Romanticism, Modernity, and the Evolution of Tourism on the Niagara Frontier, 1790–1850

Abstract

LINKING THE WORD 'ROMANTIC' with Niagara may bring to mind images of heart-shaped jacuzzis and other staples of the honeymoon motel suite. Romanticism in its much broader definition, however, is the subject of this article. By examining the birth of mass-sightseeing at Niagara during the early nineteenth century, I hope to show that the romantic movement, which still influences us greatly in the 'postromantic' age, supplied the cultural foundation for what scholars now recognize as the quintessentially modern industry of tourism. A basic assumption of this study is that tourism, like any other consumer industry, evolved through a continuous interaction between economic and cultural imperatives, and that the latter is no less significant han the former to our understanding how such industries work. Romanticism is not an easy word to define, and attention has focused far more on its literary and artistic manifestations than on its broad and lasting impact on modern society as a whole. Here, romanticism refers to the tendency, widespread among members of the middle and upper classes by the end of the eighteenth century, to value feeling, imagination, or 'sensibility' far more than before, and, especially, to extend or transfer feelings formerly associated with religious experience to the secular ealm. • The movement ook somewhat different forms in different Western nations, but in Britain and North America its diverse characteristics include a love of natural

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