Mare nostrum e “geopolitica”. Il mito imperiale dei geografi italiani

Abstract

The article provides a critical history of the Italian geopolitical history of the fascist period and especially its journal «Geopolitica» (1939-1942). The discourse is situated amidst the wider contexts of the interwar debates surrounding geopolitics and during the Second World War. Similarly, the movement is positioned within the political, academic and cultural contexts of fascist Italy and the cultures of Italian geography in this era. It considers the origins and development of geopolitical ideas and the regime’s promotion of an Italian geographical imagination and its consequent support for «Geopolitica», its program and its representations of colonial space in Africa and its analysis of the Mediterranean and Balkan regions.

Keywords

• colonial space
• geographical imagination
• geopolitics
• Mediterranean
• Second World War
• colonialismo
• geopolitica
• immaginazione geografica
• Mediterraneo
• Risorgimento