Historian Eric G.E. Zuelow’s new book examines links between Ulster and Scotland

In a new book, Tourism Histories in Ulster and Scotland: Connections and Comparisons, 1800-1939(Ulster Historical Foundation), Eric G.E. Zuelow, Ph.D., associate professor of European history, and colleague Kevin J. James, Ph.D., associate professor of modern Scottish and Irish history at University of Guelph, bring together a series of original essays by scholars interested in the tourism linkages between Northern Ireland and Scotland.

According to Zuelow, the long-standing cultural exchanges, economic linkages, and flows of people between Ulster and Scotland included, from the nineteenth century, extensive recreational travel across the North Channel. At the same time, cities, resorts, and tourist sites in each place vied for the tourist’s pound in the lucrative English market. Ulster and Scotland boasted a number of comparable sites – Staffa and the Giant’s Causeway were often seen as part of a single "site," and Co. Donegal was promoted to tourists as the "Irish Highlands"– while numerous resort towns catered to heavy cross-channel traffic between the two places. Indeed, for some, Ulster and Scotland constituted a single regional tourist economy; for others, the two locations were fierce competitors.

This collection of essay includes overviews of each tourism sector, specific case studies that suggest the value of comparison, and several studies that examine institutional and even infrastructural linkages. Through these combined approaches, the book shows that tracing the historical development of, and connections between, tourism in Ulster and Scotland yields important insights into the character of tourist development, and suggests the value of adopting a new spatial framework for exploring tourism history.

Zuelow stated: "This collection was a real pleasure to work on—both because the contributions offer wonderful insight into a host of topics and because the assembled team, especially my co-editor Kevin James, were so great to collaborate with.  The book will offer interested laymen and scholars alike some exciting new windows through which to explore the interconnections between Scotland and Ulster."

The book is available for purchase from the Ulster Historical Foundation. 

Eric Zuelow

Eric G.E. Zuelow is author of Making Ireland Irish: Tourism and National Identity since the Irish Civil War (2009); is co-editor of Nationalism in a Global Era: The Persistence of Nations (2007); and is editor of Touring Beyond the Nation: A Transnational Approach to European Tourism History(2011).  He is also a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.  He teaches a range of courses at UNE covering diverse topics such as the Holocaust, modern Irish history, British Empire, Postwar Europe, and the story of London, among others.