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30 - Negotiating National Identity through Tourism in Colonial South Asia and Beyond

from Part III - Intersections: National(ist) Synergies and Tensions with Other Social, Economic, Political, and Cultural Categories, Identities, and Practices

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2023

By
Eric G. E. Zuelow
Edited by
Cathie Carmichael ,
Matthew D'Auria  and
Aviel Roshwald
Cathie Carmichael
Affiliation:
University of East Anglia
Matthew D'Auria
Affiliation:
University of East Anglia
Aviel Roshwald
Affiliation:
Georgetown University, Washington DC
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Summary

While most critics focus their attentions elsewhere, A Passage to India is at least partly a book about tourism and about the sort of interactions that regularly take place between myriad groups as a consequence of this pastime. There is quite a lot of evidence for reading the novel in this way. The first two of the three sections in the book begin with short chapters written loosely in the form of a guidebook introducing geography, geology, history, and cultural differences. Mrs. Moore and Adela Quested are ultimately tourists anxious “about seeing the real India.”1 Their arrival in Chandrapore spawns relationships and drama around which the plot revolves, including a pivotal crisis experienced during an ill-fated excursion to see the Marabar Caves. The book ends with the contrast of religious festival and touristic gaze as the English characters, along with Muslim protagonist Dr. Aziz, watch a festival related to Lord Krishna.

Keywords

TourismTravelIndiaColonialismPostcolonialNational IdentityGuidebooks
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of Nationhood and Nationalism , pp. 640 - 660
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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References

Further Reading

Baranowski, Shelley, Strength through Joy: Consumerism and Mass Tourism in the Third Reich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).Google Scholar
Baranowski, Shelley, and Furlough, Ellen (eds.), Being Elsewhere: Tourism, Consumer Culture, and Identity in Modern Europe and North America (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gold, J. R., and Gold, M. M., Imagining Scotland: Tradition, Representation, and Promotion in Scottish Tourism since 1750 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1995).Google Scholar
Grenier, K. H., Tourism and Identity in Scotland, 1770–1914 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005).Google Scholar
Koshar, Rudy, “‘What Ought to Be Seen’: Tourists’ Guidebooks and National Identities in Modern Germany and Europe,” Journal of Contemporary History, 33 (1998), 323–340.Google Scholar
Readman, Paul, Storied Ground: Landscape and the Shaping of English National Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rice, Mark, Making Machu Picchu: The Politics of Tourism in Twentieth-Century Peru (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shaffer, M. S., See America First: Tourism and National Identity, 1880–1940 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001).Google Scholar
Storm, Eric, “Overcoming Methodological Nationalism in Nationalism Studies: The Impact of Tourism on the Construction and Diffusion of National and Regional Identities,” History Compass, 12 (2014), 361–373.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zuelow, E. G. E., Making Ireland Irish: Tourism and National Identity since the Irish Civil War (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2009).Google Scholar

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