Dr. Brian Dolan- Exploring European Frontiers (2000)
reviews

The explorations of 18th-century travellers to the 'European frontiers' were often geared to define the cultural, political, and historical boundaries of 'European civilization.' In an age when political revolutions shocked nations into reassessing what separated the civilised from the barbaric, how did literary travellers contemplate the characteristics of their continental neighbours? Focusing on the writings of British travellers, we see how a new view of Europe was created, one that juxtaposed the customs and living conditions of populations in an attempt to define 'modern' Europe against a 'yet unenlightened' Europe.

Reviewers' comments:

"[Dolan's] aim is to explore the way in which British travellers of the Enlightenment perceived Europe. Through the writings of Clarke and other travellers, Dolan provides a fascinating picture of how peoples on the margins of Europe were depicted and defined ... The polymath traveller of the eighteenth century had interests ranging from botany to political economy. To make all of these comprehensible to the reader, as Dolan has, is no small achievement."
- Katharine Edgar, Times Literary Supplement

"The role of travel as an encoder of suppositions emerges clearly in Brian Dolan's fascinating and well-written account. ... Dolan offers much guidance to the reconstruction of a European identity."
- Jeremy Black, The International History Review , March 2001

"Humans are moved to travel, to write about travel, and to read travel narratives in part by an urge to define themselves and their culture in contradistinction to some 'Other'. Taken together, the five chapters of Exploring European Frontiers provide interesting and important reading for anyone interested in the questions and issues involved in that process."
- Jeffrey Brautigam, Reviews in History, Institute of Historical Research

"In this eminently readable and well-documented study of British travel to Europe in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Dolan traces how the new, Enlightenment-fostered interest in the natural and social sciences affected the literature of travel. ... Dolan examines British travel as a source of cultural identity and a competitive assertion of national self-interest at the end of the eighteenth century."
- David Espey, The Age of Johnson: A Scholarly Journal

"Brian Dolan's riveting Exploring European Frontiers concentrates on the foreign travels and perspectives of Edward Daniel Clarke (1769-1822), whose best-selling Travels in Various Countries of Europe, Asia and Africa (preceded by a time on what the British call the Elgin Marbles in 1809) was published in 6 volumes between 1810 and 1823. ... Clarke's interests embraced all the topics of concern to his contemporaries ... As such, he is a useful peg to hang a whole series of contemporary topics relating to the history and essence of 'European' civilisation, and the nature and degree of barbarism."
- Robert Iliffe, Canadian Journal of History

See the Table of Contents (PDF ).

Book Information
New York: St. Martin's Press and Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2000. ISBN: 0312230516. 246pp.