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Britons Abroad: The Experience of Travel, c. 1650-1900

Module description

Travel today is commonplace, familiar to us all, and often routine; but it hasn’t always been so. From the early modern period in Britain, domestic and international travel increased markedly, driven by socio-cultural phenomena such as the Grand Tour, commercial expansion and the Atlantic economy, as well as developments in transport and travel infrastructure. By the twentieth century travel had been ‘democratised’, opening up mass tourism. For the first time in history, large numbers of travellers were beginning to explore the globe, encountering new countries, environments and peoples. But the history of travel isn’t just about journeys and destinations…it encompasses a huge range of historical factors including gender, health, sexuality, race, transport, the body, risk and vulnerability. This module enables you to explore the experience of travel over the course of three centuries. Alongside broader narratives of the development of tourism, transport and material culture, and drawing on a wide variety of source materials, including travel literature, personal narratives, advertising, art and literature, it focusses on the profound changes to individuals of encountering ‘new’ peoples and places, and their experiences of journeys in the past. 

Module aims - intentions of the module

This module has two broad aims: to provide you with an overview of the history of travel in and from Britain from the early modern period to the late nineteenth century; and to introduce you to key concepts and theories relevant to the history of travel. This means you will have the opportunity to explore different themes in travel history on their own terms, while also being equipped to consider how these themes can be linked analytically to gain a deeper understanding of the formation of the modern world. As well as modern debates about mobility and globalisation, for example, travel and mobility were at the heart of debates about quarantine, restrictions, risk and also cultural factors such as blame.

You will learn how to use and interpret a range of primary source materials which may include traveller narratives, letters and diaries, advice literature, medical texts, advertisements, material culture and physical artefacts, wills, insurance records, images and literary culture. These will be used to build up understanding of how people perceived and experienced the preparations for, and processes of, travelling in the past.

Some familiarity with the period (c.1650-1900) will be helpful, but no specialist knowledge of the history of travel is necessary – not least since many of the themes are easily relatable to modern and personal experiences. The co-requisite Sources module will introduce you to the diverse range of sources we can use to examine this topic.

By engaging with this rich empirical and theoretical subject, you will develop sophisticated research, analytical, interpretative and communication skills that can be applied in further academic studies or in graduate careers.

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. Identify the complex range of sources and methods used for studying the history of travel.
• 2. Analyse sources in terms of their relevance to the history of travel and British travellers.
• 3. Evaluate evidence relating to key debates about the history of travel from the early modern period to the early twentieth century.

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 4. Critically analyse sources in terms of their relevance to the history of travel
• 5. Comprehend and interpret complex texts in historical perspective
• 6. Understand and deploy relevant historical terminology in a comprehensible and sophisticated manner

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 7. Undertake independent and autonomous study and group work, including presentation of material for group discussion, developed through the mode of learning
• 8. Digest, select and organise material to produce, to a deadline, a coherent and cogent argument, developed through the mode of assessment

Syllabus plan

Whilst the content may vary from year to year, it is envisioned that it will cover some or all of the following topics:

• Destinations and resorts
• Types of travel/traveller 
• Gender and travel
• The history of travel advice
• Tourism and the democratisation of travel
• Risk, danger and preparation
• The travelling body 
• Advertising and the Material culture of travel 
• Disease and Quarantine 
• Motion sickness and travel maladies 
• Concepts of ‘British’, ‘home’ and ‘foreign’ 
• Race and blame
• Climate, weather and conditions 
• Food and water 
• Railways and the ‘modern’
• Exploration and popular culture

Some of you may already have studied (or be familiar with) some aspects of the history of travel; others will not. The introductory sessions will therefore be important in offering a broad overview within which framework everyone can place their subsequent work. The co-requisite module will also provide a close focus on the historical sources available for study. You will be expected to prepare for seminars by reading and evaluating the respective sources in advance, and will discuss the issues raised by them in the seminars.

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Re-assessment notes

Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment.

Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 40%) you will be required to submit a further assessment as necessary. If you are successful on referral, your overall module mark will be capped at 40%.

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

• Tom Taylor, Modern Travel in World History (London: Routledge, 2022)
• Antoni Maczak, Travel in Early Modern Europe (Oxford: Polity, 1995)
• Tim Youngs, The Cambridge Introduction to Travel Writing (Cambridge: CUP, 2013)
• Suman Seth, Difference and Disease: Medicine, Race and the Eighteenth-Century British Empire (Cambridge: CUP, 2018)
• Sarah Goldsmith, Masculinity and Danger on the Eighteenth-Century Grand Tour (London: Royal Historical Society, 2020)
• Pratik Chakrabarti, Medicine and Empire, 1600-1960 (London: Palgrave, 2014)
• Richard Wrigley and George Revill (eds.), Pathologies of Travel (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000)
• Jessica Howell, Exploring Victorian Travel: Disease, Race and Climate (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014)
•  Eva Johanna Holmberg ‘Introduction: Renaissance and early modern travel – practice and experience, 1500-1700’, Renaissance Studies, 33:4 (2019)
• Daniel Carey, Gabor Gelleri and Anders Ingram, Anders, ‘The Art of Travel, 1500-1850’, Viatica, 7 (2020), 1-17.
• Alun Withey and Gabor Gelleri, ‘The Art of Travelling in Good Health and Addressing the Risks of Mobility in Early Modern Europe’. Viatica, 10 (2023), 1-20
• Harmut Berghoff, Barbara Korte et al, The Making of Modern Tourism: The Cultural History of the British Experience, 1600-2000 (London: Palgrave, 2002)
• Lucy Lethbridge: Tourists: How the British Went Abroad to Find Themselves (London: Bloomsbury, 2022)

Indicative learning resources - Other resources

• The ‘art of travel’ database - https://artoftravel.nuigalway.ie/
• Social Bodies – socialbodies.bham.ac.uk
• Leisure, Travel and Mass Culture (available through Library databases) - https://www-masstourism-amdigital-co-uk.uoelibrary.idm.oclc.org
• Grand Tour (available through Library databases)
• Gender, Spectacle and World History (available through Library Databases)
• Early English Books Online (EEBO)
• Eighteenth Century Collections Online
• British Library Newspapers Databases

Key words search

Travel, grand tour, tourism, cultural history