Although A Sentimental Journey is nominally a work of travel writing about France and Italy, the novel is almost entirely set in France—Yorick makes it only as far as Lyon, a city in southern central France.
Yorick's trip takes place sometime during the Seven Years' War fought between England and France from 1756 to 1763. Sterne engages with the complicated politics of his time in the novel through frequent digressions about the national character of the English and the French. He also frequently voices his observations as a foreigner on French soil, frequently expanding into sweeping generalizations about French character. As Yorick pronounces at the very beginning of the novel, "the Bourbon is by no means a cruel race: they may be misled like other people; but there is a mildness in their blood." The major plot line surrounding Yorick’s lack of a passport in France, which is the major source of tension in the novel, also makes use of the complicated politics of being an Englishman in France during the time of the war as a plot device.
Yorick’s hatred for the practice of slavery, which he expresses with increasing urgency as the threat of his incarceration for his illegal travel grows, also reflects Sterne’s abolitionist sentiments and highlights the contemporary debate over the future of slavery in England and its colonies that raged during the 18th and 19th centuries.
