This book explored the Italian culture of nature by looking at the relations between science and politics in liberal Italy and, in particular, at the politicisation of Italian nature in the context of the nation-building process in the nineteenth century. In Risorgimento and liberal Italy, these relations can be placed within the framework of a ‘Patriotic ecology’,1 that is, a natural contract between science and politics based on an implicit arrangement between visions of nature and the objectives of politics that identified Italian nature, under various meanings, as an instrument to be used with the aim of giving legitimacy to the nation. In this context, science played a leading role because it was considered functional to achieving the objective of legitimisation through certain scientific disciplines and relevant institutions.