A ‘Vice Among Tourists’? Trans-national Narratives of the Irish Landscape, 1886–1914 - Tourism and Visual Culture: Theories and Concepts - page 69

advocates believed that infrastructural improve-
ment would provide the necessary foundation
for Ireland's prosperity - a widespread view in
the 1890s, exemplifi ed by the establishment of
voluntary bodies such as the ITA and state-
sponsored bodies such as the Congested Dis-
tricts Board, which were active during the heady
era of 'constructive unionism'.

qualifying Irish landscapes in ways that invited
the prospective touring audience to visualize a
great German river and breathtaking Norwe-
gian fjords on the Emerald Isle, the sector's pro-
ponents planned to confer on Ireland the elusive
mark of fashion. But in the promotion of spe-
cifi c destination-images, and in their discussions
on the direction of tourist development, leaders
of bodies such as the ITA gave expression to a
wider ideology of political, economic and cul-
tural development. Through an improved infra-
structure and carefully-stewarded, systematic
'improvement' aimed at appealing to the British
tourist market, they plotted the path to wider
Irish modernization, through which she would
claim her place among continental rivals, which
were at one and at the same time her 'friends'
and 'enemies'.

Conclusion

Images of the Irish Rhine, 'Norway in Ireland'
and Switzerland were incorporated within wider
debates over Ireland's political status, with
D.J. Wilson writing in the Irish Tourist in 1897
(4 [August 1897], p. 91) that the forthcoming
visit of the Duke and Duchess of York might con-
fer on the country that which she most starkly
lacked in comparison with Scotland and Swit-
zerland - neither improved hotels, nor scenery,
but the mark of 'fashion'. This became a clarion
call for a variety of tourist-development initia-
tives that aimed to insert Ireland within the tour-
ist imagination, draw British tourists to Ireland's
shores, and tap a lucrative domestic market. By

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank the Social Sciences
and Humanities Research Council of Canada
for supporting this research programme.

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