The paper deals with material mining of chapters of Robert G. Gleig’s travelogue where the author describes his journey through the Northeast Bohemia borderland in 1837. On the basis of linguistic means that Gleig uses in his description, it constructs the concept of periferism, stemming from E. Said’s orientalism. It defines periferism as a set of concepts and assumptions describing the periphery and leading to a special treatment of the periphery, i.e. a marginal part of its own social-cultural system that is socially and culturally inferior to the core - the center. The concept of periferism proposes to contemplate over the relationship of social elites and bourgeois circles with the inhabitants of the Czech countryside in the XIX century in the framework of their varied interests in this (social) space (tourism, so-called ethnographic interest, educational activities, etc.).