How does tourism transform fishing communities into vibrant resorts, working shores into bathing beaches? In A Shifting Shore, Alice Garner traces the ways fisherfolk, bathers, investors, and engineers understood, claimed, and remade the shores of the Bassin d'Arcachon, a prime fishing and oyster-farming site in southwestern France, over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Garner's interest in the coastline—a zone that resists all attempts at definition—shapes this generously illustrated book. Rather than taking a straightforward chronological approach to the settlement and evolution of the towns of Arcachon and La Teste, Garner investigates the development of the Bassin d'Arcachon's southern shores with the aim of recovering something of the "lived space" experienced by locals and visitors. Drawing on guidebooks, newspapers, bylaws, engineers' reports, medical pamphlets, postcards, and the accounts of literary-minded holidaymakers, Garner shows how investors and developers transformed Arcachon and its community—beaches were rezoned and jetties constructed to favor bathers, and a new railway line brought ever-increasing numbers of visitors to the area. She explores how fishermen and women resisted developments that threatened their livelihood or their particular sense of belonging, and shows how they adapted to the changing environment and to their new roles as guides and entertainers. A Shifting Shore, while anchored in Arcachon and La Teste, has much to contribute to a nuanced understanding of relations between hosts and guests in any community.

This edited collection explores the pivotal role of the hotel industry in building Western Europe’s tourism economy during the 20th century. The book brings together ten contributions focused on the same period, 1900-1970, to offer comparative perspectives from across the region including Italy, Switzerland, France, Spain and Britain. Drawing on historical case studies, chapters illuminate the different factors linking hotels and the broader tourism system including interventions of the public authorities and the State, the importance of private involvement, commercial strategies, the medium-term development of private hotels, hotel entrepreneurship, and the impact of economic crises and wars. By placing differing national approaches taken to the growth of the hotel industry in comparison, the book aims to fill a gap in the historiography of European hospitality and shed light on the wider impact of hotels and tourism on economic development at both a national and regional level. It will be of interest to a range of scholars, including in economic and business history, tourism studies, the history of tourism management, and social history.

During the 20th century, a variety of social movements and civil society groups stepped into the arena of international politics. This volume collects innovative research on international solidarity movements in Belgium and the Netherlands, and places these movements prominently in debates about the history of globalization, transnational activism, and international politics.

In June 1792, amidst the chaos of the French Revolution, two intrepid astronomers set out in opposite directions on an extraordinary journey. Starting in Paris, Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Delambre would make his way north to Dunkirk, while Pierre-François-André Méchain voyaged south to Barcelona. Their mission was to measure the world, and their findings would help define the meter as one ten-millionth of the distance between the pole and the equator—a standard that would be used “for all people, for all time.” The Measure of All Things is the astonishing tale of one of history’s greatest scientific adventures. Yet behind the public triumph of the metric system lies a secret error, one that is perpetuated in every subsequent definition of the meter. As acclaimed historian and novelist Ken Alder discovered through his research, there were only two people on the planet who knew the full extent of this error: Delambre and Méchain themselves. By turns a science history, detective tale, and human drama, The Measure of All Things describes a quest that succeeded as it failed—and continues to enlighten and inspire to this day.