Tourism and the International Order after 1945

This chapter explores the question of how tourism contributed to global order and conflict from the end of World War II to the early twenty-first century. It begins by looking at how political regimes of the interwar period attempted to politicize tourism. After World War II, ideas about tourism as a vehicle for both individual emancipation and mutual understanding among peoples inspired considerable technocratic planning under the aegis of postwar reconstruction. This process contributed to the consolidation of a Western bloc of nations, particularly in Western Europe, and to spectacles of modernization across much of the globe. It also contributed to the rise of a global ideology of free movement, which has posed particular challenges to regimes in the democratic, socialist, and postcolonial worlds.