Alpine agency: locals, mountaineers and tourism in the eastern Alps, c. 1860-1914

Anderson, Ben

doi:10.1017/S0956793315000163

Alpine agency: locals, mountaineers and tourism in the eastern Alps, c. 1860-1914

Anderson, Ben

Authors

Benjamin Anderson b.anderson@keele.ac.uk

Abstract

Like other forms of tourism, the activities of Alpine visitors in the late nineteenth century have normally been understood as created by the tourists themselves. In the narratives of both contemporaries and subsequent historians, local people tend to be marginalised, at best responding to the new demands of the emerging industry. This article focusses on relations between locals and mountaineers in the Eastern Alps to demonstrate that far from being passive recipients of tourist culture, local people were instrumental in defining the forms that tourism took. They were the early pioneers of infrastructure construction, lobbied to bring urban investment to the Alps, challenged urban Alpine organisations over intervention in the landscape, and engaged in collective bargaining to secure better pay and conditions. These roles helped to define tourism in the region, but also contributed to definitions of Alpine people amongst mountaineers that increasingly relied on race and biology.

Acceptance Date	Jul 10, 2015
Publication Date	Mar 3, 2016
Journal	Rural History: economy, society, culture
Print ISSN	0956-7933
Publisher	Cambridge University Press
Pages	61-78
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1017/S0956793315000163
Publisher URL	http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0956793315000163