The humor of circumstance

Travel was revolutionized in the early nineteenth century as innovation in steam made it faster, easier, and cheaper. In the subsequent years, as the means of transportation changed, the demographics of both national and international travel transformed alongside it. Foreign travel, which had previously been a privilege restricted to the aristocracy through the august tradition of the Grand Tour, was suddenly appropriated by a new, burgeoning middle class in the nineteenth century. ¹ This chapter will explore the changes in the experience of foreign travel that arose out of this shift in class dynamics in the nineteenth century, and will expand the discussion of this phenomenon by examining how this transformation was reflected in contemporary visual culture through caricature. Participation in the aristocratic Grand Tour of the eighteenth century, and the emerging international mass tourism of the nineteenth century were both largely a British phenomenon. Therefore, this examination will specifically focus upon the experience of the British foreign tourist travels on the European Continent.