Landscape, Tourism And Travel Writing For The British West Indies

By Author: Porter Black
Total Articles: 54
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Travel is a longstanding human activity, but the concept of tourism is much more recent. According to Berghoff and Korte, "The very term 'tourism' was coined in the British Isles, emerging in the English language early in the nineteenth century." One of the factors that created an environment suitable for the emergence of British tourism was the emergence of landscape aesthetics. Aitchison et al. specifically note that artistic representations and tourism have long been compatible. Aesthetic landscape concepts helped redefine nature, which in turn helped redefine tourist destinations and the tourist experience. People who had the means increasingly sought landscapes to Merrell Boots appreciate, and travel was shifted away from the cultural places formerly associated with the 'Grand Tour' to less explored places with attractive natural scenery (Chu 2003).

As British tourists sought new destinations, conditions were developing in the British West Indies that allowed it to be seen as one such potential destination. At the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, Britain ...
... emerged as the dominant naval power in the region, and territorial ownership of the islands was finally, formally established (Burns 1954; Hart 1998). For the next 99 years, the British colonies were free from the direct impact of war, until the outbreak of World War I in 1914. By 1826, the first steamship arrived in the region (Burns 1954). Steamship travel allowed people to reach distant places in less time, in greater comfort, and at less expense. Moreover, the islands in the Caribbean Sea were easier to reach from the British Isles than comparable islands in the South Pacific, and the natural environment provided enough of Merrell Sandal a contrast to those at home to sufficiently fuel the British imagination. Among the Caribbean's British colonies, islands such as Antigua, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, Nevis, Montserrat, St. Kitts, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Tobago, and Trinidad, provided a suitable outlet for foreign tourism.

The practice of travel writing has long accompanied travel, and with the rise of tourism, narratives were increasingly written by tourists for the tourist market (Sheller 2003). Many of these tourist/travel writers were established authors who were known for both their fiction and travel works. Nonetheless, it was well noted that nineteenth century tourists increasingly carried journals and sketchbooks to ultimately produce narratives of their own. In fact, "That tourists had toured solely in order to write tour-memoirs was a familiar charge". Travel writing became a popular genre with a potentially large audience. Travel books were readily available and provided exciting, adventurous, and informative stories about far off, colonial, exotic locations that a reader might one day visit, or would at least imagine visiting. Combined with colonial fiction, travel narratives helped create an image of distant places in the minds of their readers. This type of literature was important in the production of popular geographies, outside of academic and scientific discourse.