Reviewed by: The Lure of the Beach: A Global History by Robert C. Ritchie Douglas Booth (bio) The Lure of the Beach: A Global History By Robert C. Ritchie. Oakland: University of California Press, 2021. Pp. xiv + 321. The Lure of the Beach is a grand narrative of the development of beach resorts. Author Robert Ritchie begins his narrative on the English beach in the eighteenth century, where the upper classes, upon the advice of medical practitioners, immersed themselves in cold seawater as a general therapy. The beachbased health resorts that developed with this practice subsequently diffused to the British colonies, Europe, and the United States. As the demand for accommodations and bathing facilities grew, entrepreneurs and municipal officials welcomed the economic contributions of beach resorts. In the nineteenth century, promenades (or boardwalks in America) and piers with amusement centers helped transform the beach into "a bustling scene of noisy entertainment" (p. 107). Mechanical rides and amusement parks drew larger crowds: two million people visited Blackpool in 1893; twenty million people visited Coney Island in 1909. Sunbathing, the therapeutic tan, and functional—and briefer—bathing costumes broadened the appeal in the early twentieth century, and the beach increasingly signified "physical fitness, outdoor sports, and youthful appearance" (p. 170). Celebrities and sports stars visited beach resorts, which spread to Egypt, Mexico, the Philippines, Spain, Thailand, Turkey, and beyond. Today, beach resorts exist in myriad forms, from exclusive luxury resorts in the Caribbean and the Pacific to mega beaches exemplified by Australia's Gold Coast and Florida's Emerald Coast. In the final two chapters, Ritchie moves away from the narrative of development and turns to the problems confronting contemporary beach resorts. These include access, pollution, mining, sand replenishment, and rising sea levels. Predictions of sea level rises (3 feet by 2050, 10 feet by 2100, 15 feet by 2300) leave Ritchie pessimistic. He submits that governments and policy [End Page 1232] makers will prioritize the protection of urban infrastructure—"water supplies, roads, sewage facilities, power plants" and the like—over beach resorts and public beaches (p. 248). Ritchie builds his narrative around functional interrelationships between social and technological change and innovation. In this narrative form, the development of beach resorts depends upon overcoming mainly technical issues—notably access, accommodations, the presentation of bathing bodies, and pollution. In each case, technical/bureaucratic and technological solutions are readily at hand. Railways and steamships ensured access in the early days; today cars, highways, cheap airfares, and packaged holidays deliver people to beach resorts around the world, while paid holidays ensure beachgoers have the time and financial wherewithal to stay. Entrepreneurs saw, and continue to see, opportunities in providing beach accommodations. Horse-drawn bathing machines resolved public displays of immodesty before municipalities regulated and enforced bathing costumes. Legislation compelled municipal and regional authorities to close drains, thereby removing sewage from the sand and, increasingly, the sea. Even the cold-water therapy recommended by eighteenth-century medical practitioners has a contemporary technical equivalent with blue health researchers "measuring the physical and mental advantages to seawater" (p. 225). Ritchie does not ignore the social relationships that have been critical to the development of beach resorts, citing copious examples of class, gender, racial, and cultural divisions. Nonetheless, the form of the narrative privileges bureaucratic and technical solutions and technology over social relationships. The Lure of the Beach is a thoroughly researched, interesting social history. An international reach justifies the "global history" of the subtitle, and splashes of lightheartedness and wry humor add to the readability. Yet building a global narrative of beach resorts around functional interrelationships between social and technological change and innovation strikes me as passé. At the very least, this approach smooths over important nuances and details of the past and present. Should we really believe that the "decadent" French were more critical to shaping the beach as an erotic site than the "cold and puritanical" English (p. 59)? Can we continue to whitewash the influence on settlers of coastal Indigenous peoples and their relationships with beaches? What are the (unintended) consequences of simply describing the destruction of coastal boardwalks, piers, and resorts without reflecting on, or critically analyzing, how we conceptualize and relate to the...
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Jul 1, 2024
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