Geografia, economia e politica dell'Adriatico orientale: i rapporti italo-balcanici in uno studio di Carlo Maranelli del 1907

Abstract

The 1907 VI Italian Geographical Congress took place at the eve of the Austro-Hungarian annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Balkans were a potential area of economic, political and strategic expansion – then only at the beginning – of the Kingdom of Italy, which in those times was allied and competitor of the Hapsburg Empire. The Geographer Carlo Maranelli’s (radical-democrat and soon collaborator of Salvemini) interesting report analysed the geographico-economic situation of the Eastern Adriatic seacoast and also the Italo-Austrian competition. It caught limits and potentialities of the Italian penetration into those areas, thus wishing a pacific Italo-Balkanic collaboration. But the analyses and descriptions of territories and communications, of coasts and harbours, were certainly useful also for Italian politicians and military by then involved – such as the Austrian ones – in strategic considerations and war studies in the Adriatic. The various military institutes’ involvement in the congress showed, in fact, how geography, military art and Italian expansionism were getting more and more interconnected.