RISULTATI RICERCA

Liguria is a region whose borders appear somewhat artificial and not actually shaped around the culture and tradition of the various communities which constitute it. As a result, historiography also seems to reflect this peculiar feature. The reason behind such strong diversity lies in the centuries old presence of the city-state of Genoa, a city which represented for over two centuries one of the most important financial and commercial centres of the world. Its wealth and prestige have ultimately dominated and devoured the whole ligurian territory. Still today, modern history reveals a large gap in the study of the region as a whole and not only of the enormous Genoese reality.

In history and social sciences the concept of space has seen like a pre-existent order in which the protagonists are temporal processes. Some geographers have pointed at centrality of environmental element in changing processes, but, until now, this suggestion has not been taken into account because of lack of dialogue between this two intellectual spheres. The necessary historical reappropriation of space also needs to fill up conceptual distance between the definition of space and place, divided in the historical dialect: place is the framework of the conflict, space in the frame of social control. The uninterrupted geographical expansion of capitalistic world-system leads to favourable places for lack of conflict and fragility of rules. These places assure the control of the space in relation to resources, working classes, markets.

Multidisciplinary notes and a research for definitions In the last thirty years local historiography has become more mature. In the case of regional history it seems necessary to search for deeper and more precise definitions. The useful collaboration with other disciplines, as well as the comparison among different regional and local histories, can help the historians who work about these themes. One of the points which are always discussed is the regional ambit: if it seems reasonable to criticize the reduction of the regional history to its administrative borders, this reductions very often seems to be the dimension in which it is circumscribed. Indeed, this model has not prevented to carry out researches either on more circumscribed or larger areas. The historian has been able “to pursue” his own specific topic vaguely referring to this administrative outline. What seems paradoxical is the scanty number of studies which could take advantage from these borders, that is the administrative and institutional history.