Constructing Ionian identities: the Ionian Islands in British official ...

This focus on difference, which included considerations of culture, morality,
religion, temperament, and political ability, was critical to British thinking about
themselves as compared with other nations and peoples. British travel writing about
the Ionian Islands, as with other parts of the world, exhibits this framework of
thinking. Though Ionians might have claimed membership of the so called
“civilised” world (for they were European), they were denigrated simply because
they were not British. Comparisons between the British and the Ionians played an
important part in the way that British and Ionian identities were understood by
travellers. For some writers, these differences also increased the ambiguity regarding
the identity and ethnicity of the Ionians. Dean MacCannell argues that “Ethnicity”
occupies the “conceptual space between bio-genetic ideas of race and sociogenetic
ideas of culture. This accounts for nineteenth century efforts to fill this space with
observations of physical traits, genetic constitution, social behaviour and moral
character”. 85
Foreign travel became a national pastime for many Britons in the nineteenth
century and visiting the Italian peninsula and Greek territories became especially
desirable as part of the effort to seek a classical and political education. Maura
O’Connor argues keeping diaries and correspondence in which travellers “chronicled
their experiences became as important as travelling itself”. 86 Upon their return to
Britain, these diaries were often published and read by an audience mainly from the
85 See Gates H. L. Jr., (ed.), Race, Writing and Difference (Chicago, 1986), p. 5; MacCannell D.,
Empty Meeting Grounds: The Tourist Papers (New York, 1992) p. 159.
86 O’Connor M., The Romance of Italy and the English Political Imagination, p14
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