Imagination Over Innovation: The Experienced Freedom of Movement of Nineteenth-Century European Travelers.

Abstract

This article challenges conventional cultural histories of mobility by rethinking the impact of technology in nineteenth-century Europe. Drawing on nearly one hundred European cross-border travel accounts-especially by travelers from the northern Netherlands-it argues that mobility depended less on technological innovation than on what travelers imagined technology could do. Rather than being driven by inventions, satisfactory travel hinged on the availability of "ordinary" technologies, dense transport networks, reliable services, dry weather, affordable and socially accepted modes of transport, and travelers' bodies' perceived capacities. Meanwhile, over time, it was broader economic transformations and shifts in mentality that most deeply reshaped patterns of travel. Responding to calls from science and technology studies, the article redefines technology as a socially specific repertoire of imaginable practices rather than a sequence of modernizing breakthroughs.