Translated in it's entirety from J P Bager's orginal handwritten
diary.
As he turns each corner, the young traveller is surprised, confused
or even shocked as he experiences new forms of entertainment,
architecture and technical innovation, to this can be added
the countryside, the people and the social problems of the back
streets - travel was an adventure, the school of life.
IMPRESSIONS OF LONDON - FROM THE LATE SUMMER OF 1840, is a travel
journal from a bygone era. Follow the young Swedish traveller,
J P Bager, as he walks through the streets of København and
Hamburg en route for London - the home of more than a million
people and the greatest centre of trade in the world. The Victorian
Age was in its youth and the well-oiled machinery of England's
prospering industries was bringing a new era of finance and
trade to the expanding empire.
J P Bager's travel journal is a fascinating tale, a unique document
of the day. We can almost hear the voices and see the buildings
that thrilled and captivated his imagination in 1840. The trip
was to inspire Bager throughout his later life as a successful
businessman and Swedish Member of Parliament.
Never
before has this book, which is based on Bager's hand- written
notes and journals, been available to an international audience.
The book is illustrated with contemporary maps from the cities
he visited - København, Hamburg, London, Birmingham, Manchester,
Liverpool, Leeds, Hull and Malmö.
By using these maps the reader can follow Bager's journey and
truly enjoy Europe in the 1840s.
THE AUTHOR
Johan Peter Bager was born in Malmö, which was then a small
city on the edge of northern Europe, on 11 July 1818, he died
in his hometown on 20 August 1888. He was the son of a privileged
family of merchants, indeed, when he was between the ages of
five and thirteen, his family could afford to send him to the
Moravian United Brethren school in Kristiansfeld, Denmark. An
education that was to leave its mark in the form of a philosophy
that was firmly fixed in the preachings of the liberalism.
Bager's travels through a Europe, on the threshold of dramatic
change, showed him the power and oppurtunities of industrialism
and thereby introduced him to the vision of capitalism. Despite
the enthusiasm of youth, Bager also reflected on the potential
negative aspects to both the environment and mankind.
On his return to Sweden he became deeply involved in local and
national politics and worked hard to promote the building of
a new infrastructure based on shipping and rail transport. On
his earlier travels, he left a country that was vacillating
between cottage industries and farming on the one hand, and
industrialism on the other. From here he travelled to at Europe,
more particularly England, where speed, innovation and a new
approach was the order of the day.
;)
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