How did the natural elements that make up landscape come to acquire values tied to tradition and nationhood in modern and contemporary Europe?

An unprecedented reading of landscape as the embodiment of nationhood, this extended inquiry traces the history of landscape as a concept from its 16th-century debut in French through its many uses in art, geography, the social sciences, and finally, in political contexts during the rise of nations in the 19th and 20th centuries. The era of landscape begins, during which the plural deployment of landscape references constitutes a veritable social and cultural system. This book is a history of social usages that claim to speak for and embody, through landscape, a certain coherence of worldview.