ABSTRACT
The Revolution of 1789, and the destruction of the Bastille prison in Paris, left a debris field that generated a new touristic market of revolutionary relics in France, Great Britain and the United States in the decades following these events. This chapter explores the impact of the migrations on touristic patterns, behaviours and imaginations in post-revolutionary France. British travellers were obsessed with ruins and collecting the remnants of the Revolution. The chapter examines how Romantic imaginations transferred antiquarian pursuits onto the construction of an 'immediate history' of the French Revolution at the eve of the First French Empire. The chapter describes the itineraries and various social outlooks of British travellers to France during the Peace of Amiens, before investigating their collection of revolutionary ephemera and ruins. It reflects on the shift these British migrations produced on the geography and meaning of tourism in post-revolutionary France.
