This paper explores the social dimension of cruising by looking at new forms of sociality created by the advent of steamboats along the Danube and in the Black Sea. Since a Viennese steamship company introduced cruises between Vienna and Istanbul in the mid-1830s, Austrian steamboats became a busy stage of diverse social encounters. The idea of ships as “floating spaces”, “historical arenas” or “contact zones” in which different cultures meet has been developed by scholars for a long time. Framed within the new mobilities paradigm, this paper details a large range of social interactions on board Austrian steamers based on the accounts of more than a dozen travellers who plied along the Vienna–Istanbul route in the mid-1830s to the mid-1850s. With sociality as an integral part of modern transportation, this paper analyses the early phases in the industrialisation and commodification of travelling and focuses on the social experiences that steamboat cruising provided to customers.
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