Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Series Editor's Foreword
- About the Authors
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 British Steam Navigation, 1812 to the 1850s: A Bibliographical and Historiographical Review
- Chapter 2 Some Official Listings of “Vessels Navigated by Steam” in Britain up to 1851: Evidence and Interpretation
- Chapter 3 The Steamboat, Safety and the State: Government Reaction to New Technology in a Period of Laissez-Faire
- Chapter 4 The Steamboat and Popular Tourism
- Chapter 5 The Thames and Recreation, 1815-1840
- Chapter 6 Steam Shipping and the Beginnings of Overseas Tourism: British Travel to North Western Europe, 1820-1850
- Chapter 7 Technological Advance and Innovation: The Diffusion of the Early Steamship in the United Kingdom, 1812-1834
- Chapter 8 The Steamship as an Agent of Modernisation, 1812-1840
- Chapter 9 “A New and Very Modern Business:” The Traffic and Operations of the Early Steamship
- Chapter 10 Promotion, Speculation and Their Outcome: The “Steamship Mania” of 1824-1825
- Chapter 11 The Perception and Understanding of New Technology: A Failed Attempt to Establish Transatlantic Steamship Liner Services, 1824-1828
- Chapter 12 The “Norwich Explosion” of 1817: A Local Tragedy of National Significance
- Chapter 13 Early Steamboat Services and Their Impact in North Wales, 1817-1840s
- Chapter 14 The Beginnings of a New Technology: The Constructors of Early Steamboats, 1812-1822
Chapter 6 - Steam Shipping and the Beginnings of Overseas Tourism: British Travel to North Western Europe, 1820-1850
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Series Editor's Foreword
- About the Authors
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 British Steam Navigation, 1812 to the 1850s: A Bibliographical and Historiographical Review
- Chapter 2 Some Official Listings of “Vessels Navigated by Steam” in Britain up to 1851: Evidence and Interpretation
- Chapter 3 The Steamboat, Safety and the State: Government Reaction to New Technology in a Period of Laissez-Faire
- Chapter 4 The Steamboat and Popular Tourism
- Chapter 5 The Thames and Recreation, 1815-1840
- Chapter 6 Steam Shipping and the Beginnings of Overseas Tourism: British Travel to North Western Europe, 1820-1850
- Chapter 7 Technological Advance and Innovation: The Diffusion of the Early Steamship in the United Kingdom, 1812-1834
- Chapter 8 The Steamship as an Agent of Modernisation, 1812-1840
- Chapter 9 “A New and Very Modern Business:” The Traffic and Operations of the Early Steamship
- Chapter 10 Promotion, Speculation and Their Outcome: The “Steamship Mania” of 1824-1825
- Chapter 11 The Perception and Understanding of New Technology: A Failed Attempt to Establish Transatlantic Steamship Liner Services, 1824-1828
- Chapter 12 The “Norwich Explosion” of 1817: A Local Tragedy of National Significance
- Chapter 13 Early Steamboat Services and Their Impact in North Wales, 1817-1840s
- Chapter 14 The Beginnings of a New Technology: The Constructors of Early Steamboats, 1812-1822
Summary
Today's global tourism is a development of the mass tourist industry that emerged in the 1960s. That in turn was the outcome, albeit over a much longer gestation period, of the growth of popular international tourism that had its origins in the nineteenth century. Popular tourism is to be interpreted in terms of a clientele which extended beyond an elite of the very rich who traditionally enjoyed the resources of time and money that enabled lengthy and expensive travel abroad. In each of these stages of the evolution of tourism, there are market influences in common, namely those of improvements in transport that reduced the costs and time of travel alongside increases in living standards and the acquisition of more adventurous lifestyles that encouraged would-be travellers to venture further afield. Both demand and supply sides of the market, at all stages, were located in the most developed, industrial economies where technological advances in modes of transport and the rise of incomes were first apparent. Hence, it is generally held that the beginnings of popular, international tourism lie in Europe and particularly with British recreational travel to the Continent in the mid-nineteenth century. In such analyses, great weight is laid on the spread of railway construction in opening up Europe to the traveller and the services of agents, notably Thomas Cook, in the organization of tours. Without doubt, railways were highly influential in the rapid upsurge of travel to and within the Continent during the third quarter of the nineteenth century. In the case of Britain, the number of cross-Channel passengers in 1882 exceeded 500,000 compared with an estimate (albeit we believe an underestimate) of 100,000 forty years earlier. Nor is Cook's business acumen in question; he conveyed 20,000 visitors to the Paris Exhibition of 1867 and some 75,000 to its counterpart in 1878. The beginnings of popular travel to North Western Europe predated the railway, however, and there is considerable evidence of entrepreneurial activity and organized tourism before Cook undertook his first continental venture in 1855. The stimulus to development was the steamboat - the contribution of which to popular tourism has been largely ignored in accounts of the growth of recreational travel to the Continent.
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- The Impact of Technological ChangeThe Early Steamship In Britain, pp. 119 - 138Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2011