ABSTRACT

From the very rst, the Alps were associated with the emergence of leisure travel. While the origin of the word “tourism” does not derive directly from the growing attraction of western Europe’s highest mountains, visiting this region quickly became customary among European elites beginning in the early nineteenth century.1 It is absolutely correct to speak about the emergence of an “alpine tourism” that, alongside spa, seaside, and urban tourism, varied regionally in intensity and form, yet which remained universally recognizable. Understanding the history of alpine tourism demands a consideration of myriad factors that converged during the eighteenth century to transform these mountains from being a “monde subi” to being a “monde aimé,” from being an undesirable area to being a region adored by legions of visitors every year.2 At the same time as the “désir du rivage” illustrated by Alain Corbin,3 this “conquering sympathy” was fuelled by a subtle alchemy that explains its development, its perpetuity, and its success: scientic, technological, economic, political, social, physical, medical, geologic, symbolic, educational, and cultural dimensions joined and blended in the development of this new tourist model. It pulled its strength from human and material resources, oen unfamiliar in the alpine environment, which modeled the new form of tourism according to plans and projects whose ultimate purpose was the domestication and exploitation of the mountain.