Modern Travel | The Other Grand Tour | 2

What happened when the people written out of the Grand Tour wrote their own account of it?

What did an eighteenth-century Bengali diplomat see in London that made him call the British a conceited race?

And how did a man from Bihar end up as shampooing surgeon to the King of England?

Afua Hirsch and Peter Frankopan follow the travellers the Grand Tour left out — enslaved servants, Black abolitionists, Indian intellectuals — and find them looking back at Europe with a colder eye than Europe ever turned on them.

Frederick Douglass and Sarah Parker Remond met in Rome in 1868, two free Black Americans taking in the ruins of one slave society while campaigning against a living one. Mirza Abu Talib Khan toured Britain and reported home that its true religion was money. I'tesamuddin filled a notebook with the wonders of Europe and the conceit of its inhabitants. And Sake Dean Mahomed opened a vapour bath in Brighton and gave English the word shampoo. The Grand Tour was never only white men learning Latin — it was the moment the world started looking back.

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[0:00] The Grand Tour you think you know — powdered wigs, Roman ruins, enough marble to fill a museum

[3:01] The servants who weren't servants: enslaved Africans on the road to Italy and France

[4:29] Frederick Douglass, viral superstar, meets Sarah Parker Remond in Rome

[8:36] Ira Aldridge plays Shakespeare to the aristocrats who came for the ruins

[13:40] Bihar to Brighton — and the word that came with him

[17:54] Europe judged: spiritually hollow, morally compromised, excessively fond of luxury

[25:24] The Maharajas whose Cartier and Rolls Royce orders kept European luxury solvent

[36:24] What actually killed the Grand Tour, and whether Magaluf is its heir

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Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas:

Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com

Join Legacy+ for bonus episodes, early access, Q&A's, fewer adverts and more.

legacy.supportingcast.fm

Stay connected with Legacy:

Instagram: @originallegacypodcast

TikTok: @legacy_productions

Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas: Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com

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