Steamboats down the Danube: British Travel Writers in Southeastern Europe in the Late-Nineteenth Century

• In Event: Traveling down the Danube: Knowledge, Networks, and Infrastructure in the Late-eighteenth and the Nineteenth Centuries

Abstract

This paper explores the role and meaning of the Danube for British travelers to southeastern Europe in the late-19th century. Studies on travel writing to the region in this period have tended to focus on the encounters travelers made during their vast explorations on land. The Danube, however, came to occupy an important place for reflecting the hopes and concerns of moneyed visitors to the region. Suspended on slow-moving water, travelers considered the ‘hotch-potch of races’, the advancement of new technology, and the meaning of all of this for their home in Britain and elsewhere. An in-between space in its own right, the Danube hosted furious paced meetings between travelers and ‘locals’ and offered a pause for thought for meditations on modernity more broadly. The river also became a crucial part of a network of traveling experts on southeastern Europe. Traveling down the Danube on a steamboat thus became a rite of passage for self-appointed experts of the region. Wherever else travelers would go, musings on the Danube between Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade and Baziaș formed part of the preparation for their journeys and experiences in southeastern Europe.

Author

• James Koranyi, U of Durham (UK)