Abstract
Highlighting their foundation period or to past periods of glory, countries use these narratives to define themselves. In some cases (Italy, Greece for example), a glorious past even determined the nineteenth-century choice for a new capital. In the Netherlands, modern visions of landscape have been heavily influenced by paintings from the seventeenth century.
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Notes
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So strong was the appeal of the Romans, that even those who resisted them became acceptable as role models. In France, although the national language is derived from the Romans, the Gauls are seen as the country’s real forefathers (just consider the popular comic book figures Asterix and Obelix). Belgium is named after the Celtic tribe of the Belgae, mentioned by Ceasar himself as ‘the bravest […] being farthest removed from the highly developed civilization’ (Caesar, 1951, p. 29). In the Netherlands, the Batavians, who rose up against the Romans in 69 AD, were particularly popular. The capital of the colonial empire was named Batavia (after Indonesian independence, the city’s pre-colonial name of Jakarta was restored). Another example are the Dacians in Ceauşescu’s Romania, defeated by the Romans in the second century AD, who were even presented as the founders of Rome (Darlington, 2020, pp. 111–112).
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Although, some Greeks would rather have opted for Constantinople (Kristof, 1994, p. 230).
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Renes, H. (2022). Landscapes of Glorious Times. In: Landscape, Heritage and National Identity in Modern Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09536-8_6
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