Mobile Embassies, Expeditionary Ambassadors: Public Diplomacy, Activism, and The Politics of the "World Tour" across Empires

The final third of the nineteenth century was an era of the mass consumption of tall tales of global adventure from Nellie Bly’s seventy-two-day circumnavigation of the globe in 1889 to Joshua Slocum’s first solo circumnavigation of the earth by sail between 1895 and 1898. But, outside of mass popular adventure, World Touring became a tactic of knowledge-making, political legitimation, and long-distance network management around the world.

What forms of political legitimacy could touring bestow? How far did distinctive cultures of travel shape the “world” tours of Royalty, statesmen, and indigenous political leaders alike? How did torus shape the nascent art of public diplomacy in the nineteenth century? And what do they reveal about the processes of political knowledge creation? How were world tours enabled and circumscribed by new steam infrastructure? And what other new technologies of communication and transportation underpinned and transformed the meaning and representation of the World Tour?

To answer these questions, this workshop brings together an international network of scholars to re-examine World Tours from transnational, global, and comparative perspectives.