Robert C. Ritchie. The Lure of the Beach: A Global History.

Abstract

In The Lure of the Beach, Robert C. Ritchie explores the development of beach resorts, showing how something that “started out as a modest number of individuals seeking therapeutic relief in the ocean … has morphed into a staggering phenomenon” that now dominates global culture and leisure (224). He traces the massive rise of resorts in size and popularity as they changed in character and eventually proliferated around the world. Yet Ritchie also considers the problems, both social and environmental, that these sites have provoked throughout history and continue to pose in our present and our future. Ritchie begins with the ancient Roman port of Baiae, swiftly surveys medieval Europe, and gives most of his attention to the development of resorts in England and the United States in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, while also considering the broader global dimension of this phenomenon. Ritchie highlights the social, economic, and technological factors that contributed to the rise, and sometimes the decline, of these resorts. The first beach resorts were inspired by an emergent medical consensus in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries on the virtues of salt water and were restricted to social elites who could afford the time and costs of travel. Economic prosperity, expanded holidays, and developments in transport like steam power, motor cars, and jet planes sequentially transformed who could access the beach, driving the growth of both established and new resorts. As the numbers of visitors continually increased, resorts had to adapt to their demands and requirements. Although health benefits never disappeared as a motivation for visiting, over time entertainment became the primary purpose of most resorts. Leisure and social diversions were always part of this story, from the assembly rooms and promenades of the eighteenth century onward, but new forms came to prominence, especially in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, ranging from pierrots, dance venues, and music halls to piers, amusement parks, and roller coasters, and later encompassing surfing and other water sports.