Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 26, No. 1, pp.

130Ð158, 1999

\ Pergamon
Þ 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved
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0160-7383/98 $19.00+0.00

PII: S0160-7383(98)00057-7

WAR AND THANATOURISM:

Waterloo 1815Ð1914
A. V. Seaton
University of Luton, UK

Abstract: This paper examines the historical evolution of Waterloo as a tourism mega-attrac-
tion. It locates battlefield visits as a form of thanatourism and explores the development of
Waterloo through a sight sacralization model. The model proposes that an attraction|s appeal
is achieved through progressive stages of {{marking|| which comes to invest it with a quasi-
religious mystique, {sacralization|, as a goal of ritual pilgrimage for tourists. The paper com-
ments on the sequencing of the model in the case of Waterloo and suggests how the social and
ideological environments of the potential tourist may affect the potency and stability of the
sacralization process over time. Keywords: battlefield tourism, dark tourism, ideology, sight
sacralization, thanatourism, history, Waterloo. Þ 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Re sume : Guerre et thanatourisme: Waterloo 1815Ð1914. Cet article examine l|e volution his-
torique de Waterloo comme me ga-attraction touristique. Il identifie les visites au champ de
bataille comme forme de thanatourisme et examine le de veloppement de Waterloo selon un
mode le de sacralisation de lieu. Le mode le pre sente l|ide e que l|attrait d|un lieu touristique est
re alise par l|interme diaire des e tapes progressifs de {marquage|, qui l|investissent d|une mys-
tique quasi religieuse, une {sacralisation|, comme objectif de pe lerinage rituel pour les touristes.
L|article commente l|enchai¼nement du mode le pour le cas de Waterloo et sugge re comment les
environnements social et ide ologique du touriste e ventuel peuvent, avec le temps, avoir un effet
sur la puissance et la stabilite du processus de sacralisation. Mots-cle s: tourisme de champ de
bataille, tourisme noir, ide ologie, sacralisation de lieu, thanatourisme, histoire, Waterloo.
Þ 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

INTRODUCTION
The Battle of Waterloo was, and remains, the only discrete Eur-
opean battlefield to achieve lasting, worldwide tourism status. No
other battle attracted comparable public attention or detonated such
an immediate spate of visitation*so immediate, in fact, that it started
while the battle was actually taking place. It modified the itinerary of
European travel from Britain after 1815, provided one of Thomas
Cook|s earliest European destinations (Brendon 1991), stimulated the
first English guidebook to Belgium and occupied prime positioning in
all the 19th century ones which followed (including those of Baedeker,
Murray, and Black), and was for a century the most visited battlefield
in Europe until those of the First World War displaced its prominence
in the 20s and 30s. Even today it is still Belgium|s second most
important tourism site, marked by 135 separate monuments and

A. V. Seaton is Whitbread Professor of Tourism Behavior at the University of Luton (Depart-

ment of Tourism and Leisure, Luton, Bedfordshire LU1 3JU, UK. Email ðtony.seaton@luton.
ac.ukŁ). His main research interests are in tourism marketing, tourism behavior, military
tourism, and the tourism history of Scotland and Iceland. He has undertaken tourism research
in 25 countries, much of it for UK government agencies, and published more than 70 papers.

130
 A. V. SEATON 131

memorials (Speechaert and Baecker 1990). It is thus a quintessential

example of that form of attraction which has been variously called
{{Dark Tourism|| (Foley and Lennon 1996) or {{thanatourism||, a form
which has been characterised as {{travel to a location wholly, or
partially, motivated by the desire for actual or symbolic encounters
with death . . .|| (Seaton 1996).
Thanatourism has been seen as a long established form which
comprises five broad categories of tourism behavior (Seaton 1996).
The first is travel to witness public enactments of death. Though
morally proscribed in modern Western societies, this was common in
the past (e.g., gladiatorial combats to the death in Roman times; or
political executions and public hangings in Britain which were legal
until 1868). It has its modern manifestations in the sightseers who
rush to disaster scenes of air crashes, ferry sinkings, and terrorist
explosions, or slow down their cars to gaze at motorway pile-ups. The
second category is to travel to see the sites of mass or individual
deaths, after they have occurred. This is the most common form of
thanatourism which encompasses a great amount of tourism behavior.
It includes travel to atrocity sites (the holocaust camp of Auschwitz,
the Colosseum in Rome where martyrdoms and combats to the death
were staged); disaster sites (Pompeii, destroyed by volcanic eruption
in A.D. 79, and discovered and excavated from 1748, after which it
became a prime tourism sight); sites of individual, celebrity deaths
(the book depository in Dallas from which Kennedy was assassinated,
Graceland where Elvis Presley died); and visits to battlefields. The
third is travel to internment sites of, and memorials to, the dead. This
kind of thanatourism includes visits to graveyards, catacombs, crypts,
war memorials, and cenotaphs.
To continue with the thanatourism categories, the fourth category
is travel to view the material evidence, or symbolic representations,
of particular deaths, in locations unconnected with their occurrence.
This kind of thanatourism is directed towards synthetic sites at which
evidence or simulacra of the dead have been assembled. It includes
museums where weapons of death, the clothing of murder victims,
and other artefacts are put on display (e.g., the Museum of the
Revolution in Cuba exhibits the blood-spattered, bullet-ridden cloth-
ing of heroes of the Revolution and torture instruments used under
the Battista regime; and Madame Tussauds in London has always
included wax effigies of famous murderers). The Holcaust Museum
in Washington is a recent addition (Lennon 1997). The last one is to
travel for re-enactments or simulation of death. This form was, until
the 20th century, largely confined in European culture to religious
presentations which restaged the death of Christ or other Christian
figures, often at Easter. The Passion Play at Oberammergau in Austria
is the most celebrated example, but other Catholic regions have their
own plays, pageants and processions in which effigies of Christ|s body
are carried through the streets. In more modern times it has come to
comprise travel to reenactments of battles, in Britain and America by
Civil War enthusiasts, in France by Napoleonic buffs.
Once an inventory of thanatourism is made it becomes apparent
that, far from being a marginal form, it is a widespread and old
132 WAR AND THANATOURISM

established motivation, though one which has previously eluded the

literature of motivation (Seaton 1997). It is hardly an exaggeration to
suggest that in the midst of many tourism forms of life, we are in death.
The stimulus of war has been a principal energizer of thanatourism in
history and modern times. The Grand Tour and its extensions, his-
torical precursors of modern tourism, were partially shaped by war,
in that the classical literature which underpinned their structural
itineraries was epic history and poetry which celebrated war, notably
in the works of Homer, Virgil, Tacitus, Caesar and Livy. It was classical
history which took Edward Gibbon to Rome and it was there, while
contemplating the ruins of its civilization as a tourist, that he first
had the notion of beginning the 15 year labor which became {{The
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire||:
It was in Rome, on the 15th of October 1764, as I sat musing amidst the
ruins of the Capitol, while barefooted friars were singing vespers in the
Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city
first started to mind (Gibbon 1900:167).
It was a fascination with the Trojan war that led Kingslake to under-
take the journey which was ultimately celebrated in the classic travel
book, Eothen, and later Schliemann to seek the sites of the historic
Troy and Mycenae, which resulted in two of the most famous archae-
ological cause celebres of the 19th century (Kingslake 1844; Sch-
liemann 1878 and 1880).
Landscape has, in short, been colonized with myths of dead heroes,
the struggles of nations, the epic dimensions of defeat or victory, and
the death of once mighty civilizations. Smith (1998) recently noted
the diverse effects of war on tourism in terms of the stimulation of
the collecting of memorabilia, visits to memorials, and the staging
of reenactments (Smith, 1998). She has even suggested that {{the
memorabilia of warfare and allied products . . . probably constitutes
the largest category of tourist attractions in the world|| (1996:248). If
war does indeed occupy such a pivotal place in tourism generation,
then Waterloo may lay claim to being the paradigm instance of the
symbiosis of warfare and sightseeing.

THE TOURIST AT WATERLOO 1815Ð1914

The Battle of Waterloo was fought on June 18, 1815 between a
multinational allied army composed of 6 different nationalities (Brit-
ish, Belgians, Hanoverians, Brunswickers, Dutch, and Prussians) led
by an English general, Wellington and a Prussian, Blucher, against a
French army under Napoleon. The battle was fought close to an
obscure hamlet nine miles from Brussels, lasted eight hours, ranged
over an area not more than 3 miles long and 4 miles wide, and resulted
in the total overthrow of the French army and the permanent eclipse
of Napoleon who had dominated Europe for 20 years. The dating,
naming, location, duration, and extent of the battle hold problematics
which are critically discussed in this paper.
Waterloo involved the presence of significant numbers of tourists
 A. V. SEATON 133

before, during, and, particularly, after the battle. In a conversation

reported by his private secretary, Wellington observed
{{I hope the next battle I fight will be further from home. Waterloo was too
near: too many visitors, tourists, amateurs, all of whom wrote accounts of
the battle|| (The Times 1934:17).
For this paper, these tourists may be divided into three sequential
groups: {{on the spot|| witnesses of the battle and its aftermath;
tourists with a personal stake in the effects of the battle who flocked
to Waterloo from Britain immediately after the battle, including
relatives of the dead and wounded (a kind of VFR tourism), and
official and semi-official functionaries of the British government who
may be seen as business tourists; and recreational thanatourists, par-
ticularly English ones caught up first by patriotic and, later, imperi-
alistic fervor to celebrate the site of a great British victory. These
began arriving within weeks of the battle and have continued to visit
in varying numbers ever since.
As to the {{on the spot|| group, Waterloo was the first great battle
to be witnessed and recorded by tourists. Several English civilians
traveling through Flanders or spending the summer in Brussels, where
the allied forces were mustering, have left first-hand accounts of
the battle. These are now of some interest though few of the many
historians of Waterloo have used them. Their authors happened, by
chance, to be at the center of a battle zone which few expected to be
where it was. Hardly anyone anticipated that the decisive encounter
with Napoleon would take place near the Belgian capital until a few
days before. The common assumption was that the allies would, in
their own good time, build up their forces in Flanders and then invade
France from Belgium to fight Napoleon in or around Paris. Napoleon|s
secrecy and speed in taking the battle to the enemy characteristically
took most by surprise*the English more than the Prussians. They
were the first to realize that the French had started to invade Belgium
in force through Charleroi, and played a crucial role in slowing up
that advance in an engagement two days before Waterloo at Ligny
and diverting it at Wavre on the day of Waterloo itself.
Three of these tourist accounts*those of Fanny Burney, Charlotte
Eaton, and an anonymous writer with the initials N.S. (Burney 1842;
Eaton 1817 and 1853; N.S. 1852)*will be used to suggest the historic
interest of the tourist as observer. Fanny Burney (Madame D|Arblay)
was an English writer married to an ardent royalist opponent of
Napoleon. She left Paris for Brussels in April when news broke of
Napoleon|s escape from Elba and his march north on the French
capital. Staying with a cousin in Brussels she left a graphic account of
the build-up to the battle and the fluctuating accounts of its outcome
which swept Brussels while it was being fought only a few miles away.
She is one of the few witnesses who described looting of the dead and
wounded, against Wellington|s orders, by the allies.
Charlotte Eaton, who later wrote a two volume guidebook to Rome,
arrived on holiday with a party which had traveled by boat and horse
from Margate via Ostend, Bruges, Ghent, and Alost. She describes
the almost carnival atmosphere which prevailed in Brussels, at the
134 WAR AND THANATOURISM

time one of the most fashionable cities in Europe, where the Hotel
Bellevue and Hotel de Flandre were crowded with British officers. She
records watching soldiers| wives marching out with their husbands to
battle and then the unbearable suspense prevailing in Brussels as
every eye and ear was strained for indications of the battle|s outcome.
Her account vividly evokes the aftermath of the battle as the dying
and wounded were borne back to improvised field hospitals in houses
and hotels, and includes a macabre anecdote about hearing the coffin
of the Duke of Brunswick being nailed down in the hotel room below
her own. Eaton|s sister also drew an on-the-spot panorama of the
battlefield which was published without her knowledge and had a wide
circulation.
The anonymous writer with the initials N.S., whose memoir was not
published until 1852, had been on holiday in Flanders having sailed
on a yacht with two friends, Captain Clarke and Mr Meryon from
Ramsgate. He witnessed the buildup and preparations of the allies
over the final days before the battle. He saw the soldiers leave Brussels
for Waterloo on June 16:
It was now four o|clock, and already the various regiments quartered about
Brussels had assembled in the Place Royale, and consisting of, I believe, the
92nd, 32nd, 9th, 28th, 18th, 44th and 42nd beside the artillery. All waited
in awful suspense {{the word|| which was soon given* to march! and even
now my blood thrills at the recollection of the sound. (N.S. 1852:23).

The anonymous writer describes the panic and disarray created in

Brussels, as the battle raged nearby, by conflicting rumors of the
outcome, and at one point, he fled from Brussels to Bruges, only
returning when news was confirmed of allied victory.
The second group of tourists created by Waterloo can be grouped
as those visiting relatives, government functionaries, and journalists.
In general, all wars end in prolonged mopping-up operations in which
the victors typically occupy the territories of the defeated, discipline
them through diplomatic arrangements called peace treaties, divide
the spoils, and celebrate their status as winners in records and histor-
ies. Immediately after the battle of Waterloo, Belgium and Paris were
thronged with travelers on these errands of victory.
Croker, the Tory member of parliament who served at the Admir-
alty, has left an extensive account of the comings and goings of English
politicians in Paris immediately after Waterloo. He went there on
holiday in early July and left on July 26th. He describes the numbers
of allied troops, especially Prussians, in the French capital. He fra-
ternized freely with prominent English politicians, diplomats, and
military leaders including Wellington, Castlereagh, Peel and Fitz-
gerald, as well as meeting or observing many prominent foreign fig-
ures. He made a visit to Waterloo before returning home (Croker
1884). Creevey, the diplomat, who had been in Brussels throughout
the four days| engagements was one of the first to visit Waterloo, two
days after the battle, in the company of Wellington whom he met by
accident on his way. He describes the masses of the unburied French
dead from which every so often the wounded would cry out for water
and be given a drink by Wellington from his flask (Creevey 1903).
 A. V. SEATON 135

Some combatants returned to the field after the battle. Captain

Gronow was one who has left an account as well as providing inter-
esting details of Paris as the allies entered. French women were,
apparently, shocked to see Scottish soldiers wearing skirts (Gronow
1889). Semi-official visitors to Waterloo and France included journal-
ists and writers who came to get material for triumphalist accounts
which flowed from the presses soon after. Southey the Poet Laureate
went via Ostend in September 1815 and was able to write a com-
memorative poem, nearly 400 stanzas lang, {{The poet|s pilgrimage
to Waterloo||, fast enough to have it published the following year. He
also kept a travel journal, not published until 1903, which suggests
some of the bizarre relics that were collected at Waterloo as than-
atouristic attractions soon after the battle:
Lore Uxbridge|s leg, the most remarkable relic of modern times, is deposited
in the garden of a house opposite the Inn [of Waterloo] . . . The owner is as
proud of possessing it as a true Catholic would be of an undoubted leg of
his patron saint . . . He took us into the house and shewed [sic] us the stain
of blood upon two chairs, telling us Lady Uxbridge had desired it might
never be washed out. And he called for the boot, remarking as he displayed
it, {{Voila quel petit pie pour si grand homme||. According to his account
some dozen surgeons assisted at the operation, which I do not believe,
because if the surgeons at hand had been fifty fold more numerous than
they were, there would even then have been fifty times as much work as
they could all have performed. It was amputated at night, and they were
ten minutes about it, his Lordship never uttering an expression of pain
(Southey 1903:206Ð209).
Sir Walter Scott, second only to Byron in literary popularity, went to
Waterloo at the end of July and had his {{gaudeamus|| poem, {{The
field of Waterloo|| in print by the end of the year (Sultana 1993:1).
He also published a long prose account of the trip, {{Paul|s letters to
his kinsfolk||, the following year (Scott 1816). Byron, the most famous
writer in Europe, despite professing to admire Napoleon as a hero
defying reactionary European governments, wrote an account of Wat-
erloo which was included in stanza three of his best-selling travel
poem, {{Childe Harold|s Pilgrimage||, published the following year
(Marchand 1971). Its main gesture to its author|s radicalism was that
it did not mention Wellington.
Most poignant of the visitors hastening to Waterloo for personal
reasons were the relatives of the dead and wounded and those search-
ing for news of their loved ones. It was not uncommon in the Napo-
leonic wars for women to accompany their husbands (Page 1986) or,
in days before developed medical services, to go out and nurse their
wounded after battle. Crabb Robinson who visited in August describes
seeing a wife, near the inn at which he was staying, searching the
battlefield for her dead husband (Crabb Robinson 1872). Croker
describes a woman who traveled to Waterloo with a lead coffin which
was too small for the body, so forcing her to bury her husband at
Waterloo (Croker 1884, Vol 1:74). The most aristocratic and tragic of
these family mercy visitors was Lady De Lancey, married only six
weeks before Waterloo, who went out to tend her dying husband and
buried him in the Reformed Church a mile from Brussels on the
136 WAR AND THANATOURISM

Louvain road. Her poignant memoir was not published until after her
own death (De Lancey 1906).
After these two groups came the recreational tourist 1815Ð1914.
Within weeks of the battle the fashionable flocked to France and
Belgium ({{All the worlds in Paris|| was a popular song of the period),
secure in the knowledge that both countries were under five years
occupation by the allies (later commuted to two), and Waterloo
became a part of the tour, a must-see trophy attraction. If authenticity
is the mark of tourism appeal, Waterloo offered it in unlimited
amounts. To see, within months or a few years of the battle, where
Napoleon|s final assault had been repulsed, to visit the blasted ruins
of Hougomont farm which the Scots and Coldstream Guards had held
under fierce attack for the whole period of the battle, to touch the
tree under which Wellington was said to have issued commands*
later cut down and shipped to England by a souvenir collector*was
to be about as close as one could get to the stuff of authentic history.
Even King George IV, somewhat belatedly in 1821, went as a tourist
to the battlefield, conducted by probably the best guide anyone could
get, the Duke of Wellington (Hibbert 1973).
The scale of the immediate tourist invasion was captured by the
journalist, John Scott, editor of the Morning Star, who traveled to
Waterloo via Ostend and Bruges a few weeks after the battle. He
marveled at the effect the English influx was making on the local
people:
It certainly was calculated to strike their feelings . . . to hear all their inn
years re-echoing with the wheels of English equipages, and the strange
voices of British servants; to see their roads choaked [sic] and their streets
crowded with a pouring tide of British visitors . . . The cause of this visiting
on so large a scale, was well known to involve no motives of gain or necessity,
but to arise from a public enthusiasm relative to grand military achieve-
ments, the pride as well as the expence of which were acknowledged chiefly
to belong to our nation (Scott 1816:22Ð23).

Scott was able to provide a rudimentary profile of the visitors because

at his hotel in Bruges guests had to fill in forms detailing gender, age,
profession, and residence, which were daily examined by the police.
This invaluable register, possibly the first visitor survey ever recorded,
enabled Scott to ascertain the extent to which Waterloo was the {{main
purpose of visit||:
Many of them . . . had put down the precise point of their destination, in the
words, {{Field of battle, near Waterloo||. There were whole columns of those
very familar patronymics, the Johnsons, Roberts, Davises, and Jacksons,
coupled with Highgate, Pancras, Camberwell, and even some of the streets
of London, such as the Strand, Oxford Road, and Charing Cross, as the
places of their domiciles. These will remain in the archives of the police at
Brussels, as the memorials of a most extraordinary time (Scott 1816:40).

Waterloo was apparently attracting not just the aristocratic traveler,

but the London lower middle classes. For some visitors the rather
featureless appearance of the landscape over which the battle had
been fought was a disappointment. Henry Crabb Robinson who visited
 A. V. SEATON 137

the battlefield with his friend Thomas Naylor on August 14th com-
mented:
Not all of the vestiges of conflict were removed. There were arms of trees
hanging down, shattered by cannon balls, and not yet cut off. And there
were ruined or burned cottages in many places, and marks of bullets and
balls on both houses and trees; but I saw nothing in particular to impress
me . . . A more uninteresting country, or one more fit for a {{glorious victory||,
being flat and almost without trees, than that round Waterloo, cannot be
imagined (Crabb Robinson, Vol 1:260).
Byron made much the same point about the discrepancy between the
historic importance of the battle and its featureless setting (Byron
1973Ð1982). Other visitors in the two decades after the battle who
kept accounts, some of which were not published until years after
their deaths, included Major W.G. Frye (1908), Robert Hills (1816),
James Mitchell (1816), James Simpson (1816), Miss Berry (1866),
Edward Stanley (1907), later Bishop of Norwich, the Capel family who
had been living in Brussels for a year before the battle (Marquess of
Anglesey 1955), and an anonymous Scotsman (Anon 1828). But this
was only the beginning. Throughout the century Waterloo attracted
continuous volumes of tourists. In the 1830s English stage coach
owners based in Brussels advertised trips there. Cook began taking
parties in the 1850s (Brendon 1991) and still had one day trips to
Waterloo in the 1920s when the battlefields of the First World War
were more popular.
Few tourists actually stayed at Waterloo although there was a hotel
near the Butte de Lion by the 1840s. For most Waterloo was typically
a day or half day trip from Brussels, or a stopping-off attraction on a
longer tour of Belgium, France, and the Rhine. Two English mail
coaches ran to Waterloo from Brussels in the 1850s (Murray 1858).
In the 1860s the Hotel de L|Europe in Brussels had daily excursions
which left with the mails to Waterloo at 9:30 and returned in time for
table d|hote at 5. Private carriages could be hired at 27 francs a day for
the trip (Bradshaw 1866). Similar arrangements still existed at the
turn of the century when a four horse coach left every weekday in
summer from Brussels at a quarter to nine having collected passengers
from the main hotels. It took 3 hours to get to Waterloo and left at
4:30, giving guests the opportunity to be back for dinner (Ward Lock
1898). An alternative, after the 1850s, was to take the train to Braine
L|Alleud, the station nearest the battle site, and change to horsedrawn
omnibus, or in the early 20th century, a steam tram (Black 1906). By
the first decade of the century the motor car became available to
those wishing to make an excursion to Waterloo (Figure 1).
A tourism industry quickly developed to service the demand. Local
peasants set up stalls and sold relics and mementoes immediately
after the battle including buttons, boots, badges, and bits of uniform
(Hibbert 1969:217). Croker who visited Waterloo on July 22nd, a
month after the battle, witnessed this commerce:
On several parts of the field we saw people searching for some remains of
plunder, but they had not got much, as the whole had already been carefully
gleaned over by the peasants; two boys had two English Lifeguardsmen|s
138 WAR AND THANATOURISM

Figure 1. Tourists at Waterloo, in 1905

swords. All the peasants of Mont St. Jean and Waterloo have collected great
quantities of spoil*clothes, swords, helmets, cuirasses, crosses of the Legion
of Honor, etc. which they offer to you for sale. At first these things were
bought by the curious cheap enough; now the purchasers are more numerous
and the commodity rare, and therefore their prices are much enhanced.
(Croker 1884, Vol 1:73).
As stocks of relics were exhausted, a thriving industry in fakes grew
up. Most guidebooks warned against them and opinion varied on
where they were made. In the 1830s these early artifacts of {{fake
authenticity|| were said to be manufactured at nearby factories in
Liege (Thorold 1836), in the 1860s at Nivelles (Bradshaw 1866), and
at the end of the century Thomas Cook told his clients they were
made in Birmingham and Sheffield (Cook 1901). Sellers of spurious
buttons even began anticipating tourists| scepticism by saying, {{This
is the real one; the manufactured button has the eagle|s head turned
the other way|| (Thorold 1836:280). Nevertheless, some were fooled
and in the 1850s bullets and buttons from the coats of the dead were
still bought by the credulous (Mackay 1852), although some buyers
may have been like Lieutenant T.E. Knox, a tourist who on his trip in
1842, bought a few relics suspecting them to be spurious. {{in order to
get rid of the importunities of the relic sellers|| (St. Helier 1909:192).
 A. V. SEATON 139

Guides offered their services, the most famous of whom was Edward
Cotton who had fought at Waterloo, and established his own museum
and hotel under the Butte de Lion, where he exhibited Waterloo relics
including skulls from the battlefield. He wrote a much reprinted book
of memoirs, {{A voice from Waterloo||, which is still seen as a valuable
eyewitness account by military historians. In 1914, long after his
death, his museum/hotel appeared in international hotel guides:
Hotel de Musee: at the foot of the Lion|s Mount in the center of the
battlefield. Good situation, comfort and moderate prices. Lunches and din-
ners at fixed prices or a la carte. Omnibus meets all trains at Braine l|Alleud.
E. Veraleweck-Browne, proprietor (Stubbs 1914:492).
Another old soldier who became a guide was Sergeant Munday of the
7th Hussars who was employed by Cooks during their second European
tour. In addition to genuine old soldiers it is said that many local
people, posing as eyewitnesses or participants of Waterloo, offered
their services to tourists late into the 19th century and guidebooks
warned tourists of them. In the 1850s Murray|s guide named 4 reliable
Belgian guides.
Evidence of the tourist interest in Waterloo can be inferred by the
number of guidebooks to Belgium printed in the 19th century, all of
which typically devoted many pages to the battle, describing not just
the place but the main details of the action itself. Nearly all went to
several editions, especially those of Baedeker and Murray. Boyce,
who produced the first English guidebook to Belgium (Boyce 1815),
accelerated its publication to make sure it came out by the end of
1815. There was also, as described later, a vigorous trade in prints
and illustrated travel books on Waterloo. In short, Waterloo generated
a popular, new kind of battlefield tourism which changed the itinerary
of British travel in Europe, particularly for those visiting the low
countries:
Before 1815 Waterloo was virtually unknown; for few tourists bothered with
the country south of Brussels. Having already done Antwerp, Ghent, Bruges
to the north, having gone to Courtrai in the west . . . and to Tournai . . . they
usually turned east for Louvain, Spa, and Aix (Hibbert 1969:218).

The Sight Sacralization of Waterloo

To the question of what gave Waterloo its enormous potency, not
just as a historical occurrence, but as a tourism attraction, a common
sense answer seems obvious. Waterloo was a major historical water-
shed which resulted in the overthrow of Napoleon and secured the
freedom of Europe from a French domination which had lasted almost
20 years. This is certainly the kind of answer the historian, Creasey,
author of a classic military history ranking Waterloo as one of the 15
decisive battles of the world (Creasey 1851), might have offered. Such
an interpretation provides a plausible explanation of the historical
significance of Waterloo, but it does not account for its success as an
attraction. Fourteen of Creasey|s other battles, including Blenheim,
140 WAR AND THANATOURISM

have never generated tourism on any great scale. Nor did any of
Wellington|s earlier victories in the Peninsula which had originally
established his reputation. Nor have any single battles since, if one
excludes those of the American Civil War and the First World War,
because they were diffused geographical networks, rather than single
sites. The answer lies, rather, not just in the historic importance of
the battle, but in the nature of the tourism process itself*how it is
constructed, influenced, and sustained.
The work of Dean MacCannell, especially his well-known book,
{{The Tourist|| (1976), offers insights of some relevence in under-
standing the development of Waterloo as a tourism magnet. His
central argument is that the potency of an object offered to the tourist
gaze depends upon a sequential {{marking|| process, by which it is
made meaningful, through progressive semiotic separation and dif-
ferentiation from others, in a way which results in its {{sight sac-
ralization|| as a quasi-holy object in the eyes of the pilgrim-tourist.
The sacralization of Waterloo began from virtually the day after the
battle and the ways in which it evolved, and is still evolving, provide a
paradigmatic case of the marking processes described by MacCannell.
Hardly an entity on a map before 1815, Waterloo came to resonate
throughout the world until it transcended its status as a historical
event with a specific location. Then it metamorphosed into a universal
myth that was ultimately divorced from its particular, material fea-
tures and came to stand as a general sign, in the sense Roland Barthes
(Barthes 1972) anatomized, for terminal disaster and judicial nemesis.
To {{meet one|s Waterloo|| has entered the lexicon of international
myth (and in 1974 the international pop music hit parade; in 1997,
there are still multilingual translations of Abba|s hit on Internet). The
only comparable modern event to achieve such mythic dimensions, as
the German poet Enzensberger (1981) has brilliantly evoked, is the
sinking of the Titanic in 1912. Such processes of sight sacralization
develop through 5 distinct marking processes (MacCannell 1976), all
of which can be seen at work in the progressive sacralization of
Waterloo.

Naming. Waterloo is now such a household name that is difficult

to conceive of a time when its name was not settled*and even harder
to understand that for some it is still not. The problematic of its
naming has something to do with the battle|s spatial features, and of
allied politics after it had been won. In the past, battles rarely took
place within discrete, precisely named geographical locations. They
often raged, for both humanitarian and tactical reasons, away from
towns and population concentrations, over open countryside, anony-
mous rural spaces that had no precise name on a map. Waterloo is
one such example. The battle did not actually take place at Waterloo,
but 3 miles away from the hamlet of that name which was, in itself,
little more than a roadside tavern in the forest of Soigny where
Wellington spent the night before the battle (Figure 2). The closest
point to Wellington|s position at the start of the final action was a
farm called Mont St Jean which is the name the French came to
 A. V. SEATON 141

Figure 2. The Inn of Waterloo on the Eve of Battle. Aquatint 1817

call the battle, and one which would probably have gained general
acceptance had Napoleon won (Figure 3).
A more contentious problematic concerning the naming of Wat-
erloo is what was named. What is a battle? When and why are engage-
ments between the same protagonists which are close in time
differentiated from one another as separate battles? When and why
are they aggregated together as one continuing one? The action known

Figure 3. Farm of Mont St Jean, c. 1840

142 WAR AND THANATOURISM

as Waterloo was only the final point of a comparatively short, three

day campaign which consisted of 4 interdependent actions between
the Allies and the French which all came to be named as separate
battles (Ligny, Quatre Bas, Wavre, and Waterloo), rather than phases
of one battle. They could have been aggregated under some such
name as the Battle of Flanders or the Battle of Belgium. One can
think of much more extensive actions where were aggregated in this
way. The Battle of the Somme lasted for 3 years across a front 180
miles long, but is now seen as one battle, though more knowledgeable
specialists may discriminate between the first, second, and third Bat-
tles of the Somme. The Battle of Britain lasted 3 months, involved
hundreds of separate air engagements and took place over several
English counties but was named as one battle. By contrast Waterloo
raged for only 8 hours over an area of not much more than 12 square
miles, and one of the actions between the Prussians and the French
which vitally affected its outcome and could easily be conceptualized
as part of the overall day|s action, was subsequently {{ringed off|| and
counted as a separate one, the battle of Wavre. The naming of Wat-
erloo as a discrete battle, differentiated and entirely separate from
the other actions, and following them as a climactic event, had the
effect of constructing it as the major battle. In so doing it implicitly
privileged the role of Wellington since Waterloo was the name of the
inn at which he had stayed the night before the battle and, in per-
ceptual terms, it also priviliged the British, rather than the Hano-
verians, Belgians, Dutch, and Brunswickers in the allied army.
It seems that, to some extent, this process happened by design.
When Wellington met Blucher after the battle at the farm of La Belle
Alliance where Blucher had slept the night before (Figure 4), the

Figure 4. The Inn of La Belle Alliance Aquatint 1817

 A. V. SEATON 143

latter proposed that they should call the battle Belle Alliance, because
the name emphasized the alliance of all the nations in the allied army.
Wellington stalled and then chose Waterloo as the name. The social
construction and naming of battlefields is not, therefore, an obvious
or innocent matter. The battle boundaries designated for naming and
the names given to them have consequences in shaping perceptions
of what took place, including those by tourists. Had the three-day
campaign which culminated in the action called Waterloo been con-
ceptualized and named as a single battle it would have tended to
spread the perceptual credit among all its winning protagonists more
equally. In the first action at Ligny the Prussians fought an important,
if unsuccessful crucial holding operation which slowed Napoleon|s
advance on Brussels, while Wellington, after a hurried departure from
Brussels, was fighting another one nearby at Quatre Bas. At Wavre
two days later, while Waterloo was raging, the Prussians fought ano-
ther diversionary action, which drew a crucial part of Napoleon|s army
away from the main engagement. However, by being categorized
individually and sequentially as minor skirmishes preceding in time
the {{great battle||, Ligny and Wavre became marginalized as {{warm-
ups|| to the main show, rather than being seen, as they might have
been, as vital holding and diversionary actions which affected the
outcome of the final engagement at Waterloo. Another effect of
naming the three day campaign as one entity would have been to
widen geographical perceptions of its dimensions. Today Ligny,
Quatre Bas, and Wavre are little visited because of the preeminence
of Waterloo.
There are signs that this dominance is being contested by more
than the French and Prussians. The revisionist Napoleonic historian,
David Hamilton-Williams (1994) indexes Waterloo as {{see Mont St.
Jean||. Elsewhere, in his seminal {{Waterloo New Perspectives: The
great battle reappraised|| (1993), the index entry under Waterloo
cites just one page in the book, {{Waterloo, village inn, 256||. Further,
in a third book on the fall of Napoleon, he calls the chapter which
deals with the Waterloo campaign {{The road to Mont St. Jean|| (1994).
Framing and Elevation. MacCannell defines framing and elevation
as {{The putting on display of an object*placement in a case, on a
pedestal or opened up for visitation. Framing is the placing of an
official boundary around an object|| (1976:44). The framing and elev-
ation of a battlefield presents particular problems in sight sac-
ralization since the primary features that determined its pristine
status as a battlefield, rather than a piece of land*the soldiers, the
dead, the paraphernalia of warfare*have long disappeared, and often
the physical features of the landscape change beyond recognition over
time (the original features of naval actions are even more evanescent
which is why the Armada and Trafalgar have had limited tourism
consequences). It is not possible to place a battle in a case, frame it,
or put precise boundaries round it.
It is possible to elevate and frame it through the building of monu-
mental markers on the spot of critical actions within it, which was the
first act of sight sacralization undertaken at Mont St. Jean by the
144 WAR AND THANATOURISM

Belgians between 1823Ð1826. The monument which became known

as the Mont or Butte de Lion was a huge mound crowned by a bronze
lion which was erected at the spot where the Duke of Orange was
wounded and Wellington|s army had been when the French attack
began. The mound was built up from soil to a height of 200 feet and
a circumference of about 1700 feet. The bronze lion, reached by
climbing 225 steps, weighed 22 tons and was cast out of captured
French cannon by Cockeril of Liege (Figure 5). The building was
in one sense gross vandalism which forever obliterated the original
contours of the landscape, and was said to have angered the Duke of
Wellington for that reason (St. Helier 1909). The soil excavations
necessary to form the mound lowered much of the original battlefield
and heightened it to a bizarre degree at the point where the Butte de
Lion was erected. But if its topographical effect was adverse, its visual
symbolism was to be enormous. It dominated the landscape for miles,
as it does today, and indelibly marked the battle setting, which might
otherwise have become as bland and anonymous as the sites of Crecy,
Agincourt, Malplaquet, and Mons. Once the monument was built, it
was inevitable that it would become a tourism spectacle like the Eiffel
Tower, and that restaurants, museums, and hotels would spring up as
they did and still do (along with a panorama, housed in a rotunda and
built just before the First World War; a modern visitor center built in
the last 20 years; and numerous gift shops). Through its position
and design the allies began their appropriation of Waterloo, a fact
recognized by the French who fired on it on their way back from the
siege of Antwerp in 1832, but only succeeded in breaking off its tail
and damaging the neck; the marks of the ball were still visible in the
1840s and were something of an additional tourism {{sight|| (St Helier
1909).

Figure 5. The Lion Monument, c. 1830

 A. V. SEATON 145

The Butte de Lion was the beginning of a framing and elevation

process which finally came to comprise 135 monuments and physical
markers (Speechaert and Baecker 1990). The others included monu-
ments to each of the armies which participated in the battle, mem-
orials to individual regiments and soldiers, and the erecting of plaques
on farms and buildings which had been strategic points during the
battle. Despite protest, the French were not allowed to share in these
commemorative displays until the allied markers were well advanced.
The most recent French plaque, on the farm wall at Hougomont, was
not installed until 1990.

Enshrinement. The third phase of MacCannell|s marking model,

enshrinement, refers to the point at which {{the framing material that
is used has itself entered the first stage of sacralization|| (MacCannell
1976). He gives as examples buildings erected to house important
works of art or relics which themselves become attractions. An early
example of this enshrinement was Waterloo Church where the British
deposited battle standards, military penants, and regimental colours
and placed memorial plaques to the dead (Figure 6). Prior to 1815
this church was a modest one of no great architectural significance.
Its later status as the Chapel of Waterloo turned it into an iconic
shrine and it was rebuilt in 1855 on a somewhat grander scale as a

Figure 6. The Church at Waterloo. Lithograph by Gerard, c. 1830

146 WAR AND THANATOURISM

symbol of this importance with a subsidy of 25,000 francs from the

British Government, on condition that commemorative inscriptions
in honor of the British dead should figure upon it (Libert 1915:31).
In addition, many of the original marking monuments, including
the Butte de Lion, became increasingly elaborated, commonly through
being ringed off in decorative wrought iron, giving them some aes-
thetic distinction of their own. Pictures of Waterloo throughout the
century show how the central area around the great mound gradually
became less open, more cultivated and manicured, more networked
with markers with their own designer features, which tended to make
them signifieds, as much as signifiers of the events they marked. This
tendency for the frame to compete with the picture can also be seen
in the building housing the huge panorama of the battle, painted just
before the First World War by the French artist Louis Demoulin
(Pleunes 1970). Measuring 110 by 12 m, it was and is housed in a
Rotunda below the Butte which has some pretensions to architectural
impact.

Mechanical Reproduction. One of MacCannell|s most original

insights in his sacralization model of tourism attractions was his
critique of Benjamin|s (1970) famous assertion that the potency of
cultural works is diluted if they are frequently reproduced. Mac-
Cannell argued just the opposite, that mechanical reproduction of
cultural phenomena, including tourism destinations and attractions,
intensifies and elevates, rather than diminishes them, and is an essen-
tial condition of their sacralization.
The data of cultural experiences are somewhat fictionalized, idealized, or
exaggerated models of social life that are in the public domain, in film,
fiction, political rhetoric, small talk, comic strips, expositions, etiquette and
spectacles. The first part is the representation of an aspect of life on stage,
film, etc. (1976:23).

Waterloo is a pre-eminent example of what one would now call the

media role in sight sacralization. The sustained reproduction of Wat-
erloo through the printed word and graphic image was one of the
reasons that it achieved a unique place in the public imagination.
This reproduction was, and has been sustained, at an unprecedented
level in books, journalism, and illustration. Within 25 years of the
battle, the Dutch author of a topographical history of Belgium and
Holland was writing:
It would be quite superfluous, the attempt of giving even a slight sketch of
the eventful details of this battle, when there are so many graphic descrip-
tions now extant, minutely portraying in vivid colors the momentous actions
of that triumphant day . . . (Van Kampen 1840:202).

Fifty years later another historian noted that, {{ . . . the literature of

the Waterloo campaign would fill a library|| (James 1887:iii). Even a
modern commentator suggests that the flow has still not dried up:
{{[Waterloo] prompted the production of a larger number of books
than any other campaign, both histories and reminiscences|| (Hay-
thornthwaite 1973:5). This unprecedented coverage of Waterloo in
 A. V. SEATON 147

print was not just due to human volition. It was made possible because
the battle, unlike others before, coincided with advances in processes
of mechanical production which increased the speed of printing and
quantities in which the printed word could be disseminated. The
Napoleonic wars happened in the first great age of the newspaper in
Britain (Andrews 1869) which were vitally stimulated by the printing
developments. In November 1814 the Times introduced steam print-
ing which enabled 1,000 copies an hour to be produced instead of 250,
a maximal number which had lasted since the days of Caxton. In May
1815 the number of newspapers in Britain peaked at 254, with 55 in
London, 122 in England and Wales, 26 in Scotland, and 49 in Ireland
(Andrews 1869, Vol 2:81Ð82). The wars were a major factor in building
their readership and the expansion was maintained afterwards:
Now came the peace, and interest in the newspaper would naturally have
abated but that the public had got used to it. It was no longer a luxury*it
had insensibly grown into an actual necessity of life. Men had begun to feel
towards it as towards a companion, and could not be parted from it; they
could not live alone again and without their newspaper . . . (Andrews 1869,
Vol 2:83Ð84).

One of the most interesting foreign newspapers was L|Oracle, a popu-

lar Brussels daily and the one published closest to the battle field. It
was read by Belgians and many English tourists in Brussels. The issues
for 1815 provide a unique account of conditions and opinion before,
during, and after the battle.
As well as advances in printing technology, major innovations in
the making of paper revolutionized supply and cheapened its cost.
Prior to 1800 paper was made by hand out of rags, a relatively expens-
ive commodity. In the first two decades of the new century methods of
making paper from previously unprocessed vegetable fibres including
straw and wood pulp, and also old paper, provided cheaper, more
accessible substitutes which replaced the old materials in mass pub-
lishing. In addition the first paper-making machines were introduced
which replaced the slowness of the old hand made techniques (Smith
and Son nd).
These technological innovations afforded the material conditions
for the immense expansion of publishing after Waterloo. Poetical
celebrations of Waterloo flowed from the presses. The name of Word-
sworth could be added to Scott, Byron, and Southey among well-known
poets whose Waterloo celebrations were widely disseminated, as well
as numerous forgotten, often anonymous, lesser figures. Waterloo
was also celebrated in the cheap broadsides and ballads sold by the
thousand in the streets until about 1870 (Ashton 1888:303Ð304). Wat-
erloo was also reproduced in fiction and several 19th century best
sellers helped to sacralize its image. Foremost among these classics
in England was Thackeray|s {{Vanity Fair||, and in France, Victor
Hugo|s {{Les Miserables||. Hugo went to live near Waterloo to research
his novel and it is said that he finished it in the Hotel des Colonnes
at the crossroads of Mont St Jean (long since demolished). A less well-
known work, hugely popular in its day and widely translated, was
{{Waterloo|| by the Alsatian collaborators, Alexandre Chatrian, and
148 WAR AND THANATOURISM

Emile Erckmann which went into many editions after its publication
in 1865.
The technologies also heralded the beginning of the cheap guide-
book era which built to enormous proportions during the 19th century.
Before Waterloo no English guidebook had ever been produced on
Flanders or Belgium. By autumn 1815 Boyce had brought out his
{{Belgian Tourist|| and, within 20 years, this was followed by guides
by Galignani (1822), Campbell (1815) and in the 1830s, by the first
Murray|s (1836) guide to the continent which featured Waterloo. In
1832 the battle was featured in a revised edition of Starke|s (1832)
popular guide to Europe which had first appeared at the turn of the
century. In the second half of the century Waterloo was even more
prominently featured in the guides published by Baedeker (various
dates), Black (various dates), Ward Lock (1898 and various dates),
and Thomas Cook (1901 and various dates).
The same mechanical printing advances which helped to expand
newspapers and books were matched by advances in mechanical repro-
duction of the visual image. The age of Waterloo coincided with major
innovations in aquatint and lithography which improved the accuracy,
beauty, speed, and quantity of reproducing pictures. The result was
that many illustrated books were published celebrating Waterloo and
its landscape which would have been impossible after earlier wars. The
most beautiful and important of these view books were inventoried in
Abbey|s (1953) catalogues of aquatint and lithographic works. After
the 1830s the introduction of steel engraving expanded the quantities
and fidelity of illustration still further. The new techniques facilitated
an enormous tourism trade at Waterloo for the Brussels| lithographers
Gerard, Jobard, and Mardou who began in the 1820s publishing views
of the battlefield and its environs. These were normally published as
sets of 12 lithographs with a map of the battlefield, and sold in such
quantities that they were frequently redrawn and republished. Today
the various editions provide valuable information on how the Waterloo
site changed over the 40 years that they were published. Another
prolific source of illustration in aquatint, lithography and engravings
was caricature which, as a graphic form, reached its height during the
Napoleonic wars. Several volumes have been devoted to graphic satire
on Napoleon (Ashton 1884; Broadley 1911; Henderson 1912) and
Dorothy George (1938Ð1954), in her majestic work on the British
Museum|s holdings, has inventoried every caricature of the period in
detail. Many of these feature Wellington and Waterloo. In the last
three decades of the century, photography began to replace engravings
as the dominant form of graphic reproduction and by the turn of the
century the introduction of the postcard provided a new medium
which has since resulted in the dispersion of millions of new images
of Waterloo.
The role of the press, the book, the print, and the postcard in
Waterloo|s sacralization pose a question about differentiations made
in MacCannell|s typology, and the uses made of it by scholars since.
Fine and Haskell (1985), for instance, have argued that framing and
elevation are achieved by the oral commentary of guides at heritage
sites in America. On the evidence of Waterloo it can be argued that
 A. V. SEATON 149

they are achieved as much by the printed word and graphic image
consumed both before the visit, during it (through souvenir books),
and after it, as through the influence of guides on site. Mechanical
reproduction may, in short, be seen as part of the framing and elev-
ation process.

Social Reproduction. The final phase of MacCannell|s sacralization

model is social reproduction which refers to the representation of
cultural objects in everyday practice away from the places where they
originated. The most powerful symbolic objects and events do not
remain as distant artifacts or remote representations: they are repro-
duced in the social environment and become part of the everyday
world of people. As such, throughout the 19th century Waterloo was
a singular instance of social reproduction. It was disseminated in an
astonishing variety of manifestations: in the naming or roads, pubs,
streets, bridges, boots, products, museums, monuments, in the exhi-
bition of artifacts, and in the prints people hung on their walls. As the
author of an important history of London dryly remarked
, . . our countrymen were somewhat profuse in applying the names {{Wel-
lington|| and {{Waterloo|| to all and every sort of thing*Wellington streets,
Wellington inns, Wellington boots; Waterloo hotels, Waterloo academies,
Waterloo coaches, and Waterloo bonnets*and when at a later date that
class of conveyance was introduced, they, . . . adopted {{Waterloo|| as the
designation of a line of omnibuses, and at last a railway station (Walford
nd, Vol 3:293).

This social reproduction was partly engineered by the state, municipal

governments, and commercial organizations cashing in, but it was also
a genuine expression of popular feeling. Rowland Hill, the celebrated
preacher had a transparency of Waterloo painted and placed in his
chapel (Walford nd:66). In 1816 Napoleon|s military carriage, cap-
tured in Belgium, was exhibited in the London Museum, Piccadilly,
where people queued to pay a shilling to see it from 10 till dusk
and from 6Ð9 in the evening (Ackermann 1816). Madame Tussauds
included a variety of Waterloo exhibits throughout the century, includ-
ing the effigies of Wellington and Napoleon, and two of the latter|s
carriages (Timbs 1867:820). Military medals were struck and, for the
first time in any battle, all ranks received one (Fortescue 1934).
Monuments to Wellington were erected in many cities, the first being
the Achilles Monument in Hyde Park unveiled on 18th June 1822. It
was cast by Westmacott from cannon seized at Vittoria, Toulouse,
and Waterloo. Another equestrian statue of Wellington costing
£36,000 was designed by Matthew Wyatt in gun metal at the entrance
to Hyde Park. Virtually every town had its Waterloo or Wellington
street, road, or terrace. There was a Wellington Quay in Dublin, a
Wellington Square in Oxford. In 1851 there were 22 pubs named
the Duke of Wellington (Weale 1851:227Ð228). Furthermore, as the
Empire expanded there were towns called Wellington or Waterloo in
Canada, New Zealand, and Australia.
One indication of people|s familiarity with Waterloo was the num-
ber of places which were said to resemble it. One of these, according
150 WAR AND THANATOURISM

to the Earl of Stanhope (1888:254), was Strathfieldsaye. Another was

a place near Cambridge noted by Crabb Robinson:
{{I saw Waterloo some years afterwards . . . and I can bear witness to the
fact of the great resemblance which the aspect of the neighborhood of
Waterloo bears to a village a mile from Cambridge, on the Bury road||
(1872, Vol 1:260).

Similarly, in Northamptonshire a place which resembled Waterloo

was converted into a tourism attraction:
On the road between Finedon and Thrapston in the Parish of Burton
Latimer just where it touches Woodford and Great Addington it is known
as the Burton Round House. It had a circular viewing platform which
simulated the effect of panoramas and dioramas. It was built by General
Arbuthnot of Woodford House after Wellington had noted that the country-
side round about resembled Waterloo (Northampton County Magazine,
date unknown).

In summary, Waterloo entered the popular psyche of the British at

home and overseas, not just through the media, but through taken-for-
granted objects in their everyday environment and the social practices
associated with them.

Social Circumstances and Sight Sacralization. Sight sacralization

creates the disposition to visit a place but does not guarantee it will
be visited. Dispositions become action when the social circumstances
of motivated travelers, including their financial means and access to
transport tie-ups between them and their destination goals, are favor-
able. Waterloo took place at a time when social circumstances were
very favorable to travel. The Industrial Revolution had started to
produce a rising middleclass with a hunger for travel which had been
thwarted for almost 20 years. Between 1799 and 1815 the Napoleonic
wars had made Europe a no-go area for British travelers with the
exception of two short periods in 1802 and 1814. Waterloo reopened
the floodgates of travel just as the Peaces of Amiens in 1802 and Paris
in 1814 had done. According to Coolidge,
{{The great rush of English tourists came when the Continent was reopened
after the battle of Waterloo|| (1888:60).

Unlike other famous battle locations of the Napoleonic wars (e.g.,

battlefields in the Iberian Peninsular where Wellington had enjoyed
unbroken success between 1807 and 1812), Waterloo was also near to
the British mainland and thus within easy reach of nationalistic tour-
ists. Access was made even easier by transport improvements which
reduced traveling time. In 1812 the steam boat was invented and
quickly revolutionized the speed and ease by the direct route into
Belgium via the port of Ostend, and by the more indirect one via
Calais. By the mid-century the development of railways in England
and on the continent produced a comparable revolution in overland
traveling times from London to the channel ports, and from the
channel ports to Belgium. The station at Braine L|Alleud, built in the
 A. V. SEATON 151

1850s, became the main terminal for reaching the Butte de Lion, a
mile and a half away.

The Role of Ideology in the Sacralization of Battlefield Attractions. Finally,

it is possible to view the persistence of Waterloo as a tourism des-
tination throughout the 19th century as a function of ideological
conditions which have been mentioned indirectly already. The Battle
of Waterloo acted as a symbolic military peak experience for the
British throughout the century. Its location became at once a shrine
of exemplary pathos and nationalistic triumphalism within an imperi-
alistic context which was increasingly orchestrated by the state. The
patriotic pride of the English in Waterloo never dimmed throughout
a century which ended at the high point of British imperialism. A
comment by a holidaying vicar in 1844 is representative of sentiments
expressed by many throughout the century:
It is almost superfluous to mention that about twelve miles from Brussels,
on the road to Naumur is the field of Waterloo. All that can be said in the
way of description, respecting this sacred spot, is familiar as {{household
words|| to every lover of his country; but to experience that thrilling interest,
that almost stifling emotion, which that eventful scene of strife cannot fail
to excite, he must pace the aisles of the little church hung with memorials
of the best and bravest of England|s sons; he must stand on the hill where
Wellington stood, with his eyes turned towards the road along which Napo-
leon FLED (Trollope 1842:96).

The status of Waterloo as an attraction illustrates how ideology impacts

upon the possibilities of military history as a tourism option. The attrac-
tion of Waterloo was not just influenced by nationalistic ideology
embodied in numerous forms of mechanical and social reproduction,
its construction and layout were a material embodiment of that ideol-
ogy, and the tourism practices associated with visiting it became an
enactment and intensification of that ideology. The guidebook way of
seeing Waterloo was either arrival at Waterloo to see the inn where
Wellington spent the night and the British chapel opposite it and/or to
go to the Lion Monument (an animal which British people saw as British
rather than Belgian) to marvel at its sky-grabbing testament to the
allied victory. Through tourism, as well as many other practices, Wat-
erloo came to be positioned*physically and metaphorically*at the
center of British Imperial culture in a century that provided no other
comparable military triumphs to mythologize. No English visitor went
home from Waterloo without having his/her notions of British great-
ness, heroism, and morality confirmed and intensified.

CONCLUSION
The sight sacralization of tourism at Waterloo was thus a function
of marking processes, social conditions, and ideological currents. The
combination of MacCannell|s marking processes acting on ideo-
logically programmed, and socially responsive, travelers meant that
Waterloo came to assume the status of a national shrine. It entered
that realm of sedimented common sense and taken-for-granted knowl-
152 WAR AND THANATOURISM

edge which Gramsci (1971) has identified, in his theories of ideology,

with the successful hegemonic practice of states and religious organ-
izations. Just as in Gramsci|s formulations of ideology, the hegemony
of the Catholic church in Italy was due to its power to export sym-
bolism and practices which reached deep into, and struck popular
chords within, popular consciousness at the level of everyday {{common
sense|| experience*so Waterloo, as a profound icon of triumphant
national identity, was disseminated through a whole range of sig-
nifying practices which correspond to MacCannell|s marking
processes. Waterloo came to be visited by British travelers, not so
much to see what it was like, as to celebrate what they already knew.
The case history of Waterloo thus illustrates the general utility of
MacCannell|s sacralization model, not just to the analysis of con-
temporary attractions, but to the historical evolution of a destination.
It also suggests a number of refinements to it which may advance our
understanding of the process. Four modifications to the model as
originally proposed may be suggested.
One, MacCannell suggested that sacralization consists of five dis-
tinct marking processes. The early Waterloo data suggests that the
sequence may be abbreviated to just two: naming and mechanical
reproduction. The immediate spate of visitation to Waterloo, in the
weeks and months after the battle, took place before any significant
framing and elevation, enshrinement or social reproduction had taken
place. The main monument at Waterloo was not built until 1822 and,
for the early visitors, the site presented little more than a chaotic
landscape of churned-up fields, blasted fauna and flora, and the scat-
tered detritus of battle. The sacralization agents had been the press
and the other graphic media of reproduction which had trumpeted
the scale and nature of the victory to an eager British public, and
those throughout other European countries. The impact of media
coverage upon the popularity of thanatourism sites has been seen as
a critical factor in recent analyses of the phenomenon (Foley and
Lennon 1996). Related to the problem of sequencing is that of dif-
ferentiating the five marking processes from one another. On the
basis of the Waterloo case it can be argued that the products of
mechanical reproduction, circulating before an attraction is visited,
elevate and frame an attraction, irrespective of what physical markers
have been put in place at the site of the attraction itself. The work of
Fine and Haskell (1985) has demonstrated how an oral commentary
may sacralize a sight verbally during the visitor experience. The
Waterloo case suggests that verbal precoding, achieved through textual
materials absorbed before a visit, may achieve the same function.
Two, a corollary of the first point is that there is no evidence from
Waterloo that the marking stages happen in any specific order, except
naming which almost always occurs at the outset. Still, as already
noted, there may be disagreement and ideologically-derived con-
testation about what name should be chosen which may persist over
a long period. At Waterloo many new markers were being added (and
still are, particularly French ones, which were disallowed in the past)
long after the social and mechanical reproduction of Waterloo were
well advanced.
 A. V. SEATON 153

Three, the analysis of sacralization at Waterloo suggests that fram-

ing and elevation, and enshrinement, are less important in generating
tourism than naming and social and mechanical reproduction. Though
the former may animate and heighten the actual experience once a
tourist is there, it is the other three marking processes which propel
visitors in the first place. Mechanical reproduction and, in particular,
social reproduction, as the most difficult kind of marking to achieve,
may well be the key sacralization factors in the success of major
international attractions.
Four, MacCannell|s model was primarily developed in the context
of objects as tourism attractions (the Mona Lisa, Napoleon|s hat, and
Moon rock were used as exemplars of the attraction marking process).
The extension of sight sacralization to a destination, particularly a
military one, foregrounds an issue less apparent in that of objects. In
other words, sacralization operates within sociopolitical and ideo-
logical parameters of supply and demand which may mitigate the
effectivity and stability of the process. The sacralization of a military
site may be originally promoted by the partisan feeling and effort of
some group or groups, (particularly in the aftermath of victory) which
may be resisted by others. The French contested the monopoly of
allied memorials at Waterloo in the 19th century by firing on the
main Lion Monument, and also through graffitti scrawled on some of
the sacralized sights which challenged the monopolistic appropriation
by the allies of a battle in which the French had also lost tens of
thousands of soldiers. Figure 7 shows the French tourist graffitti
challenging the Allied appropriation of the Chapel of Hougomont.
There may, therefore, be variations in the disposition of tourists to
accept the ideological perspectives invested in the way an attraction
or destination is served up to them. Not everyone is affected uniformly
by the sacralization process, a truth known to the publishing company
of Baedeker, which devoted much less space to Waterloo in the French
language version of its guide to Belgium and Holland, than in the
English language version.
Moreover, sacralization, like the Gramscian notion of hegemony is
a dynamic, never-completed process. As the social and ideological
environments of people change*of those seeking to sacralize a sight,
as much as their audiences|*so will the constructed and received
meaning of attractions. Waterloo occupies a less central place in the
British psyche now that the imperialist ideology which helped to
populize it is in decline. In the {{new|| Europe generally, the propensity
to celebrate battles through triumphalist displays of nationalism has
waned, not just among visitors to Waterloo, but among sponsors of
modern attractions. This includes newer museums like the Caen
Memorial Museum and La Coupole in Northern France which are
based on World War themes and sites, but promoted within a discourse
of peace, reconciliation and science, rather than in stridently partisan
terms.
Historically considered, sacralization is not a monadic, linear mark-
ing sequence with some final arrival point, as MacCannell|s analysis
of modern attractions suggests, but a shifting process affected by the
relationships among groups, interacting within a changing force field
154 WAR AND THANATOURISM

Figure 7. Statue in Hougomont Chapel with Graffitti, c. 1920

of production and consumption. Sacralization is a process delimited,

not just by the social power of representation vested in the attraction
sponsor, but by the situated motives and perspectives of those to
whose gaze a sight is offered, both of which may change over time.
The 19th century visitor at Waterloo can certainly be seen, pace
MacCannell|s insightful comment on modern tourists, as a {{moral
witness|| of one of the most celebrated {{masterpieces of virtue and
viciousness|| (1976:36). But a temporal perspective discloses that the
moral drawn may vary or change among different spectators, and at
different points in history*and may ultimately need to be redrawn
or rethought, by those presiding over the sacralization process. In
years to come when tours to the moon are common, even a piece of
moon rock may be less amenable to sacralization than in MacCannell|s
example. There is a counterveiling phenomenon to sight sacralization
in the development of tourism attractions which one might call sight
secularization or sight desacralization, that tendency for what was once
seen as remarkable and unique to mutate, and, in some cases, to dim
to the gaze of the tourist, ceaselessly worked on by the exigencies of
social experience and ideology. Waterloo, while still a major attraction
today, rarely provokes the kind of euphoric triumphalism that it did
a hundred years ago*even among the British. This case study of
 A. V. SEATON 155

tourism, generated by a battle which took place almost two hundred

years ago, provides insights into the processes by which tourism attrac-
tions are sacralized, and the social and ideological climates in which
they flourish or decline, at the end of the millenium. Q

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Submitted 10 November 1997
Resubmitted 20 April 1998
Accepted 4 May 1998
Coordinating Editor: Valene L. Smith