1Denis Linehan, Ian D. Clark, Philippe F. Xie (Eds.), Colonialism, Tourism and Place, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2020
2Denis Linehan is a Professor of Cultural Geography at University College Cork. Ian D. Clark is an adjunct professor of tourism in the School of Business at Federation University Australia. Philip F. Xie is a Professor of Tourism, Hospitality and Event Management at Bowling Green State University.
- 1 The decolonial intellectual movement “[...] updates the critical tradition of Latin American though (...)
- 2 Colonial tourism is a form of occupation that Achille Mbembe (2003, p. 25) calls “writing a new set (...)
- 3 Colonial tourism is a form of occupation that Achille Mbembe (2003, p. 25) calls “writing a new set (...)
3In general, the book bases its analysis on the decolonial perspective1 relating to consequences of tourism practices after Eurocentric colonial expansion. Specifically, the collection explores the intersection of colonialism, tourism, and place. The concept of colonialism is mobilized as a form of political subordination that territories and people suffered in the past; tourism is seen as a type of industry that shapes representations of places, people, nations, and cultures (Aitchison, 2001); place is the geographical dimension that represents situated interactions between society and space. As a result, the idea of “colonial tourism”2, appears revealing an important ambiguity: if it allows to exalt destinations, it also encourages erasing the barbarities of colonialism and, in some cases, promoting the renewal of this coloniality. 3
- 4 Grand Tours were voyages that took place in the 18th century and represented the “[...] expression (...)
- 5 Term used to explain different types of colonialism at different times and their effects on the pre (...)
- 6 In general, the parts have a slight difference in length; part I contains 64 pages and part II, 89 (...)
4In the collection, different methodologies are applied by the authors. However, all of them use a full review of primary and secondary sources and a strong degree of empiricism in their work. It is inferred that the timeline follows the Grand Tour4 phenomenon and extends to the present day. The work is divided into two parts: the first, with a more historical bias, is composed of five articles that analyze the phenomenon of tourism from an ambiguous relationship between visitors and the visited in Australia, Indochina, Taiwan, and the Caribbean to understand the search for the exotic. In the second part, the authors present a comparative perspective of places and times based on the “colonial present”5, i.e., approaching contemporary developments of tourism in East Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, Macau, New Zealand, and Hawaii.6
- 7 In Orientalism: the Orient as an Invention of the West (Said, 1978), Said investigates the links be (...)
5Analogously to this work, Postcolonial Tourism: Literature, Culture, and Environment (Carrigan, 2011) examines how postcolonial literature expresses entangled power relationships in tourism. The “exoticism” that characterizes the marketing of non-western regions would be equivalent to the idea of “orientalism”.7 Cultural tourism: an Anthropological View (Pérez & Xerardo, 2009), Spanish edition, presents an understanding of tourism as a producer of homogenizing images of places and cultural heritage. These and other works highlight the relevance of the decolonial approach to tourism studies.
- 8 Term used by the author to express urban modifications, construction of railways and buildings, wit (...)
6In the first chapter, “Glimpses of the East Via Japan: Representing Colonial Korea and French Indochina in the Interwar Years”, H. Hazel Hahn analyzes the official travel guide used as a collection of advertisements about Korea and Indochina in the troubled period between wars. Past colonialism reinforces the present as early tourism publications as sources of information are highly selective about Korean cities, portrayed as a country with an abundance of beautiful scenery and “the most pleasant climate in all of Asia” (p. 20), followed by a romanticization of “Japanization”8 and then by the praise of imperialism in French Indochina.
7In the second chapter, “Towards Recovered Territory: the Chinese Tourist Rush to Taiwan, 1946-49”, António Barrento describes the Japanese colonization, China retaking Taiwan after Japan’s defeat in WWII and its consequent transformation into a tourism hub by travelers from mainland China. Again, the author highlights the contemplation of Taiwan's coloniality by travelers and the consolidation of Chinese nationalism on the island through government publications.
- 9 Ian D. Clark points out crossings and streams as spatial discontinuities and natural barriers to tr (...)
8In the third chapter, “Aboriginal Interactions and Associations with the Hospitality Industry in Colonial Victoria, 1835-70”, Ian D. Clark reveals the advance of the hospitality industry as being at the origin of aboriginal land speculation which would have contributed to the economic development of the Victorian state. Furthermore, the author relates this phenomenon to alcohol consumption and the exploitation of indigenous hunting and dancing skills, producing discontinuities in areas that then became opportunities for settlers to control land.9
9In “They Surprised Them with National Airs: Aboriginal Brass Bands, Tourism and Sentimental Colonialism”, the fourth chapter of the book, an analysis of the relationship between tourism and aboriginal people on Palm Island is continued. The tourist growth after the Christian missions in Australia between the years 1920-1930 is analyzed. In consequence to this first “valorization”, Toby Martin considers the use of Aboriginal music as a cultural appropriation highly alienating to the local people since the art was only considered relevant when appreciated by tourists. Hence, British colonial expansion was morally justified and considered a positive valorization policy.
- 10 Term used to refer to the body of water formed by the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico.
10In the fifth chapter, entitled “Neither Wholly British nor American but Something In-between: US Tourism and Layered Colonialisms in the British West Indies”, John Hougue understands the “American Mediterranean”10 as a place of tourism and leisure that wholly re-establishes the British colonial legacy by the United States. Productions by traveling writers from the mid-twentieth century to 1970 are analyzed. From American trips to the Caribbean Island, an empire led by the ideological force that had tourism as an essential “weapon” was noticed – that is, tourist agents strengthened the supposed North American hegemony over the island. The chapters in the first part demonstrate how past colonialism reinforces new colonialism.
11At the beginning of the second part of the book, the sixth chapter is titled “Beyond the Postcard: a Translated Hawaii for Tourists”. Ana Cristina Gomes bases her analysis on the use of photographs, images, and postcards by the emerging tourist industry at the end of the 19th century. The author discusses the coloniality impregnated in this material, in which the Hawaiian identities are represented through the notion of exoticism and experience in “paradise”. The work concludes that the phenomenon is crowned with the invasion of their spaces to be sold and that racism in the end influences this process.
- 11 “Pagoda” or “pagode” are terms that refer to a type of multi-edged religious building or temple com (...)
12In the eighth chapter, “A Pagoda at the Pearl of the Indian Ocean: Producing Nostalgic Colonialism and Heritage Tourism in Mozambique”, “pagoda”11 and the emergence of nostalgic representations of colonialism are treated as a symbol of Chinese neocolonialism in Mozambique. Eve Wong recognizes tourism as a key economic activity for reducing poverty in the country which suffered from the 1992 civil war. However, she points to the remodeling of Mozambique's past by the Chinese tourism market. She concludes her reasoning by judging the ambivalence between post-war economic recovery and neocolonialism.
- 12 The "Macanese identity" is represented as the maintenance of the Cantonese language by the inhabita (...)
- 13 Bourdieu suggests that the cultural field can be understood as a sociocultural, imaginary, and imma (...)
- 14 The authors emphasize the construction of the idea of Portuguese heritage through the expressive fl (...)
13In the ninth chapter, “The Pursuit of Macanese Identity: Colonization and Recolonization through Tourism”, Ivy Lai-Chu Lou and Philip F. Xie examine the potential role of Chinese tourism in encouraging a change in Macanese identity.12 The authors reflect on the Chinese government's support for the casino industry and a consequent exaltation of colonial heritage. The article is based on quantitative and qualitative methods, virtual research, and the use of the theory, “habitus”, by Pierre Bourdieu13 to suggest that Macau is going through a process of awakening its post-colonial identity.14
14In chapter ten, “Displacement, Memories and Struggle: the Case of Mapari Ranch in Zimbabwe”, the authors start from a more subjective perspective of the subjects involved in tourism practices to describe how tourism can act on the nuances of Mapari's memories (Zimbabwe) by helping to produce memories and forgetfulness of past conflicts.
15In a perspective similar to the previous chapter, the eleventh article of the book, “Coloniality, Tourism and City-branding as an Apparatus of Forgetting in Dunedin, Aotearoa New Zealand”, addresses contemporary tourism in Dunedin as “producer of a forgetting device” (p. 163). Furthermore, Holly Randell-Moon relates this phenomenon to structural racism. Finally, through the analysis of tourist areas officially sanctioned by the Dunedin City Council (DCC), the author finds that colonial tourism marginalizes indigenous people in the area. The second part of the book mainly emphasizes the contemporary neocolonialism process.
16Taking the work as a whole, the authors explored how global western domination has concrete effects on subjects and places and its influence on a process of recolonization based on tourism. The hypotheses of this type of approach are validated, for example, when the intensification of contemporary social problems, such as racism and misogyny become evident in regions strongly inserted into the practice of colonial tourism. Despite the absence of mentioning possible positive effects of tourism on sovereign policies of economic development, which could subtly influence some of the reasons presented, the work validates the phenomenon of colonial tourism as an important subject to be studied among academics through proposals similar to this one. – i.e., rich in theoretical, methodological, and empirical approaches. Thus, it is necessary to study these realities to have the scope of possibility of reversing its effects.