The 19th century was considered a turning point in the history of communications well before it had come to its close. From the early years of the century, expressing the sense of a finiteness of the world as something to be soon apprehended – the sense of a hitherto unprecedented acceleration of transport speeds and of the disappearance of distance – nourished a discourse, which soon took on the colours of political liberalism. The sentiment climaxed in the 1860s, which saw the multiplication of infrastructure projects. The tourist emerged as the emblematic figure for the ambiguities of this revolution in communications. S/he benefited form the new modes of transport, but also best expressed the impossibility of communicating with the societies s/he visited. However, as the examples of Delacroix and Gauguin demonstrate, the problems involved by any encounter with the Other are so fraught with moral considerations as to be almost impossible to solve historically.