That Impulse that Bids a People to Honour its Past: The Nature and Purpose of Centennial Celebrations

The role of iconic-historic commemorative events in event tourism: Insights from the 20th and 25th anniversaries of the fall of the Berlin Wall

“…The questions were deliberately left broad, but related to the idea that commemoration is political and that organisers have agendas which shape the commemorative effort (e.g. Barthel, 1996;Frost 2012;Frost and Laing, 2013;Gillis, 1994;McDonald and Méthot, 2006;Spillman, 1997;Turner, 2006). The interviews aimed at further illuminating such agendas.…”

“…In this regard, it is state-sponsored commemorative events of national significance that have again received a lot of attention in the literature. McDonald and Méthot (2006) look at the purpose of centennial celebrations in particular, stating that these events are often hosted to foster nationalism, especially in young nations. Bodnar (1992), Spillman (1997) and White (2004) further studied centennial and bicentennial celebrations in the United States and Australia as events which constructed national identity and fostered patriotism in relatively young nations.…”

“…In the context of event tourism, commemorative events within political spheres are a largely unexplored phenomenon. The definition of iconic-historic events as a further form of commemorative event in this area and the understanding of such events in relation to how they are used for event tourism development thus adds to work published on commemorative events, such as the studies by Frost (2012), Frost andLaing (2013), Frost, Wheeler andHarvey (2008), Hall et al (2010), Laws andFerguson (2011) andMcDonald andMéthot (2006) whilst also adding a new perspective to work on event tourism (e.g. Getz, 1991;Getz and Page, 2016a).…”

Learning to use the past: the development of a rhetorical history strategy by the London headquarters of the Hudson’s Bay Company

“…Differences in historical cultures can be relatively basic, such as variations in the calendar used to record the date, or can include profound cosmological differences in how people think about historical change, causation, and the nature of time itself (Farriss 1995). We now know that the custom of commemorating the anniversaries of political events is a relatively recent development, much like the custom of celebrating individuals' birthdays: historians have established when and how the practice of commemorating the anniversaries of events became widespread in Western cultures (McDonald and Méthot 2006).…”

“…In 1763, the post of Historiographer Royal of Scotland was given to Professor William Robertson, who duly published historical accounts that were useful to King George III (Hargraves 2000). This period saw the emergence in Western countries of the custom of celebrating special anniversaries (McDonald and Méthot 2006), such as the 1788 centennial of the 1688 Glorious Revolution (Schwoerer 1990) and the three-hundredth anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation, which was marked in 1818 (Landry 2014). Philanthropic and religious organizations then started to commemorate their anniversaries.…”