Through a series of case studies that involve past conflict in China, the United States, The South Pacific and Europe, the nature of battlefield sites as tourist locations are explored. As places of past conflict and individual acts of heroism, these sites are places of story telling. How are these stories told? And for what purposes are the stories told? The acts and modes of interpretation are many, ranging from a discourse conducted through silences to the more complex nuanced story telling told through re-enactments of past battles. The book also asks where is the battle-field? - as case studies relate to conflicts that ranged over several hundreds of miles, to, on the other hand, acts of local civil disturbance that subsequently achieved mythic values in a history of national identity. The book is divided into 'acts', these being 'Acts of Resource Management', 'Acts of Silence', 'Acts of Discovery and Rediscovery', 'Acts of Imagination' and 'Acts of Remembrance' and embrace examples as diverse as an re-enactment of past battles on a New Zealand rural town cricket pitch to the towering strength of the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown, and from the Straits of Taiwan to the centre of Canada.

Introducing real-world case studies from across the globe, Battlefield Tourism contributes to the growing fields of dark tourism, destination and risk management, and tourism security.

The Darker Side of Travel is a contemporary and comprehensive analysis of dark tourism. Drawing on existing literature, numerous examples and introducing new conceptual perspectives, it develops a theoretically informed foundation for examining the demand for and supply of dark tourism experiences. It also explores issues relevant to the development, management and interpretation of visitor sites and attractions associated with death, disaster and suffering.

Military Pilgrimage and Battlefield Tourism is the first volume to bring together a detailed analysis of professional military pilgrimage with other forms of commemorating military conflict. The volume looks beyond the discussion of battlefield tourism undertaken primarily by civilians which has dominated research until now through an analysis of the relationship between religious, military and civilian participants. Drawing on a comparative approach towards what has mostly been categorised as secular pilgrimage, dark tourism/thanatourism, military and religious tourism, and re-enactment, the contributors explore the varied ways in which memory, material culture and rituals are performed at particular places. The volume also engages with the debate about the extent to which western definitions of pilgrimage and tourism, as well as such related terms as religion, sacred and secular, can be applied in non-western contexts.

This ground-breaking book looks at the rise of the tourism industry around the battlefields, cemeteries and memorials of the First World War.

Through a series of case studies that involve past conflict in China, the United States, The South Pacific and Europe, the nature of battlefield sites as tourist locations are explored. As places of past conflict and individual acts of heroism, these sites are places of story telling. How are these stories told? And for what purposes are the stories told? The acts and modes of interpretation are many, ranging from a discourse conducted through silences to the more complex nuanced story telling told through re-enactments of past battles. The book also asks where is the battle-field? - as case studies relate to conflicts that ranged over several hundreds of miles, to, on the other hand, acts of local civil disturbance that subsequently achieved mythic values in a history of national identity. The book is divided into 'acts', these being 'Acts of Resource Management', 'Acts of Silence', 'Acts of Discovery and Rediscovery', 'Acts of Imagination' and 'Acts of Remembrance' and embrace examples as diverse as an re-enactment of past battles on a New Zealand rural town cricket pitch to the towering strength of the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown, and from the Straits of Taiwan to the centre of Canada.

In the aftermath of the Great War, a wave of tourists and pilgrims visited the battlefields, cemeteries and memorials of the war. The cultural history of this 'battlefield tourism' is chronicled in this absorbing and original book, which shows how the phenomenon served to construct memory in Britain, as well as in Australia and Canada. The author demonstrates that high and low culture, tradition and modernism, the sacred and the profane were often inter-related, rather than polar opposites. The various responses to the actual and imagined landscapes of battlefields are discussed, as well as bereavement and how this was shaped by gender, religion and the military experience. Individual memory and experience combined with nationalism and 'imperial' identity as powerful forces informing the pilgrim experience.But this book not only analyzes travel to battlefields, which unsurprisingly paralleled the growth of the modern tourist industry; it also looks closely at the transformation of national war memorials into pilgrimage sites, and shows how responses both to battlefields and memorials, which continue to serve as potent symbols, evolved in the years after the Great War.