2025/10/04 by Diren Çakılcı · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Social Sciences · #Global Maritime and Colonial Histories #Historical Economic and Social Studies #Travel Writing and Literature
paper · doi:10.1080/03086534.2025.2563578
openalex publication_date 2025/10/04 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/14
The tours of the British royal family have always been important both for the British Empire and for the countries visited. Prince Alfred’s Mediterranean voyage in 1859 is among the royal tours that increased in the second half of the nineteenth century, but it is not well known in literature. Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, Queen Victoria’s second son, was sent on a mission to see and learn about the Mediterranean region in 1859 when he was only fifteen years old. The route of this tour, which mostly took place in Ottoman lands and along the coast, was shaped by the Prince’s interests in archaeology, history and photography. It followed a varied itinerary, taking in Alexandria, Jaffa, Jerusalem, Beirut, Tripoli, Rhodes, Crete, Halicarnassus, Knidos, Smyrna, the Dardanelles, Kavala, Mount Athos, Salonica, Catherine, Athens, Corfu and Malta. When his visits to these regions are evaluated together with the hegemonic policies of the British Empire, it is understood that this tour should also be seen as an activity serving the strategic goals of the empire. When newspaper reports from the period, Ottoman archival records, many photographs and archaeological findings in the Royal Collection, are evaluated together, it becomes possible to date many firsts in the history of royal tours back to 1859. In this context, research on Alfred’s voyage, which should be considered the first royal tour, has made significant contributions to the definition and scope of royal tours, the historiography of these tours, the Prince’s biography, and the history of the Mediterranean world.