A Night at the Inn: the Elite Experience of Empire 1650-1850

The talk follows the experiences of an elite traveller on a journey through the North Atlantic world. What becomes clear along the way is that inns were much more than somewhere for a drink, a meal and a bed for the night; they played a central role in what was first a British, later Anglophone, process of national and imperial placemaking. Whether in Scotland, Virginia, or Jamaica, 'principal inns' contained the useful spaces and things that society's ruling elites needed to establish and maintain power. The material world experienced inside principal inns shaped elite inn-goers' perceptions of place, confirming that here - wherever here was - was somewhere familiar, somewhere 'civilised', somewhere British.