• The wilderness and its cultural history

The wilderness and its cultural history

Raf De Bont, PhD
assistant professor of history

International nature protection organisations have a weakness for the wilderness. Why? Why are certain types of nature considered valuable and others not? Why do we have a soft spot for elephants, gorillas and rain forests? De Bont answers these questions on the basis of cultural history. He takes us from the nineteenth-century American Romantics and the big game hunters in colonial Africa to the cattle of the Oostvaardersplassen.