Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book talks about a region that is a central concept in geography. Regions can have administrative territorial shape through the drawing of borders and boundaries and the making of state spaces. An era of traditional regional geography existed during the long nineteenth century. Here, the region was treated as absolute: as an independent backdrop for, first, conducting geographical inquiry and, second, developing thereafter a world of different regional geographical types. A regional geography of elements was proposed to produce an elaborate regional geography of 'areal differentiation', the division of the earth surface by observations that different areas of the world are somehow self-contained and where, extending the work of Vidal de la Blache, relationships between people and land created a distinctive geography or genre de vie.