Description:
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How have the English influenced the image of the Alps?
Would the Alps be what they are, without British Alpine tourism? The project seeks to get to the bottom of this question by examining pictorial and written portrayals of the Alps by English-speaking Alpine visitors, and assessing the influence these portrayals have had on the images of the Alps held by the local inhabitants.
Background: The way in which local inhabitants and visitors perceive and imagine the landscape determines to a large extent how the landscape is organised, developed, and used: the reality results from the perception. As Great Britain became industrialised, its middle classes found they had money to spend on businesses in the Alps, of which they already had a preconceived notion. This changed the local inhabitants’ conceptions just as much as it did the infrastructure, industry, and residential development of the area. Peculiarities typical of Switzerland, such as its role as a safe-haven in the Second World War, were associated with the British view of the Alps. The British, however, developed not just one, but a whole series of alpine images – from a fanatical perception of the region as healthy and full of clean air, to the notion of the Alps as the theatre for heroic mountain-climbing exploits.
Objectives and approach: The project examines how the portrayal of the alpine landscape developed through the pictures and words of English people and English-speaking visitors. The aim is to assess the claim that the alpine landscape is an English invention. To what extent, for example, have the actions and preconceptions of the English visitors shaped the local inhabitants’ perception of the landscape? Worthy of particular study is the change from one alpine image to another, the way in which a new image has been added to an existing one.
Significance: The project helps to clarify the origins of the contemporary image of the Alps and of the Alpine landscape, and to unravel the Alpine identity, often assumed to be genuinely Swiss. It explains how old-fashioned images of the Alps interact with today’s realities, and shows how knowledge of earlier cultural landscape management can be used to understand current policy on conservation and development.
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