ABSTRACT
The region as a unit of analysis has gone in and out of fashion in geography. Regional geography was very much influenced by the work on the ‘natural region’ of the French geographers Vidal de la Blache and Elisée Reclus at the end of the nineteenth century. For them and others of the French School of geography, the main unit of analysis was the synthetic region. The idea of using synthesis in regional studies was taken up in Britain by such pioneers as Gilbert (1960) and Ogilvie (1928).
