ABSTRACT
265This chapter investigates early tourist discourse (1875-1914) on the Netherlands through material of mostly British, German, and Dutch origin - travel brochures from Thomas Cook, the Vereeniging voor Vreemdelingenverkeer (VVV), and the Centraal Bureau voor Vreemdelingenverkeer, as well as guidebooks and travel writings. It traces the emergence of commercial tourism to the Netherlands by bringing together earlier forms of leisure travel to the Netherlands and the discovery of the Netherlands as a place worthwhile visiting by painters and writers of the Romanticist movement. In tourist discourse, information is linked to the advertising or purchase of a service or commodity - a travel arrangement, a postcard, or a souvenir. These commodities serve as mediators for experiencing the visited country; hence other visual media of consumer culture are investigated as well (advertising trade cards, picture postcards). Images in tourist discourse and consumer culture mostly use the form of the cliché, regardless if these images were produced by Dutch or foreign people. The chapter concludes with a discussion of Dutch reactions to the cliché, which calls for rethinking the divide between self-image and outsiders’ image.
