourist

Driving a car made motorists transcend their national identity. Motorized traveling created a certain fraternity among motorists. Such fraternal bonds fitted perfectly with the vision of L’Européen, from the pages of which the quote above has been taken. L’Européen was one of several well-read publications pertaining to the blossoming Europeanist press of the Interbellum. The Parisian weekly review presented its public with an essentially economic view of Europe interlarded with political analyses and cultural articles. The weekly was tailored towards an elite public of whom a high percentage owned or was closely familiar with the automobile.

In 1930 the journal started dedicating its final page to “L’Européen et le tourisme.” According to the magazine tourists should not simply indulge in a pleasurable leisure activity: through thorough prior preparation and planning they should turn their trip into a methodical intellectual endeavor. The Union pour le Tourisme Européen, an organization filling large chunks of the page, suggested the right itineraries for l’Européen's readership. It initiated organized tours such as the Voyage d’Art et d’Amitié en Europe to Italy, which it portrayed as the cradle of European civilization. In short, being a good European started with exploring the continent as a tourist, or:

What better way to explore Europe than touring the continent by car? Certainly for L’Européen's elite readership car ownership was much more common than among most sections of society. The popularity of automobile tourism increased manifold in the course of the Interbellum. In Switzerland, a popular destination country, the entry of touring automobiles quintupled from 7,284 in 1922 to 36,380 in 1925, jumping to 167,463 in 1930. Although the 1930s in general were a period of economic crisis, there are indications that overall automobile traffic continued to grow. Dutch traffic censuses from 1935 and 1938 provide data on cars’ nationality signs at twenty-eight counting posts equally divided between the borders with Belgium and Germany (see Table 4.1).