Inventing the Beach: The unnatural history of a natural place (2016)

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/inventing-beach-unnatural-history-natural-place-180959538/

by softwaredoug • 6 years ago

57 24 6 years ago

In short: In the 18th and 19th century the British Elite, the most powerful back then, started to use beaches as a place to restore and rejuvenate. Then extended this to the Mediterranean and Baltic seas.

The article fails to mention that the main reason for the elite to seek solace in coastal shores was health-related: iodized fresh air on the beach helped (or at least was considered of help) with several diseases that were common back then.

EamonnMR• 6 years ago

It's kind of striking how much faith they used to put in the power of climate to affect health. Histories of the period very frequently include people moving specifically because they are told the climate will improve their health. I wonder if there was anything to it or if it was the equivalent of a fad diet.

variaga• 6 years ago

Probably a mix; for respiratory conditions, the _abysmal_ air quality in London (look up the "Great Stink" of 1858) and other industrial(izing) cities meant a move to somewhere the air was cleaner would have a rapid, measurable effect on health. (The Victorian understanding of the word "climate" would have included "air quality" as a factor.)

Other medical conditions (Cholera) that were exacerbated by poor sanitation would also show lower prevalence in the countryside, but the "climate" would be correlation, instead of causation.

And some of it was undoubtedly just a way of showing off in an "I spend 4 months a year on the French Riviera for the climate, on advice of my Doctor. PS I am wealthy enough to summer in France and have a personal Doctor." sort of way.

darkerside• 6 years ago

There's probably a conflation of "mindfulness" in there. Since it wasn't a word at the time (I would presume), the meaning of it was probably mixed into other concepts, like climate.

Sniffnoy• 6 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miasma_theory

drc500free• 6 years ago

My wife and I are moving for climate. She has some rare diseases, and does very poorly where we currently live. Any time we travel to somewhere without high dust and mold levels, many of her problems clear up. What's surprising to me is really how little modern physicians pay attention to climate.

saagarjha• 6 years ago

Well if you consider that back then there was a ton of soot and disease in the air in cities and their wallpaper was likely to literally contain arsenic I can’t see why it couldn’t actually help.

205guy• 6 years ago

Ahem, 5th paragraph: "The notion of the “restorative sea” was born. Physicians prescribed a plunge into chilly waters to invigorate and enliven. The first seaside resort opened on England’s eastern shore in the tiny town of Scarborough near York. Other coastal communities followed, catering to a growing clientele of sea bathers seeking treatment for a number of conditions: melancholy, rickets, leprosy, gout, impotence, tubercular infections, menstrual problems and “hysteria.” In an earlier version of today’s wellness culture, the practice of sea bathing went mainstream."

wittyusername2• 6 years ago

I live on the beach. Like actually I wake up and there it is staring at me in bed, my porch is covered in corrosion and salt air persists everywhere.

It may be an invention but a few years into living here damned if it isn't one of the few things that resists hedonic adaptation. I feel way more relaxed here, granted I was coming from a major metro but I sometimes things that get hyped up actually are great!

chris_t_98• 6 years ago

Do you mind sharing where you live? One day I think I'd like to live on the beach.

wittyusername2• 6 years ago

Puerto Rico! If you are a US citizen you can just get up and move here. Lots of videos on YouTube to describe what it’s like and what it’s like to move here.

OldHand2018• 6 years ago

From antiquity up through the 18th century, the beach stirred fear and anxiety in the popular imagination. The coastal landscape was synonymous with dangerous wilderness; it was where shipwrecks and natural disasters occurred.

It's still actually a very dangerous place [1]. Keep in mind that very few people knew how to swim back then.

[1] https://glsrp.org/statistics/

flukus2• 6 years ago

Some of the history is surprisingly recent too, still in living memory. My mum has a newspaper front page clipping of her friend being led away in handcuffs for the heinous crime of wearing a bikini. I think Grandma was the first generation of women that was allowed to swim at all and at least in some places they had gender segregated times. To add insult to that on the way back from the weekly beach trip Grandad liked to stop at the pub for a couple, women and children weren't allowed so they had to sit in the car.

Through the 20th century the beach has been a close parallel (usually lagging) of gender equality.

tanatocenose• 6 years ago

Only related tangentially: Los Angeles’ famous beaches, some 31 miles worth, are all man-made.

“In 1947, for example, nearly 14 million cubic yards of sand were removed to make way for El Segundo's Hyperion power plant. They were deposited onto Santa Monica's beaches. Another million cubic yards came a couple years later, the sand this time recovered from dredging operations along a nearby breakwater. In all, some thirty million cubic yards of sand have been dumped onto the beaches of Santa Monica and Venice. That's almost as much, by volume, as all the concrete used to build the Three Gorges Dam in China.“

https://www.kcet.org/shows/earth-focus/rewilding-santa-monic...

danw1979• 6 years ago

As a local, I was thrilled to see Scarborough on the Yorkshire coast mentioned as one of the first places where the idea of the beach transformed from a nightmarish hellscape into an idyllic retreat.

I also feel entitled to mention how - at this particular location - things have, in a way, come full circle.

christefano• 6 years ago

What are the historical views and experiences of people outside of Europe?

Sadly this article is written exclusively from a Euro-centric perspective. Even the “Inventing the Beach” part of the title is colonialist.

Inventing the Beach: The unnatural history of a natural place (2016)

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