Victorian Women Travellers and the Political Economy of Art: An Analysis of Commerce, Craftsmanship, and Nationhood in Travel Writing on the Middle East and Asia, 1844-1899

Abstract

Although recent travel criticism has acknowledged the intellectual authority and popularity of female travel writers in the Victorian period, few studies have considered that female travellers both informed and expanded upon Victorian debates surrounding the role of art, and art production, as a symbol of political-economic progress and cultural identity. My analysis shows that female travellers consistently situate their observations of art production and trade in the Middle East and Asia as a central concern of political-economic discourse throughout the mid- and late-Victorian period. Crucially, these accounts reveal the development of an ideological impasse between the collectible value placed on traditional arts and crafts, and the value placed on industrialisation as an indicator of political-economic progress in the late nineteenth century. In Victorian Britain, museums and global exhibitions served a dual purpose as educational spectacles and sites of nationalistic competition which centred Britain as an exemplar of technological and cultural advancement. In this thesis, I approach travelogues as another form of ‘exhibitionary space’ where female travellers textually recreate displays of art objects and antiquities found in museums, private collections, markets, and manufactories in Egypt, Persia, China, and Japan. I apply this conception to travelogues by twelve women, including professional authors such as Isabella Bird, Harriet Martineau, and Amelia Edwards alongside more obscure travellers such as Anna d’Almeida, Isabella Romer, and Mary Bickersteth. These women perpetuated stadial ideals of industrialisation and global commerce as a signifier of national ‘progress’ in both implicit and explicit fashion across the century; however, as mass production replaced traditional artistry and craftsmanship across the world, their accounts reflect a growing concern that the resultant decline of quality and cultural authenticity will destabilise not only the value of eastern collectibles, but of Britain’s own artistic productions.