Land and Nation: The Ancient Modernity of National Geography (Piedmont, 1750–1800)

This paper focuses on the shift that occurred in the spatial representation of states in the eighteenth century. This shift will be considered as a combination of institutional reforms and of a new social awareness of space. A consideration of the case of the Italian Piedmont will demonstrate how “national” space was created through antiquarian research and how a larger political confrontation took place in the guise of a learned debate. The diverse accounts of Piedmontese history under examination all employed methods derived from previous ages, relying upon a concept of space as historically continuous, embedded in time immemorial.