The Dangers of Travel—Banditry on the Roads: The Bibliometric Study of the Retrospective Literature

Abstract

Since the dawn of time, one of the main barriers to travel has been the fear of leaving one’s place of residence and travelling into a foreign unknown and dangerous space. However, at the same time, firmly rooted in human nature is the desire to know and experience travel, this archetypal inner need is the motive for undertaking travel. In the past, in ancient times, it was difficult to travel safely, not always succeeding in avoiding dangerous areas and being among the friendly inhabitants of distant countries. In modern times, too, travel is dangerous and no traveler can have the comfort of carefree travel until the end. This work has the character of scholarly reconnaissance and touches on selected historical threads related to banditry on the roads in the old days. This work deals with the methodology of bibliographic information retrieval using modern search methods for the expansion and accumulation of knowledge on the criminal risks of the commuter in ancient times from antiquity to the 19th century period. The main purpose of the study was to compare existing data already obtained from autopsies with those to be obtained using Google Scholar and the EBSCO databases. Available research articles were searched for using the following keywords: history of tourism, cultural tourism, dangers of travelling, travel dangers, robbery, highwaymen, bandits, robbers. The goal was also to find qualitative studies concerning the outlined areas. This article aims to show the technology of performing a comparative literature review on the subject of the dangers of travel in a historical context. To achieve this goal, the authors used the following methods: the historical method, the historical fact-finding method, the comparative method, and the method of literature analysis and criticism. The research of the second stage yielded very interesting records for the keywords bandits—131,000; cultural tourism—45,000; travel dangers—311; tourism history—7460; and travel dangers—135.

1. Introduction

Travel hazards in a retrospective context are a scarce topic of scientific research. Hence, there is a paucity of publications on the subject in the world literature.

Despite the dangers of travel for thousands of years, almost since the dawn of human civilization, some atavistic and archetypal force of new knowledge, beyond the conditions of being, has prompted people to change their place of residence, and to move, to wander around the world [1]. Travellers, who will later be called tourists, chose the safest possible roads, more willingly where there were hospitable, friendly parties and good people. Routes leading among dangerous and sinister areas were reluctantly chosen. Further, it seems that the danger of travel in the twenty-first and subsequent centuries will still accompany tourist travellers, because the world is shaken by various dramatic events that limit carefree travel. In addition, the specter of further pandemics can limit this movement to a minimum [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9].

Travel safety is an important component of a traveler’s choice of route to a destination. The relevance of the issue of travel safety, including tourism safety, is evidenced by tens of thousands of specialized studies on all travel dangers. We encounter the two concepts of “travel safety” and “travel danger”. Danger, on the one hand, is defined as a condition, situation, or position threatening something bad, endangering someone. Safety is one of the main human needs. This aspect is also found in the hierarchical ordering of travel needs made by H.R. Scherrieb. Danger can be treated as a predictor of fluctuations in the volume of tourist traffic in a given area. A high crime rate in some cities can be identified as a threat to travellers, including for tourism, and is a factor in reducing the number of visitors to the city or the entire area. Thus, danger can be treated as a destimulant of tourism. Travel dangers can be generated by social forces, including armed conflicts and warfare, religious unrest, political terrorism, nationality feuds, and natural forces or natural disasters: floods, earthquakes fires, hurricanes, etc. There are also threats of traffic disasters. However, most often, travellers are concerned about criminal crime including murder, robbery, kidnapping, extortion, rape robbery, or theft. The presented article aims to show the records of retrieved publications from the scope of retrospective research on criminal dangers and threats during travel in ancient times.

The academic research today generates a huge number of publications in thousands of journals. Given the interdisciplinary nature of the academic research, as well as greatly dispersed knowledge, it is not possible to use an autopsy, which not so long ago had some pragmatics of an armchair examination. Today, an efficient research activity in any area, even in narrow research fields, is not possible for a clearly stated hypothesis without using modern methods of identification, evaluation and synthesis of all the sources concerning a given research problem. Only a professional systematic literature review can adequately describe the current state of knowledge.

In the academic activity of any discipline the basic duty lies in getting to know the topical academic achievements concerning the part of the world that is being examined. Therefore, a researcher at the beginning of their retrospective analytical process concerning travel safety should start their exploration from a bibliometry, a statistical set of methods and tools used for a quantitative analysis of academic writing, and then work it out in a qualitative way.

It is important to answer basic questions: who and where conducts research on a given topic? What research areas do we distinguish in each of the disciplines and who is responsible for that? Who, when, and where has published the research results for a given issue? Who was cited by them? How many publications are available in the area being examined? Answering those questions will lead to gathering knowledge of the existing research niche as well as journals that we can publish our results in. It is the bibliometry that shows the methods and tools that will make it possible to obtain basic knowledge during the stage of planning the research.

The purpose of the work takes into account comparisons of already existing data obtained from the autopsy to those that were to be obtained using Google Scholar and the EBSCO databases. The work has the character of scholarly reconnaissance and touches on selected historical threads related to banditry on the roads in the old days. The authors, when making a scholarly analysis, used mainly the historical method as well as the method of establishing historical facts through induction and deduction. In the development of the historical narrative, a comparative method was used. In addition, the methods mentioned earlier were applied to present various concepts of presenting the history of banditry on the roads in retrospective terms in the literature on the subject.

The purpose of the review and topics related to the dangers of travel are also pragmatic. The information obtained from the sources and their popularization can be important for the promotion of tourist destinations. In tourism, a type of tourism called “dark” tourism is becoming increasingly popular”. The main attraction of dark places is their historical value, rather than their association with death and suffering. Visited places are both a place and a tourist product, which is purchased, as it is associated with the memory of spectacular events: murders, assaults or robberies. It is of vital importance that the tourist business is associated with a specific historical incident, as the tourist wants to know and feel the atmosphere of past events. Thus, we can speak of travel robbery sites as a tourism destination and product. In the bibliographic review, we find many events of the past that could inspire the organization of memorials and re-enactments of criminal events of the past.

The work has the character of scholarly reconnaissance and touches on selected historical threads related to banditry on the roads in the old days. The authors used mainly the historical method in the analysis but also the method of establishing historical facts through induction and deduction. When drawing up a historical narrative, a comparative method was used. Furthermore, the authors also used analysis and literature review to show different concepts of the road banditry’s history in a retrospective way in the literature on the subject.

The research was based on data obtained from a bibliometric review. The purpose of the work takes into account comparisons of already existing data obtained from the autopsy to those that were to be obtained using Google Scholar and the EBSCO databases. The work has the character of a scientific reconnaissance and addresses selected historical themes related to banditry on the roads in the old days. In developing the historical narrative, the comparative method was used. In addition, the method of literature analysis and criticism was used to present different concepts concerning presenting the history of banditry on the roads in retrospect in the literature.

An important issue is the article’s contribution to the scientific literature. Already the preliminary literature search shows the scarcity of bibliographic information related to the retrospective view of the journey and, in particular, the dangers of travel in ancient times. The accumulation of knowledge concerning this topic is not only of scientific importance but is also of pragmatic importance, as the authors write in the introduction. If we want to describe any human activity, it is necessary to go back to the past and observe how and where on the timeline its development took place. In a thesis, in order to understand the present flowing from human nature, it is necessary to know the past is still valid. It is the analysis of the past and present that will allow us to understand important and complex social and economic processes. Hence, the presented article can be of significant importance for specialists dealing with the multidimensional issue of travel, tourism and hospitality, history, social anthropology, etc.

The goal of the paper is to prepare a comparative review of travel dangers in a retrospective perspective.

A review of the literature is important. The safety of travel has not become a particularly emphasized topic of historical tourist literature, both in the past and in the present. In the travel memoirs of the old days, we find a lot of information on the various dangers of travel; it is, however, the monographs on the safety of travel in a historical context that are missing. It seems that in the twenty-first century of global terrorism, learning about the dangers of travel in ancient times can serve the modern world.

From the point of view of the presented paper, it is more important to determine the state of the literature on the issue of travel safety in a retrospective context. Already at the beginning of the nineteenth century, there was literature about bandits and robbers. Among the published books, which at that time had a literary character, although not devoid of a large factography, many various biographies were published.

In the thirties of the nineteenth century, there was a great demand for cheap fiction for the intelligentsia and also for the proletariat. It should be noted that literacy was becoming popular among workers. In England, by 1830, as many as three-quarters of workers had learned to read, pioneered by the cheap sensational popular literature of Edward Lloyd. His “Penny Bloods” were a great success, especially among the working class. From 1835, he published such titles as Lives of the Most Notorious Highwaymen, Paws, and History of the Pirates of All Nations.

Thus, from the first decades of the 19th century, there was an increase in works containing information on the dangers of travel, but these were fiction and popular rather than scientific publications. Prior to that, this information appeared in a number of pan-stories and travelogues. However, this information is scattered and often only fragmentary. They contain rich factual material about travel in ancient times, however, testimonies of robberies, assaults and crimes are episodic in these texts.

2. Materials and Methods

This work has the character of scholarly reconnaissance and touches on selected historical threads related to banditry on the roads in the old days. This work deals with the methodology of bibliographic information retrieval using modern search methods for the expansion and accumulation of knowledge on the criminal risks of the commuter in ancient times from antiquity to the 19th century period. The main purpose of the study was to compare existing data already obtained from autopsies with those to be obtained using Google Scholar and the EBSCO databases (Google Scholar base processing February 2022).

The purpose of the study was to perform a comparative review related to the topic of travel danger in retrospect, on the basis of data obtained from a bibliometric review. The purpose of the study includes comparisons of existing data already obtained from the autopsy to those that were to be obtained using Google Scholar and the EBSCO databases.

As a result—an empirical product—the knowledge, which is taken from a bibliometry, has been described, and the paradigms have been found. The way of interpreting and evaluating the sources has also been set. The authors, while conducting the review, used mainly the historical method together with other methods, such as a comparative method of analysis and also literature criticism. The method of analysis and the criticism of literature were also used. The collected and filtered literature on travel safety retrospection was research material in the shape of published articles that were the subject of analysis and critique. The analyzed academic material gave important information on the achievements and the state of knowledge in the research area.

In academic investigations, special attention should be given to informatology in the context of an analytic and critical approach to the writing. We have a reliable method for the analysis and critical research of the writing at hand, and all disciplines use them. They are a process, a set of cognitive activities, and a research product in themselves. We can use a systematic review as well as a metanalysis.

A systematic literature research was conducted using Google Scholar and the EBSCO databases.

Available research articles were searched for using the following keywords: history of tourism, cultural tourism, dangers of travelling, travel dangers, robbery, highwaymen, bandits, robbers. Given these keywords, as a result, a huge number of publication matches were found. In the final selection process, 36 of them were isolated and thoroughly analyzed in the systematic review below.

In the development of the analytical material, in-depth studies of the subject literature, and the comparative analysis of the collected and selected information, were applied. The research techniques also included: electronic data processing, synthesis of the information obtained, statistical data processing, forecasting and logical inference. An important research method used in the project is the original comparative research method, which enables the synthesis of accumulated theoretical and practical knowledge.

3. Bibliographic Analysis with the Use of Autopsy Based on the Heuristic Method

One of the methods of acquiring bibliographic knowledge, in addition to incorporating digital methods of data acquisition and processing into bibliometric search work, is still to extract data from printed sources and analyze them from autopsy—this is a heuristic method based on the experience and knowledge of the researcher. The authors at the first stage of the research relied on this very method to then compare its results with a method based on digital technology (Google Scholar and the EBSCO databases). As a result of this method, 132 items of literature were reviewed, from which 56 items were selected in the final stage and then carefully analyzed. As a result of the analysis, it turned out that only 31 of them contained substantive content that directly corresponds to the research topic The Dangers of Travel—Banditry on the Roads. The results of the analysis are presented in

Table 1. Keywords included in the selected bibliographic records.

No. in Bibliography		[5]	[6]	[7]	[8]	[9]	[10]	[11]	[12]	[13]	[14]	[15]	[16]	[17]	[18]	[19]	[20]
	Authors	Annals or Chronicles	Antologia 1966	Chappell A.T. 2008	Dagen N. L. 1995	Duby G. 1988	Gaspari A. 1991	Gautier L. 1894	Gautier T. 1979	Goryński J. 1914	Góralski Z. 1998	Hobsbawm E.J. 1981	Hobsbawm E. J. 1985	Huizinga J. 1974	Jowków J. 1982	Kitowicz J. 1970	Kot S. 1932
Keywords
bandits		x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x
brabant						x			x
rottweiler and robbers									x						x
cottereaux						x		x									x
dangerous tavern		x													x
haidamaka																x
innkeepers								x	x
looting		x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x
robber bands								x									x
robberies		x	x	x	x	x	x		x	x
robbers		x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x
routiers								x
scoundrels								x	x
thieves								x	x
travel dangers		x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x

and

Table 2. Keywords included in the selected bibliographic items.

No. in Bibliography		[21]	[22]	[23]	[24]	[25]	[26]	[4]	[27]	[28]	[29]	[30]	[31]	[32]	[33]	[34]
	Authors	Konieczny F. 1924	Kracik J., Rożek M. 1986	Kunicki K., Ławecki T., Olchowik-Adamowska L. 2011	Luchaire A. 1909	Łoziński, W. 1978	Macfarlane Ch. 1833	Mączak A. 1980	Mickiewicz A. 2017	Milewski S. 1996	Ochmański W. 1950	Przyboś A. 1977	Przyboś K. 2000	Riché P. 1979	Schnayder J. 1968	Szujski J. 1862
Keywords
arming robbers		x							x
attacks on pilgrims					x
banditry							x
bandits			x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x
soldiers robbers													x
gang of outlaws							x
hoodlums													x
legends and stories		x							x
looting			x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x
marauders												x				x
mountain robbers		x											x
murders												x
peregrinations													x
rapes																x
robber bands		x	x
robberies										x
robbers			x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x
rogue										x
travel dangers and bandits			x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x

.

4. Bibliographic Analysis Using a Digital-Based Method (Google Scholar and the EBSCO Databases)

An ideological scheme of the literature review process included stages of preparation, pre-selection and a final selection of literature items. The diagram shows, in a simplified way, the various stages of work leading to the intermediate results and the final result of the literature review. The following are marked: selection of keywords → search → results review → and the final stage of preliminary work consisting of qualification (accepted manuscripts) or rejection (rejected manuscripts) of individual retrieved items. A further stage of the work is marked by the work associated with the second (second review), a thorough review of the results obtained, which were accepted earlier after obtaining versions of the full articles.

The members of the team, after reviewing the content of these articles (this is how it should be performed according to the PRISMA methodology, which was adopted to conduct the work), undertook a joint discussion on the qualification of the items and possible conditions that the qualified items should meet; then, they made a selection and, as a result of this work, were able to present the final result, which is the final list of selected articles forming the literature review. A schematic diagram of the literature review process (see Figure 1), taking into account the stages of preparation, pre-selection and final literature items is as follows.

Figure 2 presents, in detail, the adopted methodology that was used to conduct the review. It was based on the developed Standard of Systematic Review developed and adopted by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies. According to this standard, works are divided into four main stages: preparation (preparations), initial search (initial search), database review (database exploration) and results analysis (results analysis).

In each of these stages, a certain scope of work is to be performed according to the diagram shown in the figure. Thus:

THE FIRST STAGE—PREPARATION (PREPARATIONS) is associated with defining the area of research, determining the limits of the scientific search and then exploring the selected topic (the researcher must orient himself in the research area and have knowledge of the subject of the research, and the limitations that belong to the area, to be able to distinguish it from the universe). At this stage, it is necessary to decide what tools will be used for the research work—computer programs.

Thus, for example, for substantive and organizational work, the MindManager program was adopted; for work related to quantitative analysis of the obtained results the MS Excel program was used; for work with the acquired literature, the ZOTERO program was adopted; and for editorial work, the MS Word program was used. It was also agreed that the literature search would be carried out in databases.

The first is the EBSCO system, which can be accessed through a subscription purchased by the university, and Google Scholar, which can be accessed freely.

SECOND STAGE—INITIAL SEARCH (initial search). In this stage, an analysis of the selected area was carried out for the possibility of conducting a scientific search using the definition of the research area by means of keywords. The selection of keywords is related to the knowledge of the research area and the initial queries to the databases, verifying the correctness of their selection. The result of the work in this stage is a list of keywords (see Figure 3).

STAGE THREE—database exploration. In this stage, the results of the database queries are collected; in the case of our research, these were the aforementioned EBSCO and GOOGLE SCHOLAR databases. Both quantitative results and item-specific records (item description including author, title, publisher, publication date, DOI number and others) are acquired. The result of the work in this case is information on the quantitative results obtained in the selected databases and, in addition, a pre-qualified list of items for further analysis. In the final part of the work, with regard to the list of literature items, the consolidation of results is carried out and duplicate items are removed in order to obtain a uniform list without repetition.

STAGE FOUR—ANALYSIS OF RESULTS (results analysis). This stage of the work is related to working with the results of the previous stage. As the first task, the work of obtaining abstracts on the acquired articles, analyzing them, and then obtaining the full text of the selected items is carried out. In the final part of this process, a detailed analysis of the full-text version is carried out and a decision is made on whether the item will or will not qualify for the bibliographic list. As the final step of the work of this stage, the merging of the list is carried out and the final version of the bibliographic list is created.

In accordance with the methodology adopted for the work at the preparation stage, keywords were singled out as the backbone of the search and, in addition, preparations were made for the use of research tools in the form of databases by preparing keywords in English (the work to date has been conducted in Polish) (Figure 4).

The keywords were analyzed according to the methodology adopted with the research tools. Since the research tools allow searches involving the use of Boolean arithmetic, in which we can use the keywords ‘and’ (AND), ‘or’ (OR) in the questions, our questions can be built as phrases, such as: (condition_1 AND condition_2) OR condition_3, which should be understood that the retrieved items must meet the assumed constraint: from the database, select the items that meet the criteria: (condition_1 AND condition_2 combined) OR condition_3.) With such queries, it was possible to preliminarily obtain results and assess whether the keywords were selected correctly, while the obtained results were within the assumed range.

The Google Scholar database allows for a simple and advanced search. As a first stage, a preliminary search was made, which contained the keywords and phrases in a simple mode. During the second stage, the search was limited to the titles published from 2010 up till now. In the first stage, some basic phrases were tested initially, which gave a large number of publications to consider (

Table 3. Full-text keyword search results as an introduction to an advanced search.

Entry	Number of Items Found
bandits	131,000
cultural tourism	45,000
dangers of travelling	311
history of tourism	7460
travel dangers	135

).

For the sake of order, the simple and advanced searches were performed for the phrases as presented in

Table 4. Example of a help table for narrowing questions by creating questions using logical operators and additional narrowing constraints.

Entry no. 1	Operator	Entry no. 2	Operator	Entry no. 3
history of tourism
history of tourism	AND	robbery
history of tourism	AND	dangers of travelling
history of tourism	AND	travel dangers
history of tourism	AND	bandits
history of tourism	AND	highwaymen	AND	robbers
history of tourism	AND	cultural tourism	AND	dangers of travelling
history of tourism	AND	cultural tourism	AND	travel dangers
history of tourism	AND	cultural tourism	AND	bandits
history of tourism	AND	cultural tourism	AND	highwaymen
dangers of travelling
travel dangers
bandits
highwaymen
travel	AND	bandits
travel dangers	AND	bandits
cultural tourism
cultural tourism	AND	robbery
cultural tourism	AND	dangers of travelling
cultural tourism	AND	travel dangers
cultural tourism	AND	bandits
cultural tourism	AND	highlanders	AND	robbers

.

5. Results

For the phrases mentioned in Table 4, the following results that are shown in

Table 5. Results for queries built on the basis of Table 2 presented by the EBSCO system.

No.	Entry	Items Found
1	history of tourism	7460
2	history of tourism AND robbery	155
3	history of tourism AND dangers of travelling	3
4	history of tourism AND travel dangers	7
5	history of tourism AND bandits	21
6	history of tourism AND highlander and robbers	1
7	history of tourism AND cultural tourism	611
8	history of tourism AND cultural tourism AND dangers of travelling	1
9	history of tourism AND cultural tourism AND travel dangers	2
10	history of tourism AND cultural tourism AND bandits	4
11	history of tourism AND cultural tourism AND highwaymen	3
12	dangers of travelling	311
13	travel dangers	135
14	bandits	131,000
15	travel AND bandits	36,200
16	travel dangers AND bandits	3
17	cultural tourism	45,000
18	cultural tourism AND robbery	331
19	cultural tourism AND dangers of travelling	1
20	cultural tourism AND travel dangers	3
21	cultural tourism AND bandits	61
22	cultural tourism AND highwaymen and robbers	1

could be found.

As the phrase “travel AND bandits” generated a number of results that would be useless for any research purposes, it was obvious that the criteria should be changed in order to achieve a better efficiency and complexity in turn. Therefore, this phrase was removed from further results. What is more, the rest of the phrases was grouped into two separate groups (see Figure 5 and Figure 6).

From among the selected groups (highlighted in grey), the found positions were imported to the Zotero software (bibliographical data) (

Table 6. Presentation of one of the stages of the work, consisting of selecting the results of individual queries and, at a later stage, introducing the selected items into the Zotero bibliographic system.

No.	Entry	Items Found
1	history of tourism	7460
2	history of tourism AND robbery	155
3	history of tourism AND danger of travelling	3
4	history of tourism AND travel dangers	7
5	history of tourism AND bandits	21
6	history of tourism AND highwaymen AND robbers	1
7	history of tourism AND cultural tourism	611
8	history of tourism AND cultural tourism AND danger of travelling	1
9	history of tourism AND cultural tourism AND travel dangers	2
10	history of tourism AND cultural tourism AND bandits	4
11	history of tourism AND cultural tourism AND highwaymen	3
12	dangers of travelling	311
13	travel dangers	135
14	bandits	131,000
15	travel AND bandits	36,200
16	travel dangers AND bandits	3
17	cultural tourism	45,000
18	cultural tourism AND robbery	331
19	cultural tourism AND dangers of travelling	1
20	cultural tourism AND travel dangers	3
21	cultural tourism AND bandits	61
22	cultural tourism AND highwaymen AND robbers	1

).

Then, a list was prepared, from which repeated items were removed.

For the advanced search, the following results were found (

Table 7. Presentation of the results of the work involving the use of previously presented capabilities of the EBSCO search system and narrowing the query to the title of the publication (advanced, in-depth queries).

No.	Entry	Items Found
1	allintitle: history of tourism	92
2	allintitle: bandits	2300
3	allintitle: cultural tourism	707
4	allintitle: ROBBERY	849

) (the allintitle operator means the search is performed only for a title of a publication):

For other keywords that are not mentioned in the table the system did not find any items. Only for search no. 1 was a list of items collected.

Finally, the simple and advanced searches were superimposed on each other. The full bibliographical list, which consists of items that were found during the final stage of the search, can be found at the end of the article in the Reference section. The section consists of two parts (

Table 8. The effect of the work at the stage of database exploration after organizing the results, removing duplicates, and rejecting publications that are obviously inconsistent with the adopted subject.

The Results of the Work Performed	Number of Items Found
the simple search	94
the advanced search	87
total number of chosen publications after removing duplicates	168

and

Table 9. A summary of the work including exploring the databases, and a detailed analysis of the results, with items not present in stage 1 included as the results of stage 2.

The Result of the Work	Number of Chosen Items
STAGE 1—Simple search	94
STAGE 2—Advanced search	87
STAGE 3—Total number of chosen publications after removing duplicates	168
STAGE 4—Published selected items after a substantive analysis of content	29

). The second part is the final choice of items.

After being superimposed, the final search results were chosen.

Based on the results of Stages 1 and 2, a bibliographical list was prepared with duplicates removed; 168 items of literature were selected. After subjecting the obtained results to filtering, 11 items were selected for in-depth analysis from the total material obtained at stage 2. The items extracted in the appendix bibliography can be found at the end of the paper.

6. Discussion

Despite the dangers of travel for thousands of years, almost since the dawn of human civilization, some atavistic and archetypal force of new knowledge, beyond the conditions of being, has prompted people to change their place of residence, and to move, to wander around the world [1].

In antiquity and in the Middle Ages, Europe formed a comprehensive territory, the borders of which did not constitute a barrier to the movement of travellers. The barrier was the hardships of travel and the risks lurking on the roads. It must be remembered, however, that people in ancient times were accustomed to uncertainty, because in turbulent times it was impossible to avoid dangers. Danger was, therefore, an inseparable companion of everyday life on the journey. Most often, they wandered on foot, though often also on horseback; to carry large luggage, pack animals were used. Between the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the common use of the horse collar and horseshoe began, the carts already had four wheels, which allowed them to carry a greater weight. In the Middle Ages, millions of pilgrims, tourist travellers, merchants, soldiers, students, vagabonds, etc., travelled throughout Western Europe along a miserable and dangerous road network. They often suffered from the inconveniences of travel, hunger and thirst, endured cold and heat, the malice of carriers, the dishonesty of guides, and the deception of innkeepers. They were exposed to the dangers of travel, loss of life and limb. In the Middle Ages, it was mainly merchants and pilgrims that travelled. The purpose of the peregrinations were mostly places of religious worship, as well as famous colleges—universities of Italy, universities in Padua and Bologna. Travelling tourists visited Rome or Santiago de Compostela, Aachen, Canterbury or Einsiedeln. Many continued on their long journey to Jerusalem. Since the sixteenth century, a high dynamic of travel has been observed in Europe. The travel movement included the youth of France, Spain and Italy. For educational purposes, young German aristocrats were sent away; soon, they were joined by noble sons of the Danish and Swedish nobility [6,10,24,25,27,34,35].

Crime and the standard of socio-economic living have always had a feedback loop. Furthermore, the overall crime rate increased in the sixteenth century, and then decreased after the mid-sixteenth century. The reason may have been the harvest in the last decades of the sixteenth century, as well as slower population growth and greater availability of work. A sharp increase in robberies usually occurred after a poor harvest, or after the end of the war, when demobilized soldiers returned home, and the roads were full of armed men and organized bands of stragglers. Sometimes, it was during wars that a decline in crime was observed. Both in the Middle Ages and the following centuries of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, theft and violence were the main manifestations of crime. Travellers were usually robbed of small sums of money or goods such as food and property. Violent and life-threatening crimes against travellers were the minority of cases. When, as a result of the spread of literacy, the availability of printed information about crimes increased, and often exaggerated their number for populist sensationalism, the public became mistaken about the increase in crime. In the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth century, crime declined, as it did after 1850 [4,6,8,9,11,12,13,14,16,19,20,21,22,23,26,28,29,30,31,32,33].

Travellers, who will later be called tourists, chose the safest possible roads, more willingly where there were hospitable, friendly parties and good people. Routes leading among dangerous and sinister areas were reluctantly chosen. In addition, it seems that the danger of travel in the twenty-first and subsequent centuries will still accompany tourist travellers, because the world is shaken by various dramatic events that limit carefree travel. Furthermore, the specter of further pandemics can limit this movement to a minimum [2,36,37,38,39,40,41,42].

7. Conclusions

In the development of the analytical material, in-depth studies of the subject literature, and the comparative analysis of the collected and selected information were applied. The research techniques also included: electronic data processing, synthesis of the information obtained, statistical data processing, forecasting, and logical inference.

Two approaches were used in the study. Firstly, the method of bibliographic analysis using autopsy based on the heuristic method, which is one of the methods of bibliographic knowledge acquisition (in addition to the inclusion of digital methods of data acquisition and processing in bibliometric search work), which allowed the acquisition of data from printed sources and their analysis. This is a method based on the experience and knowledge of the researcher. The authors relied on this method in the first stage of the research, and then compared its results with a method based on digital technology (Google Scholar and the EBSCO databases).

As a result of the first method, 132 items of literature were reviewed, from which 56 items were selected in the final stage and thoroughly analyzed. As a result of the detailed analysis, it turned out that only 36 of them contain substantive content that directly corresponded to the research topic “Dangers of travel—banditry on the roads.” The results of the analysis are shown in Table 3.

The second stage of the research used a method based on the digital technology of Google Scholar and the EBSCO databases. As a result of the research, the following items were found: bandits 131,000; cultural tourism 45,000; travel hazards 311; tourism history 7460; and travel hazards 135. It should be noted that the authors used 2020 as the time period of the lower limit due to the search for more recent items.

The final conclusions are as follows:

• In the first stage of the work, the search utilized the method of bibliographic analysis using autopsy based on the heuristic method, based on the experience and knowledge of the researcher, and gave satisfactory results, allowing the authors to obtain numerous data from printed sources relevant to the research topic. Thirty-six records well suited to the research topic were achieved. The analysis of the collected bibliographic data allowed a detailed analysis of the texts and the combination of the collected information in the form of a synthetic study.
• In the second stage of the research, using the method based on the digital technology of Google Scholar and the EBSCO databases, a large number of items were found (131,000); however, only 16 records met the criteria of the research topic. After a thorough analysis of the full texts, it turned out that they did not fully meet the substantive criteria adopted for the research topic.
• The research of the second stage yielded very interesting records for the keywords: bandits—131,000; cultural tourism—45,000; travel dangers—311; tourism history—7460; and travel dangers—135.
• The main conclusion derived from the research is the need to select the right databases for parametric analysis of specific topics, especially niche topics in specialized databases.
• Despite the development of search system technology in bibliometrics, what is important is the heuristic method, autopsy, and the intuition of the researcher.
• The bibliometric review of the literature carried out indicated a deficit of works on the history of the peril of travel in ancient times.
• In conclusion, it should also be pointed out, unfortunately, that only traces of literature are used for the promotion of tourist destinations; despite how visiting places associated with a specific criminal historical event can be a tourist product, as it is associated with the memory of spectacular events, such as murders, assaults or robberies.

Despite the first search from the so-called autopsy of the literature on the dangers of travel in the old days, the results were small. In fact, no synthetic studies in this area were encountered. One can even speak of a trace and episodic appearance of more valuable information. The first article on the topic of interest was prepared on a limited source base, assuming that a larger body of material for analysis would be obtained after conducting a systematic review of the literature using Google Scholar and the EBSCO databases. In addition, subject-matched articles were searched using keywords such as: history of tourism, cultural tourism, travel dangers, robbery, robbers, and robberies.