Page 19 - EXPOTIME!Sept2017

Top stories Analysis

Ibrahim Muhammed Saadaoui

Tourism :

The phenomenon and its
socio-economic consequences

The word tourism possesses two senses: the act of trav- plishing a "Grand Tour of Europe "that drives them to
elling for non lucrative reasons and that of travelling for Italy, especially to Rome and to Tuscany, in some capital
economic purposes. The French dictionaries of the 19 cities like Paris, and sometimes in the mountainous re-
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cent. notably those of Littré and Larousse, underline the gions of the Alps as the taste of nature and the authen-
characters of “curiosity"and the “idleness"that are the tic landscapes started to develop. The rediscovery of
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essence of tourists. Montaigne who travelled from June Herculaneum and Pompeii stimulates the movement and
1580 to November 1581 to France, Switzerland, Germany the interest for archeology. 8
and Italy appears to be the typical tourist who made a
journey for just the pleasure of it: "If it is not fine on the The English word tourist, formed from the French tour
right, I turn on the left … did I leave something to see and designating the person who moves was used in 1800
behind me? If yes, I there return”. Het shows his desire by the British, before being adopted by the French in
to learn: "Making of journeys seems to me a profitable 1803 (touriste). The word spills and Stendhal published A
exercise … I don't know a better school to form life than Tourist's Memoirs in 1838. The substantive tourism dates
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constantly exposing our eyes to the diversity of so many from the end of the 19 cent.
other lives, opinions and ways of doings things". In the th
XXth Century, the international institutions complete In the 19 cent. the Oriental Mediterranean has espe-
the definition while adding the criterion of the time: the cially become a favorite goal of journey sought-after
tourist is the person who leaves his/her usual residence by European artists. Lord BYRON took a long stay there
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for a period comprised between 24 hours and one year, from 1809 to 1811 , Gustave FLAUBERT, accompanied
in view of devoting themselves to a non gainful activi- by his friend Maxim the Camp stayed there from 1849
ty. The geographers underline the systemic dimension to 1852. Flaubert vent to Tunisia from April to June 1858
of the phenomenon: it is "a system of actors, practices to gather some documents on Carthage where the plot
and spaces". 1 of his novel entitled Salambô is based (1862). The rela-
tions of journeys increased: Châteaubriand published his
Tourism cannot emerge and develop unless a number of book Itinerary of Paris in Jerusalem in 1811, Lamartine
conditions are met: curiosity, taste of the discovery and and Nerval wrote each a book entitled A Journey in Ori-
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disorientation; resources permitting to finance this curi- ent, narrations published respectively in 1835 and 1851.
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osity; free time to be able to leave the usual residence Painters like Delacroix, Fromentin, Gérôme , architects
temporarily; means of transportation and lodging. In 12 , later photographers came to look for models in the
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the XIXth Century, the construction of the railroads gives East of the Mediterranean. Thus was the image of the
a spectacular flight to displacements. Thus, the journey Orient, somehow more or less fantasized. As the colonial
Paris - Nice that took a dozen of days in diligence has empires constituted themselves, appeared a specific kind
been shorten to 23 hours in 1864 when the first railway of tourism attracting people in quest of disorientation
link between the two cities was inaugurated and, thanks and exoticism. In Java, in the Dutch Indies, in Maghreb
to the technical progress, to 13hours and 50 minutes in and the French Indochina, hotels, roads, climatic stations,
1914. Nice that welcomed only a few hundreds of tour- and sometimes casinos were constructed for Europeans,
ists at the time of diligences passed to more than a mil- local civil servants or tourists. The first efforts for the
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lion on the eve of the First World War. 3 preservation of the heritage are provided. Tourism thus
became a source of observations, a field of experiences,
I. The touristic phenomenon a species of laboratory where often develops pictures,
concepts, stereotypes that are spilled in the countries of
The tourist displacement possesses old roots that the origin of the travelers. 14
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historians studied for the Antiquity , the Middle Ages ,
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and the modern time. However, it is in the 18 cent. The various shapes of tourism can be spelt out in a rich
that the phenomenon takes its contemporary dimen- typology.
sion and thus receives its qualification. At this time, the
young English aristocrats took the habit of completing The cultural tourism represents one of the oldest incar-
their intellectual and artistic formation while accom- nations of the phenomenon. Even in the antiquity al-
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EXPOTIME!, issue August/September 2017