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Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2017

« Steaming with the Orient-Express at the turning of the 20th century : the birth of new ‘travelling elites’ ? »

Nicolas Pitsos

Résumé

At the crossroads of technological advances, the advent of ‘leisure-time’ culture and the taste for Orientalism and adventure, the Orient-Express was created in 1883 by the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits (CIWL). Conceived and established by a Belgian civil engineer, Georges Nagelmackers, this luxury train offered its passengers a comfortable travel from Gare de l’Est to the Sirkeci station. Once arrived at Istanbul, royal families members, nobles, business-people, artists, diplomats were supposed to be hosted at the Pera Palace, another legendary ‘encounter arena’ bringing together members of older and new elites. The onset of the Great War in 1914 saw Orient Express services suspended. They resumed at the end of the conflict in 1918 and flourished during the interwar period. From Edmont About’s De Pontoise à Stamboul (1884), till Hercule Poirot in Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express (1934), a series of travellers real or fictional, contributed to the reputation of this train and the hotel found in its terminus. The aim of this paper is on the one hand, to study the sociological profile and social coexistence of passengers leading to the emergence of these new spaces of elites’ sociability and mobility, replacing in a certain manner at the end of the 19th century, the Grand Tour’s ritual of earlier Romantic period. On the other hand, it seeks to analyze how this socio-cultural phenomenon and its actors, have been perceived by contemporary societies, especially the French and the British ones. In order to answer to these questions, my principal sources are the archives of CIWL, travel memoirs, the Quai d’Orsay’s diplomatic archives, the articles published in the general Press, in Paris, London, or Istanbul, (The Times, Le Temps, Le Figaro, Le Matin, Stamboul, Levant Herald), as well as in specialised newspapers such as Journal des Transports, Journal des Chemis de Fer, or illustrated magazines (Tour du Monde, Le Monde Illustré, Illustrated London News) and the directories of European royalty or higher nobility such as Annuaire de Gotha, or Annuaire des Grands Cercles.
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hal-03996253 , version 1 (19-02-2023)

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  • HAL Id : hal-03996253 , version 1

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Nicolas Pitsos. « Steaming with the Orient-Express at the turning of the 20th century : the birth of new ‘travelling elites’ ? ». Elites and Leisure: arenas of encounter in Europe, 1815-1914, University of Leuven, May 2017, Leuven, Belgium. ⟨hal-03996253⟩
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