Life Before Fodor and Frommer: Americans in Paris from Thomas Jefferson to John Quincy Adams

Abstract

Abstract Several thousand Americans, most of whom hailed from the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic states, and who travelled for business or combined business with tourism, visited France and Paris during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic era. A fairly representative group of some fifty travellers have left accounts of their stay, providing an insight into American attitudes towards France and the French, particularly as regards national stereotyping. Key parameters determining such stereotyping included Franco-American relations and domestic politics during the time of an individual's stay; Enlightened American notions of the virtuous Republic and its relation to gender issues; and American exceptionalist discourse. Travel conditions varied over the period, and were particularly difficult under the Directory, if somewhat less so under Napoleon. Americans were not seldom mistaken for Englishman and harassed in one fashion or another. The monuments and tourist attractions they chose to visit, however, were largely the same as those visited by their modern compatriots.