Masculinity and Danger on the Eighteenth-Century Grand Tour

The Grand Tour, a customary trip of Europe undertakenby British nobility and wealthy landed gentry during the seventeenthand eighteenth centuries, played an important role in the formation of contemporarynotions of elite masculinity. Examining testimony as written by Grand Tourists,tutors and their families, Goldsmith demonstrates that the Grand Tour educated eliteyoung men in a wide variety of skills, virtues and masculine behaviours that extendedwell beyond polite society. She argues that dangerousexperiences were far more central to the Tour as a means of constructingBritain's next generation of leaders than has previously been examined. Influencedby aristocratic concepts of honour and inspired by military leadership, elitesviewed experiences of danger and hardship as powerfully transformative andtherefore as central to the process of constructing masculinity.Far from viewing danger as a disruptiveforce, Grand Tourists willingly tackled a variety of social, geographical and physicalperils, gambling their way through treacherous landscapes; scaling mountains, volcanoesand glaciers; and encountering war and disease. Through the study of danger, Goldsmithoffers a revision of eighteenth-century elite masculine culture and the criticalrole the Grand Tour played within this.