British Travellers in the Age of Enlightenment

By: Brian Dolan, Edward Dolan

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Hardcover | 2 March 2000 | Edition Number 1

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Hardcover
248 Pages

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21.59 x 13.97 x 1.75

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Casanova's belief that England 'is different in every aspect from the rest of Europe' was increasingly shared in the eighteenth century by England's body politic. But just what was it that made it - or, indeed, not just England but Britain more generally - different? Swelling patriotism led increasing numbers of British travellers to comb the far reaches of Europe and make assessments, comparisons, analyses and judgements about the relative state of civility between themselves and their neighbours. This study examines a range of British travellers' perceptions of Europe and charts their quests to explore and contrast far-flung European frontiers - to Lapland, to the eastern provinces of the Russian empire, the Levant. Using a wide range of eighteenth-century travel accounts, Dolan demonstrates how these narratives were often informed by and designed to address contemporary historical and scientific assessments of the status of modern European civilisation.

Industry Reviews

An exciting addition to that space on the scholar's bookshelf between Edward Said's Orientalism and Mary Louise Pratt's Imperial Eyes. It focuses on the literature of travel, but by targeting areas on the margins of Europe visited at the turn of the nineteenth century by English travellers - notably, the Far North and the Middle East - it unpicks easy assumptions about 'West' and 'East' and presents a more complicated, yet intellectually more sophisticated and more satisfying account of cultural encounter in a key stage in the formation of concepts of national identity and ethnographic science.' - Colin Jones, Department of History, University of Warwick

'A thoughtful and far-reaching account that uses travel to throw fresh light on eighteenth-century thought. Aside from the inherent importance of the subject this is a great pleasure to read.' - Jeremy Black, Professor of History, University of Exeter

Through the writings of Clarke and other travellers, Dolan provides a fascinating picture of how peoples on the margins of Europe were depicted and defined...The book is particularly successful in explicating intellectual history of different kinds and relating it to the travel reports. The polymath traveller of the eighteenth century had interests ranging from botany to political economy. To make all these comprehensible to the reader, as Dolan has, is no small achievement.' - Katherine Edgar, The Times Literary Supplement

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List of Plates	p. ix
Acknowledgements	p. xi
Preparing the Course: The Death of the Grand Tour and the Making of a Literary Traveller	p. 3
Identity, history and travel	p. 3
The making of a literary traveller	p. 7
Encounters with Clarke	p. 15
Plotting the course	p. 20
Northern Frontier: Scandinavia--The Mismeasure of Modernity and the 'Age of Liberty'	p. 27
The state of Scandinavia	p. 28
A land of wood and iron	p. 33
Science and education	p. 38
Population, production and progress	p. 47
The 'borders of civilisation'	p. 57
An alternative Enlightenement?	p. 68
Eastern Frontier: Russia and its Frontier--Cultivating Empire and Imitating Enlightenment	p. 73
Bordering a lack of knowledge	p. 73
Anxieties of expansion	p. 80
Peter's progress and Catherine's costly culture	p. 84
Paul: 'The most barbarian among Christians'	p. 97
Warriors in the 'unknown territory'	p. 102
Limits of enlightenment	p. 109
Southern Frontier: Greece and the Levant - The Archaeological Appropriation of the Historical Frontier	p. 113
Models of antiquity	p. 115
A Dilettante pursuit	p. 121
Acquiring antiquities Part I: Imperial self-fashioning	p. 129
Acquiring antiquities Part II: The 'Levant lunatics'	p. 135
To patronise or pilfer?	p. 141
Self-styled caretakers of civility	p. 147
Coming Home: Displaying and Describing the Trophies of Travels	p. 153
Collections and displays	p. 153
Writing travels	p. 158
Travel and new forms of education	p. 167
Looking at Europe from different perspectives	p. 178
Notes and References	p. 189
Bibliography	p. 208
Index	p. 226
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British Travellers in the Age of Enlightenment