Transcript:
Welcome to Navigating the Grand Tour. This is an introduction. Throughout our trip, I'll be sharing these short recorded lectures or walking notes. The transcripts will also be available with references for you to use if you'd like in your projects. As you know, our program, Navigating the Grand Tour, follows the traditional Grand Tour itinerary as both a real and ideal itinerary of cosmopolitan education.
We explore the narratives and counter narratives of travel to Europe and how travel contributes to a global society. The official Grand Tour narrative describes the Grand Tourist as white, male, a member of the aristocracy with the purpose of traveling to be education about the birthplace of civilization, which is Rome. All roads lead to Rome.
The traditional official Grand Tour lasted from the 16th through to the 18th century. Kind of the 18th century when revolutions and national politics shut down travel for some time. So that's about 200 years of people wandering around Europe following pathways that had already seen centuries of pilgrims.
So to give an idea of what's going on in England, I'm going to walk through a little bit of a timeline for you. So in the 1600s, that's the 17th century. I've always had a problem with the difference between the hundreds and the century, which was and is hard for somebody who teaches history and has a degree in art history.
It's always been in trouble. So the 1600s are the 17th century. This was the age of the Stewarts. It was also the beginning of the East India Company. England had a civil war, which led to the rise of parliamentary power. Then they had the restoration of the crown, but there was ongoing fights between Catholic and Protestant citizens.
The 17th century, was also considered the age of reason. It was the beginning of the British society, scientific salons, exploration around the world, and we saw the beginning of what we think of now as the modern university. The classic university actually began back in the 12th century, 1160 give or take. Some would say arguably at the University of Bologna, where we're going to visit in the second half of our trip.
In the 18th century, the 1700s, this time in England, was considered the Georgian England. And at the end of the 18th century, they called it the Regency period. Most of the historical fiction that we see on movies and television and so forth were based in the Regency period.
King George, number one, number two, number three, and number four, had the crown during the Georgian England period. During this period, the 18th century, England colonized Ireland. And merged with Scotland, so it became Great Britain, the British Empire. It's important to remember that Ireland was in many ways colonized, it wasn't always part of Great Britain, and that Catholic Ireland was subsumed by Protestant Scottish and British landowners.
In 1753, the British Museum was opened. 1768, the Encyclopædia Britannica was started. So there's a bubbling up throughout the 18th century of cosmopolitan universalism, and at the same time, nationalism. It's important to recognize that nationalism, loyalty to a state, and that state having A desire to keep itself alive and growing is what leads to empire building and the global exploitation of other parts of the world.
At the same time that that was happening, the empire building, there was also a revolution of ideas around cosmopolitan universalism. Which led to the idea and the belief that all people should be free. So the 18th century is really a conundrum. You have both the enslaving of parts of the world and at the same time the liberating of ideas and we see that tension when we go to the British Museum.
The 1800s in England, this is the 19th century, is the Victorian era. In the 1800s, slave trade is abolished in all of the British colonial possessions However, slave trade is not abolished in the U. S. or the French. Slavery itself is abolished in all of Britain's dominions by 1833. Again, that didn't affect the other colonies and the other countries.
The other important thing about the 19th century, the 1800s, is the rise of train travel. And this means that everybody can basically travel. And so this is a kind of a second wave of the Grand Tour. The first wave, the, the O. G. Grand Tour would have ended around the time of the American and French Revolution.
But the second wave, the Romantic Victorian Grand Tour, that we associate with some of the people, sheets sorry, Keats and Shelley and some of the other writers and artists that we're going to talk about this is where we get into the 19th century. Colonization of Africa and India. started replacing slavery, where actually owning parts of Africa and India as colonies became more profitable than exporting the residents of those spaces.
So we'll hear more about that as we go. And the 19th century is the era of science. There's the establishment of more universities, including the University College of London, which we will either visit in the future or we've already visited it. So, the next thing to think about is that if all of these people are going on the Grand Tour and going to Rome, who didn't go?
In the early days, again, if we back up and look at the, the original official Grand Tour, the aristocracy was running around visiting their cousins, and they would travel for years and years. Lassells, who you read about in your pre work, with the rise of Enlightenment philosophy, a growing desire to study the past and demonstrate intellect as well as culture and politics, saw a shift in travel for family building, as the aristocracy may have been doing, to travel as education and as a sign of status and cultural cosmopolitanism. So the first sons of the wealthy. would go on a grand tour. The second sons would go to college. So where is college? What's happening with college these days? For perspective, think of colonial America about the time of the revolution, American Revolution. There were a few colleges in each region of the colonies, and their charters, their ability to award degrees, was given by the King of England.
So when you think of places like Harvard University or King's College, which became Columbia University that's what higher education looked like in the States. Things weren't much different in England and other parts of Europe, except that universities were larger, had fancier buildings, had a slightly wider scope of subjects having a more, having more money and students. And during the 18th and early 19th century, these institutions started to grow as the Industrial Revolution and the economic boom of imperialism meant more and more families had the money to send their second sons away to study.
What they were generally doing, however, was hanging out in coffee houses and socializing with each other. For most students, college was a social club rather than an intellectual hub. And when your brother or your cousin's friend invited you to go travel Students regularly left university and wandered away to see the site. A university degree wasn't very important at the time, and getting a chance to travel was seen as , a way to rise in social standing. And it was fun.
At the same time, in the 18th and early 19th century, the world saw waves of revolution and power struggles, as nations emerged from regions formerly controlled by aristocratic powers. We see an ongoing struggle between universalism, the idea of individual rights and freedoms, and nationalism, the importance of the state to protect its people.
Where are our travelers in all this? Still traveling. They would just avoid the war and continue to go see and be seen, creating social ties, learning new languages, studying new ideas, architecture, design, science, and again, having fun.
The recent TV series, Franklin, about Benjamin Franklin traveling as an unauthorized diplomat in France gives a glimpse of what it might have been like as an American to do this traveling. But the reason that Ben Franklin could travel and hang out with the French elites was because it was common for people with his standing to do that. You got an introduction from one part of your social network to another, and then you go visit them. And make more acquaintances and maybe set up some business dealings or trade ideas for new inventions. Or in Ben Franklin's case, go into arms trading to try to support the American Revolution.
So in the mid to 19th century, higher education grew up and became more formal, more intellectually diverse, and more important to students wanting to break into new and old professions. The Industrial Revolution and imperialism, building global trade networks based on enslaved labor and exploitation of natural resources, meant that there was more money. And importantly, there was also curiosity. There was an explosion of disciplinary conversations in the sciences, early forms of the social sciences, modern forms of humanities, and new aesthetics in the fine arts.
These new ideas were explored in new and reformed universities, as well as in private salons, societies, and institutes. And this was the beginning of the museum.
That's it. Next stop, Bloomsbury.
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