Selling the Sights: The Invention of the Tourist in American Culture by Will B. Mackintosh (review)

At its center, Selling the Sights by Will Mackintosh is a book about origins—the origins of the concept of “the tourist” in American culture, the origins of a tourist industry designed to sell pleasurable experiences to a market of leisure travelers, and the origins of the dichotomy between “authentic” travelers and “superficial” tourists that continues to shape discussions of tourism even today. Mackintosh situates his analysis firmly in “the historically specific social, cultural, and economic conditions of the first half of the nineteenth century,” building a convincing case for it being the key formative period for American tourism (p. 13). Ably balancing textual analysis of archival sources with theoretical frameworks from the history of capitalism and cultural studies, he offers a comprehensive examination of how culture shaped the development of tourism, and what tourism can tell us about the culture of the era.

The book is divided thematically. In the first three chapters, it traces how tourism became a distinct subset of travel, forged in the transportation and market revolutions of the early nineteenth century. Drawing on sources that include accounts written by travelers, as well as guidebooks, periodicals, and other literature produced for tourists, Mackintosh argues that leisure travel became increasingly commodified—an experience that “could be bought and sold in the marketplace,” defined by a “set of cultural parameters within which individual tourists could situate themselves” (pp. 16–18). Guidebooks instructed tourists how to travel; transportation networks of stagecoaches, canals, and, ultimately, railroads offered standard ticketed itineraries; and entrepreneurs began promoting a plethora of attractions and destinations. Each chapter details how these developments occurred by looking at the interaction of culture, economics, and technology. The first guidebooks, for example, evolved from enlightenment-era geography texts and print campaigns designed by boosters to draw settlers and investment to their local areas. Mackintosh surveys major changes in the genre, from early efforts like Gideon Davison’s The Fashionable Tour; Or, A Trip to the Springs, Niagara, Quebeck, and Boston, in the Summer of 1821 (the first American guidebook clearly aimed at leisure travel) to the mass-produced texts of Appleton & Company in the 1850s, which offered general advice and a selection of different tours. Aimed at a national market, the Appleton guides reflect transformations in the publishing industry, as well as a growing demand from elite and middle-class consumers interested in tourist travel.

By the 1850s, the “tourist” had become a distinct and recognizable figure in American culture. The second half of Selling the Sights focuses in to consider “the meanings nineteenth-century Americans made” about this type of travel more fully (p. 16). Traveling to fashionable sites signaled a level of social status and cultural awareness among the American bourgeoisie. Being seen was as much a part of tourism as seeing the sights. However, the innovations in print culture and transportation that shaped tourism also led to standardization. While many enjoyed the greater accessibility and ease this brought to travel, others began to question whether tourist experiences had any real value. Chapter four analyzes satiric portrayals of tourists in literature from Washington Irving to Mark Twain. These texts have little in common save for their universally negative portrayal of tourists as “ambitious yet ignorant purveyors of tired cliches” (p. 149). At the same time, a prescriptive literature advising tourists how to be “useful” travelers also developed. The key was to produce something: scientific knowledge, astute observations, or personal improvement. Mackintosh argues this ambivalence reflected a broader suspicion nineteenth-century Americans held about luxury and the consumer culture that increasingly structured their world.

The critiques and ambivalence about tourism that Mackintosh finds in the early nineteenth century still circulate in the present day and are an issue that every scholar of tourism has to contend with. By tracing the origin of this tourism/travel dichotomy back to the beginning of the American tourist industry itself, and...