Leisure, Travel and Mass Culture

This resource is a multi-archive collection that explores the evolution of European and American working-class tourism from the mid-nineteenth to late twentieth centuries. Sources include the collections of the Thomas Cook Archives, the Newberry Library, and the National Archives, UK. Users can explore personal travel journals, industry leaflets, maps, government documents, brochures, and other ephemera as well as a collection of promotional tourism films.

Site navigation, collection overviews, and search tips are gathered under the Introduction tab. The collections can be searched by keyword or by selecting the Documents or Galleries tab at the top of the page. Results may be browsed alphabetically or filtered by type, source collection, region, or theme. Each theme has an explanatory page that includes a shortcut to an alphabetical list of the relevant materials.

Of special note is the chronology function, which is searchable in its entirety or may be filtered by region or theme. Individual entries may be saved to a list to create a printable, customized timeline. In addition to the primary source documents are a collection of contextual essays written by the editorial board, an interactive world map, and an overview of the development of the travel business, along with a list of external websites to aid in additional research.

Suitable for historical research by high-school and college students and for scholarly research.

The History of Mass Tourism is a multi-archival, interactive, online resource, which allows students and researchers to trace the emergence of mass tourism in Britain and America, from the earliest travel agents of the mid-nineteenth century to the explosion of the package holiday over a hundred years on. The resource brings together more than 4750 diverse primary sources from 15 international archives including guidebooks, manuscript diaries, scrapbooks, periodicals, posters, advertisements, promotional films and tourist ephemera. Users can virtually travel from the UK National Archives to The Newberry Library in Chicago through the project's digitalized holdings, which also include archival material from a number of American universities and historical societies, as well as company records of The Camping and Caravanning Club, The Polytechnic Touring Association (PTA, later Thomson's) and Thomas Cook.

This radial focus enables a broader understanding of the cultural and social history of mass tourism than author studies or archival case histories can afford. It enables the development of particular travel agents like Thomas Cook, Raymond Whitcomb Travel and the Anspach Travel Bureau to be traced alongside technological incentives like the Pullman Company's luxury trains, all of which played a role in this history. The comprehensive geographical coverage of the resource encapsulates the expanse of destinations made increasingly accessible to travellers over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This geo-historical overview is complemented by more detailed case studies through the integration of digitally curated exhibitions, which spotlight the development of popular seaside resorts, Blackpool and Coney Island, within the resource.

Undoubtedly, however, it is the opportunities for personalised curation within History of Mass Tourism that bring the advantages of digitalization to the fore. The Search Directories provide a helpful starting point for those overwhelmed with the rich array of material. Particular tourist trends (from educational tourism through wilderness travel to caravanning) can be explored by filtering searches thematically. Items can be further isolated by region, archive, or document type, allowing users to curate their own case studies from the material. Unfortunately, it is not possible to perform hierarchical combinations of search filters. However, the advanced search option allows for greater refinement of criteria and is very intuitive, automatically searching for associative words. The Chronology function invites users to build personal timelines according to their research foci from the digital content. AM's user-friendly interface also facilitates the manipulation of image and film content for PowerPoint presentations or for sharing via social media.

The resource is particularly effective as a visual, interactive learning aid. The Interactive Map makes use of the digital platform to represent the history of mass tourism spatially and is an insightful tool for teaching destination development. The archival content provides insights into the relationship between the tourist industry and issues of class, gender, racial and national politics, augmented by critical essays by Anthony Stanonis (on race relations in early American tourist accounts) and Marguerite S Shaffer (on the growth of national parks like Yosemite and Yellowstone), which engage with the collections. Although it may develop over time, the secondary criticism in the resource does not currently cover British touristic developments in equal measure. The 'External Links' section spotlights further resources including essays, archival holdings and digital projects. However, the inclusion of European Travellers to Wales but exclusion of Benjamin Colbert's Database of Women's Travel Writing points towards some of the idiosyncrasies in its coverage. This would benefit from continual development in conversation with relevant organisations and research groups. Given the resource's potential as a teaching aid, reference might also be made to seminal works on mass tourism by James Buzard, John Vaughan and Lynne Withey among others, in the form of 'Suggestions for Further Reading'.

The majority of documents in the database (88%) take the form of fully searchable published texts. Especially rich are the periodicals relating to the tourist industry in the collection, which include the full run of Cook's Excursionist digitized here for the first time, along with Cook's Holidaymaking and The Globe Trotter. The collection also contains long runs of the American Travellers' Gazette and Camping: The Official Organ of the Amateur Camping Club of Great Britain and Ireland. Importantly, the resource also makes available for the first time several unpublished 'Eyewitness Accounts'. Reverend Shave's unpublished Diary of an Eastern Tour (1903), which was later published in the Cleckheaton Guardian, is also of potential interest to scholars of Victorian periodicals.

The manuscript accounts, which include Jemima Morrell's journal from Thomas Cook's first tour of Switzerland in 1863 and Frances W. Shaw's personal papers surrounding her journey (by cruise ship, train and motor car) from Canada to the Far East in 1933, lend particular insights into the history of women's travel. At the same time, these travellers are critically contextualised as exceptional rather than ordinary women. Elise Charlotte Otté's American 'Grand Tour' (1843) is a case in point: Otté was accompanied by ex-President John Quincy and 'cannon fanfare' on her travels. It is similarly questionable how such eyewitnesses contribute to 'the evolution of European and American working class tourism' that the resource purports to provide, the majority coming from middle-class backgrounds. Given that there is evidently an editorial process at work in the resource's compilation, greater transparency of selection criteria might be expected.

History of Mass Tourism offers a platform for interacting with primary source material that is especially suited for teaching the social history of travel and tourism. Rather than supplanting the embodied experience of the material archive, it acts as what publishing director Martha Fogg calls 'a stepping stone' towards further physical engagement with the archives in its purview. While the nature and scope of secondary material makes it more suited to teachers than researchers, it also provides a useful starting point for scholars interested in developing particular case studies within this history.

AM’s History of Mass Tourism database has been described as a "scrapbook". Containing many scans of original source material, I would agree that this is an apt description. The database does not chronicle the travel of the societal elites; rather, it attempts to chronicle the travels of the working class in the United Kingdom and the United States from the mid-1850s to the 1980s.

The vast time period covered by the database provides an advantage for the researcher. Further, the database is broken down geographically. As such, the researcher can see what vacation destinations were popular among working-class travelers and when. This is a useful tool and also helps to trace the development of technology.

The database focuses on Cook's Tours, one of the world's oldest travel agencies and a frequent conduit that allowed working-class families to explore the world they lived in from the mid-1800s to the 1980s. The database includes primary source material, including the Excursionist magazine, personal accounts from travelers on early Cook's tours, photographs, advertising brochures, and guidebooks.

The primary sources cover sport recreation and wilderness travel; road, rail, and air travel; package tours; the rise in popularity of beach vacations; religious tourism; health and medical travel; international diplomacy; urban tours; planning and business; women and tourism; and children and families on vacation. The database is organized in a manner that makes accessing any of the aforementioned topics easy, so a researcher investigating women and tourism can click on the appropriate tab and access the important information quickly and easily.

Any examination of the period between the mid-1800s and 1980s in the United States and the United Kingdom would be incomplete without carefully examining the societal change that occurred during this period. The database does just that. The database explores the relationship between race and tourism, including the exploitation of native peoples and how they were used to advance a fictional tourist agenda. The database also considers the use of tourism to control international image, particularly by fascist regimes such as the Nazi party. Finally, the database explores the relationship between tourists and the environment in American national parks and efforts to promote conservation and stewardship.

The database is a very useful reference for researchers and students alike. It provides a scrapbook that ensures that the evolution of travel is not forgotten to the ash heap of history as our society continues to grow and advance. This is highly recommended for academic libraries.

Verdict

The History of Mass Tourism is a promising and abundant database that has potential appeal to researchers and browsers alike. Academic libraries, particularly ones that specialize in hospitality management and business, will welcome this addition to their database collections. Public libraries might also find this a worthy offering, though it may not be a high-budget priority.

The documents are beautifully captured in full color and supplied with ample metadata and information about copyright, and the system supports export of records to popular citation-management tools. Users can manipulate items by zooming in and out, viewing thumbnails, and searching within documents. The database also includes My Archive and My Lightbox, options that allow users to save searches and selected documents or create custom scrapbooks or slideshows. Overall, the database is visually appealing, relatively easy to use, and full of interesting documents that will enhance historical study of a broad range of time periods and support research at all levels in various disciplines concerned with popular culture and recreation topics.

Summing Up: Highly recommended. Undergraduates through advanced scholars.