Dark tourism is usually considered an ultramodern phenomenon; a selfie-obsessed movement propelled by cheap international flights, crumbling global politics, and post-COVID disposable income. Its roots, however, lay much deeper, submerged at least as far as the slums of Victorian London, and probably a lot deeper than that.
Abandoned
by the British Embassy in Kabul after jetting into the warzone on holiday, the
Loughborough physics accademic bivouacked himself in an United Nations safe house
among fifty others of different nationalities. Speaking to The London Times last year, the student explained that he had decided to visit Afghanistan after watching content
on YouTube. Prior to his hiding Mr. Routledge had posted photos of himself smiling
beside heavy machine guns aboard armed military convoys.
Since
his ordeal Lord Miles has rebranded his image as a YouTuber, internet
celebrity, and card-carrying war tourist. Returning to the conflict zone in
2023 for the third time Lord Miles was detained by Afghan authorities for eight
months. Undeterred by this experience, Miles described his imprisonment as “a
holiday” with a lifestyle akin to “living the lap of luxury.” Perhaps the only detail barring Miles from attempting to return to Kabul is the
obligatory immigration black-listing a prison sentence naturally occasions.
This all happened during the surgency of the vacation movement known as dark tourism. Ethically questionable tour operators across the globe offer flights and accommodation into war zones and places of recent upheaval. On the ground, guides and tour operators fix excursions and day trips. One can fire an M1 Bazooka at a cow within reach of the Killing Fields in Cambodia, dip into hot springs in radioactive Ramsar, Iran, go cherry picking just outside Chernobyl, purchase a key-ring in the Dachau Concentration Camp gift shop, or scramble down the Cu Chi Vietnamese foxholes, where US Soldiers eventually found God in the 1960s.
North Korea, East Timor, and the mountainous ethnic political tinderbox of Nagoro-Karabakh have all been ticked off the proverbial bucket list by Norwegian Erik Faarland whose next dream destination is San Fernando in the Philippines to watch locals crucified in homage to Jesus Christ. Unsurprisingly, Eriik usually travels alone, his wife preferring a paperback novel and a cocktail on the beach in Majorca to being nailed to a cross in San Fernando.
At some point the amateur anthropologist must become the budding social detective. When and where do sinister dark attractions cease to become morbid titillations satisfying instead more serious historical investigations?
“It’s not a new phenomenon,” says J. John Lennon (non-Beatle), a professor of tourism at Glasgow Caledonian University, in Scotland, who coined the term ‘dark tourism’ with a colleague in 1996, “There’s evidence that dark tourism goes back to the Battle of Waterloo, where people watched from their carriages the battle taking place.”
To
find documented evidence of dark tourism, one could do a lot worse than turning
their attention to Victorian London towards the turn of the century. Oh yes, Jack London. The city, my home city, was then a
bustling metropolis of stark contrasts as the Industrial Revolution had firmly
entrenched itself bringing prosperity to the elite, and profound social
challenges for the poor who inhabited the overcrowded slums as the city rose predatorily
above them. Nowadays the lines of poverty are less divided in London. It's all over the fucking place.
In 1902, American author Jack London decided to outfit himself as a typical London pauper and walk the mean streets of Whitechapel. Just a decade following the world’s most infamous serial killer had claimed the lives of five women on the streets in 1888, the East End of London was still one of the most dangerous districts in the world. Overcrowded housing, poor sanitation, and omnipresent poverty charactered these slums. Perhaps the greatest example of dark tourism lays within the pages of London’s seminal work published after his seven weeks living in the inner-city ghetto of London, entitled The People of the Abyss.
The themes of London’s London are bleak – destitution, inequality, and resilience. Like the dark tourist today he is traveling into an uncomfortable new world. The author is shocked at the suffering, yet heartened by the togetherness of the people."If you're in trouble," John Steinbeck once wrote, "go to the poor people - they are the only ones who will help - the only ones."
Back in London's day, around 1890, there were no tour operators, nor guides willing to enter Whitechapel. The online umbilical cord of safety afforded by social media was yet to be invented. The author struggles to find a guide or tour operator inclined to take him east. Approaching a Thomas Cook travel agent representative in the West End, the response to his request to tour the other side of the city is met with an exhalation of amazement. No bloody chance. The agent counters: ‘You can’t do it, you know,’ ‘It is so, ahem, unusual.’
Before venturing into the abyss, London stops at a
clothing store to purchase second-hand rags in order to fit in with the
locals. As the days pass he is amazed at the massive waste of human potential
wandering the streets in search for food, shelter, sleep, and work. London couldn't help but feel a
sense of sheer waste, a vast reservoir of untapped human potential trapped in a
cycle of deprivation and despair.
“Also,
as I looked at the mite of a youth with the heart of a lion, I thought, this is
the type that on occasion rears barricades and shows the world that men have
not forgotten how to die.”
Jack London, was, of course, a real warrior. His sensibilities were earnest. This is a far cry from the ‘lap of luxury’ experienced by Lord Miles at the hands of the Taliban. Yet if we substitute the written word and book for the camera and the social media platform could Lord Miles have a claim as a serious contributor to the canon of dark tourism?
It seems unlikely.
