This collection of essays develops the historical dimension to tourism studies through thematic case studies. The editor's introduction argues for the importance of a closer relationship between history and tourism studies, and an international team of contributors explores the relationships between tourism, representations, environments and identities in settings ranging from the global to the local, from the Roman Empire to the twentieth century, and from Frinton to the 'Far East'.

During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the tourism industry of Bavaria consistently promoted an image of 'grounded modernity'. This romanticized version of the present reconciled continuity with change, tradition with progress, and nature with science. In an era of rapid and unprecedented change, simultaneously nostalgic and progressive grounded modernity produced an illusion of continuity. It helped make the experience of modernity more tangible by linking impersonal and abstract ideas, like national identity, with familiar experiences and concrete sights. Bavarian Tourism and the Modern World, 1800–1950 examines the connections between Bavarian tourism and the turbulent experience of German modernity during this period. It gauges Germany's long and often unsettling journey to modernity using Bavarian tourism and travel as a lens. Closely examining guidebooks, brochures, postcards and other tourist propaganda, Adam Rosenbaum argues that by pointing visitors to the past, tourism illuminated the present, and produced signposts to the future.

In the decades leading up to World War I, nationalist activists in imperial Austria labored to transform linguistically mixed rural regions into politically charged language frontiers. Using examples from several regions, including Bohemia and Styria, Judson traces the struggle to consolidate the loyalty of local populations for nationalist causes.

This book provides a systematic, country-by-country analysis of tourism policy, planning and organisation in the EU. It applies a conceptual framework to offer a new critical approach to comparative policy analysis in tourism in the EU.

Challenging Ideas is a selection of articles which address the intersections between theory and empirical research. In general, the contributions to the volume focus on how imaginations of the temporal relationship between past and present might inform theory as well as empirical research. It is divided into two parts, the first of which, Memory, looks at the memory turn in the discipline of history, and includes investigations into the relationship between past and present in the working through of trauma and reflections on the relationship between media memory, collective memory and trauma. The second part of the volume, History looks at the intersections between social science, political theory and the writing of history. This section includes reflections on how the historian’s archival work might inform the construction of social and political theory and explorations of the temporal relationship between past and present at work in the archives. The contributions to this volume encourage historically oriented scholars to approach their work with an active interest in disciplines close to their topic and a reflexive attentiveness to the broader power relations within which they work. They offer different perspectives on the intrinsic relationship between past and present at work in the interactions between theory and empirical research, and thereby give impetus to challenging ideas and to the challenging of ideas in the social sciences and in the humanities.