The Western Front: Landscape, Tourism and Heritage

by Stephen Miles, Nicholas J. Saunders (Editor)

Overview

The Western Front has become, once again, and after 100 years, an important and increasingly popular tourist destination. The Centenary is already encouraging large numbers of visitors to engage with this highly poignant landscape of war and to commemorate the sacrifice and loss of a previous generation. Interest is also being sharpened in the ‘places of war’ as battle-sites, trench-systems, bunkers and mine craters gain a clearer identity as war heritage.

For the first time this book brings together the three strands of heritage, landscape and tourism to provide a fresh understanding of the multilayered nature of the Western Front. The book approaches the area as a rich dynamic landscape which can be viewed in a startling variety of ways: historically, materially, culturally, and perceptually. To illustrate these two dominant interpretations of the region’s landscape – commemorative and heritage – are highlighted and their relationship to tourism explored. Tourism is a lens through which these layers can be peeled away, and each understood and interacted with according to the individual’s own knowledge, motivation, and degree of emotional engagement. Tourism is not regarded here as a passive phenomenon, but as an active agent that can determine, dictate and inscribe this evocative landscape.

The Western Front: Heritage, Landscape and Tourism is a timely addition to our increasing interest in the First World War and the places where it was fought. It will be indispensable to those who seek a deeper understanding of the conflict from previously undervalued perspectives.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781473833760
Publisher:	Pen and Sword
Publication date:	03/17/2017
Series:	Modern Conflict Archaeology
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.30(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Stephen Miles is an Affiliate Research Fellow at the University of Glasgow’s Crichton Campus in Dumfries. He studied at the universities of Durham and Sheffield before undertaking a PhD at the University of Glasgow which he completed in 2012. He has previously written on ‘dark’ tourism and sense of place at conflict sites.7720

Nicholas J. Saunders was educated at the universities of Sheffield, Cambridge, and Southampton. He has held teaching and research positions at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the University of the West Indies, Dumbarton Oaks, Washington D.C., and at University College London, where he was Reader in Material Culture and undertook a major British Academy sponsored investigation into the material culture anthropology of the First World War. As of 2014 Saunders is Professor in the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Bristol,5515

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements vi

Abbreviations vii

Modern Conflict Archaeology viii

About this Book xii

Prologue: The Menin Gate, Ypres - 17 March 2015 xiv

Introduction xix

Chapter 1 The Origins and Nature of the Western Front 1

Chapter 2 Tourism Begins on the Western Front 13

Chapter 3 Tourism and Tourists on the Western Front 27

Chapter 4 A Commemorative Landscape 46

Chapter 5 A Heritage Landscape 64

Chapter 6 Museums and Interpretation 85

Chapter 7 The Rights and Wrongs of Battlefield Tourism 103

Chapter 8 Visitor experiences 120

Chapter 9 The Western Front Beyond the Centenary 131

Appendices 144

Appendix 1 Opening Dates for Museums and Café-Museums Along the Western Front 144

Appendix 2 Visitor Numbers at 10 Selected World War One Sites in the Westhoek (Belgium), 2013-2014 145

Appendix 3 The Western Front - Push and Pull Factors 146

Appendix 4 Types of Representative Pilgrimage 147

Appendix 5 Survey of Western Front Coach Tour Operators (2014) 148

Appendix 6 The Tangible Heritage of the Western Front 149

Appendix 7 Types of Museum Collections on the Western Front 150

Notes 152

Bibliography 172

Index 183

Editorial Reviews

"Useful for pre-tour research, the author has put a significant amount of work in to collating the information within."

Guild of Battlefield Guides