The Western Front: landscape, tourism and heritage (original) (raw)
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An Explorative Note on Tourism Development along Former War Front Lines
Current research about the pro-active role of tourism in valorizing war memories and landscapes still is in an explorative stage; learning from case studies, all marked by their political context, in time and space, and mainly describing local and/or regional key issues. Obviously, creating landscapes of memories for contemporary uses and visitors' experiences implies a trans-disciplinary understanding of the process of changing values (heritage landscapes) and of the intrinsic dynamics of tourism development. Shifting values and creativity in linking histories of war sites and their narratives with places and people today, leads to branding 'sites of memories' in the mindset of residents and visitors. We briefly scan four very different examples of border areas with a war history, that became landmarks on the tourist' maps today. The challenge for tourism development in former war related sites is to identify the dynamics -in time and space -to assess the political and economic forces and to identify shifts in the process of remembrance and valorization of war heritage sites, in terms of interests in war memories, narratives and experiences. These are now strategically integrated in national, regional and local tourism development planning. Historical military front zones, political borders in past wars, presently marked as tourism destinations, are on the research agenda of 'War and Tourism'. The observations below on four different former war border zones with their specific landmarks and memoryscapes, are inspiring for current tourism development. Four different war border zones were briefly explored "The Great Wall in China", "The Roman Limes", The "Wire of Death" in the First World War and the "Iron Curtain" in the Cold War. These observations can inspire future research on tourismification of war heritage.
Research on the process of tourismification of former war sites and landscapes is by definition interdisciplinary. The challenge is to introduce new concepts to link past and present, heritage sites and memorial events, in time and place, to critically reflect on the content and trendy use of vaguely defined “scape” concepts in relation to heritage. The need to anchor heritagescapes in time and space, explains the association with geographical terminology and spatial references at different scales. The question arises on how to identify the vectors of change induced by tourism to historical war sites. The added value of an international online survey completed by the World Heritage Tourism Research Network[1] (WHTRN) in 2012 results from both the conceptual and interdisciplinary approach, questioning the interdependency of cultural, social, economic and political processes within the context of war memoryscapes, and the empirical data resulting from this multilingual survey. New tourism landscapes emerge in which the interests of national and regional governments, local and global stakeholders play an important role. Geographically balanced and comparative research is required to better understand the complex relationship of the 21st-century nations and people with the tangible and intangible war heritage of the previous century. Since tourism has become an important partner and stakeholder in the process of revalorizing the past, the focus is on the current practices of selecting and (re) creating memoryscapes of the Great War (1914-1918). Strongly based on remembrance, narratives and multiple images of the war, evoked by the centennial ‘hype’ in events and media attention, numerous places with tangible and/or reconstructed war heritage are now marked on the tourist map. The inclusion in the survey of a number of open questions regarding values, experiences, memories from over 2,400 respondents (61 countries) resulted in a huge database, which allows the identification of some relevant variables in the ongoing tourismification process of former war landscapes. This paper focuses on selected issues and results stemming from the survey. Key words: Memoryscapes, Heritage values, Memorial events, Tourismification, Great War, International online survey
Recalling the Ghosts of War: Performing Tourism on the Battlefields of the Western Front
Text and Performance Quarterly, 2006
The Great War battlefield landscape of the Western Front still exerts an enormous potency for tourists even though much of its geography requires significant decoding to understand its now hidden narratives. Thousands of British visitors travel to the area throughout the year, drawn to empathize with its symbolic commemorative spaces. This essay explores the ways in which tourists embarking on commercial coach tours engage with the battlefield landscape by examining contemporary tourist performance, as well as the role of the tour guide in setting and directing their imaginative and emotional encounter with the area. The trauma and magnitude of the First World War continue to exert a profound impact on the British imagination. The mass slaughter of young men caused by four years of industrial trench warfare on the battlefields of the Western Front in France and Belgium touched almost every household in Britain, and by 1918 virtually all the towns and villages in Britain had effectively become communities of the bereaved (Winter 6). Today, however, only a handful of veterans are still alive, and the conflict now occupies the furthest edge of living memory. Yet battlefield tourism, which began
The mainstream grand narratives of the Great War have tended to disregard local perspectives from territories on the Western Front. Using on-the-field visits of battlefields, interviews with stakeholders and analysis of battlefield guidebooks and itineraries, this article addresses these gaps by examining local assertions in the re-invention of battlefield itineraries and remembrance trails of the Great War, the new socio-spatial order they establish and discordance of perspectives it triggers between the nation and the territory. The itinerary, thus, devised by memory entrepreneurs and performed by visitors on the ground becomes an 'effort of remembrance' and a dynamic scheme mediating between participants and place.
The Western Front: the creation of meaning and value in a war landscape
Landscape Values: Place and Praxis conference , 2016
The Western Front: the creation of meaning and value in a war landscape The First World War Centenary (2014-18) has stimulated increased interest in the landscape of the Western Front in France and Belgium which continues to maintain a special level of significance for the nations who fought there. As a place of staggering mortality and suffering the area speaks powerfully to present audiences and maintains an ability to address contemporary concerns. This paper examines how these special meanings have been created and emphasises the rich multi-faceted nature of the Front where values are expressed in myriad ways: materially and perceptually, tangibly and intangibly. The Western Front is a dynamic palimpsest of commemorative, heritage, economic and touristic values which determine and dictate its nature like few other historic battle sites. It is as much a landscape of the mind as of the senses and herein lies its true significance.
Tourism on the edge of the trenches
2018
The winter of 1914 nails fighters in a tragic and almost immobile war of position. The « war factory » establishes and starts in the trenches its appalling « line of the production of the death ». In the European memory, it was not kept any precedent for a similar situation.
2019
Yves-Marie Evanno and Johan Vincent (eds.), Tourisme et Grande Guerre : Voyage(s) sur un front historique meconnu (1914-2019), Editions Codex, 2019 The relationship between war and tourism was a relatively unexplored area of research as late as the end of the twentieth century, when John Walton wrote of his surprise that so little attention had been devoted to the study of the impact of the First World War on touristic towns (Walton, 1996) and I noted that the history and uses of tourism unde...
WALK OF PEACE -CAPITALIZATION OF THE WORLD WAR I HERITAGE THROUGH TOURISM
KNOWLEDGE HORIZONS -ECONOMICS, 2019
The First World War left many wounds that affected generations of people, nations, and landscapes. The patrimony left behind by World War I is diverse and scattered throughout the world represented by: trenches, mausoleums, cemeteries and monuments, war graves, some of them true architectural and artistic masterpieces. However, many of these monuments have fallen into oblivion or are scarcely capitalized on cultural, historical or tourism routes. In our research we have brought arguments on the importance of capitalizing on World War I heritage through cultural routes and tourism and we have identified the steps to be taken to develop such a route in Romania.
Visiting the trenches: Exploring meanings and motivations in battlefield tourism
Tourism Management, 2011
This paper provides insights into the motivations and experiences of tourists who visit sites associated with war and conflict, specifically 25 individuals who participated in a tour of the World War One battlefields of the Somme and Ypres. The paper discusses the narratives of four of these individuals to illustrate in detail how such battlefield tours offer opportunities for pilgrimage, collective and personal remembrance and event validation. All of the participants had a prior interest in warfare, which was a key influence on their battlefield tour experiences. For the study participants battlefield tours emerge as complex, deeply meaningful and in some cases life-changing experiences.