The British and the Grand Tour

by Jeremy Black

First published in 1985, this is a history of the Grand Tour, undertaken by young men in the eighteenth century to complete their education - a tour usually to France, Italy and Switzerland, and sometimes encompassing Germany. Rather than being another popular treatment of the theme, this is a scholarly analysis of the motives, purposes, activities and achievements of those who made the Grand Tour.The book considers to what extent the Grand Tour did fulfil its theoretical educational function, or whether travellers merely parroted the observations of their guidebooks. It also indicates the importance of the Grand Tour in introducing foreign customs into Britain and extending the cosmopolitanism of the European upper classes.

Genres: History

273 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Jeremy Black is an English historian, who was formerly a professor of history at the University of Exeter. He is a senior fellow at the Center for the Study of America and the West at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US.
Black is the author of over 180 books, principally but not exclusively on 18th-century British politics and international relations, and has been described by one commentator as "the most prolific historical scholar of our age". He has published on military and political history, including Warfare in the Western World, 1882–1975 (2001) and The World in the Twentieth Century (2002).

Reviews

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Essentially a survey of eighteenth-century British tourism - I guess many readers would consider this book less a goodread and more a goodresource, but I did a cover-to-cover read and found it quite engaging. Part of the interest lies in the source-material, and here no one can deny that Black has done a great service. He has not relied on sources that were intended for publication, and/or have been in print for ages, but instead has brought to light a bulk of unprinted material which has been overlooked, much of it having been poorly catalogued - or not at all catalogued! - and/or scattered in general family or diplomatic correspondence throughout city/county archives in the UK (no less that 33 of them). Moreover, Black has allowed the tourists many opportunities to speak for themselves by quoting liberally from their accounts, providing readers with direct access to their opinions and attitudes - and very entertaining they can be indeed! Surprisingly varied too.

Chapters are conveniently arranged by theme (routes & destinations, transport, accommodation, food & drink, sex, gambling, cost, arts, religion, social & political reflections etc). The thing that stuck me most was how intrepid a business foreign travel was in those days, particularly for those folk who ventured off the main drag (into provincial regions, or even Eastern Europe, for instance).

However the book, which was first published over twenty-five years ago, has not been introduced with a clear set of questions that point toward the aims/ends of the inquiry and shape the presentation - so readers who like a strong pull-through thread might feel that it's a bit of plod (a contemporary editor would recommend, I imagine, some more precisely focused questions at the outset and the reshaping of subsequent chapters in accordance).

But independent-minded folk will frame their own questions, and Black's overall aims are discernible in the concluding pages, where he seeks to assess what the motivations for the Grand Tour were and how much of an influence foreign travel was in cultural history. Patently an important one, given the fact that the majority of tourists were young men from the upper orders, men destined for influential roles, and that travel and exposure to foreign influences during their formative years meant that they became aware of achievements in European society and culture, as emerges from their letters. Xenophobia, to be sure, is alive (in varying degrees) in these accounts, but so is openness to foreign influences (good and bad naturally) and we can see that travel at least placed tourists in a position to make comparisons and better-informed judgements.

Footnote: Among other interesting findings of this survey is that although eighteenth-century tourists often felt it necessary to justify foreign travel in terms of education and social finishing, nonetheless enjoyment and leisure were an important part of the travel experience. Maybe they weren't so different from us after all!

[Marina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very informative - an excellent referenca book.