Italy意大利

Norbert Krebs

This review introduces the Atlante fisico economico d'Italia, edited by G. Dainelli. Containing 82 plates and 508 maps, the atlas draws on recent statistics to present Italy's physical environment (geology, landforms, climate) and human geography (population, economy, transport). The reviewer praises its refined printing, but notes that vegetation maps lack differentiation and that isarithmic methods are unsuitable for abrupt regional contrasts; an explanatory supplement enhances the work. The atlas is seen as a milestone of Italian scientific and technical progress.

Giotto Dainelli

Drawing on his long personal experience, Giotto Dainelli recounts the genesis, delayed realization, and final completion of the Physical-Economic Atlas of Italy. He first conceived the project 37 years earlier during a stay in Vienna, influenced by the geographical school there and possibly by the Finnish Atlas. Convinced that such a work should represent current conditions rather than become an outdated historical document, he nevertheless saw the initial idea remain dormant for a quarter of a century because of material difficulties, insufficient statistical data, and the lack of a publisher. Although the project was discussed at the 1921 Florence Geographical Congress, no action followed. The decisive stimulus came when he saw preliminary plates of a similar atlas at the Paris and Warsaw Geographical Congresses. Supported by Mussolini, he secured a publisher and undertook an extremely intense five-year effort, personally constructing and drawing more than 400 of the 600 maps (1935-1939). The atlas was designed to give a comprehensive picture of Italy around 1930. Its natural-environment maps, such as relief, geology, rainfall, and temperature, are treated as introductory, explaining the demographic and economic patterns that form the core of the volume. A major methodological advantage was the use of three censuses almost simultaneous in time—the 1927 industrial census, the 1929 agricultural cadastre, and the 1931 population census—thus avoiding anachronisms. The author also included smaller historical maps to show dynamic trends, particularly improvements in morbidity and infant mortality due to Italian sanitary and social policies. Dainelli stresses that geography must be a living science: an atlas produced too slowly would portray an already superseded past rather than the present, and therefore its preparation had to be as rapid as possible. He likewise recommends that similar works be repeated periodically, acting like a thorough clinical chart for a nation, to assess progress and identify weaknesses. Finally, he appeals for international cooperation among scholars in adopting uniform cartographic methods—common scales, gradations, and coincidence of reference dates—so that major distributive phenomena can be compared across countries, offering a wider scientific and humanitarian perspective beyond national boundaries. The article thus combines an autobiographical account of scholarly perseverance with a methodological statement on the nature and purpose of national economic atlases.

Jan Ernst

This is a detailed review of the Physical-Economic Atlas of Italy, edited by G. Dainelli (1940). Produced by a team of Italian scholars, the atlas contains 82 plates and 508 maps and uses mainly isarithmic methods to present Italy's physical environment and economic development. The physical section, about one-quarter of the volume, gives particular attention to climate, and also covers relief, seas, geology, volcanoes, hydrography, vegetation and fauna; the economic section deals with population, agriculture, industry and services, with special emphasis on land use and the regional distribution of activities. The reviewer praises the wealth of material and the clarity and aesthetic quality of the maps, but criticizes significant shortcomings: the only topographic map is too small in scale, a soil map is lacking, urban geography and tourism are absent, fisheries are insufficiently treated, the isarithmic method is often misapplied, and no map bears a graticule or coordinates. He concludes that the atlas fails to provide a complete picture of Italy's geography, and that its economic content was deliberately selected to present the fascist regime in a favorable light.

This review evaluates the 1940 Atlante Fisico-Economico d'Italia, focusing on its composition and cartographic methods. The atlas contains over 500 pages, with physical maps occupying about a quarter; relief, geological, temperature, and precipitation maps are detailed, and the glacier map of the Alps is particularly well executed. Population and economic maps account for the majority, using graded ratio and regional diagram techniques. However, industrial maps fail to show the configuration and scale of industries, and some isopleths are inappropriately applied to non-continuous distributions. Overall, the atlas is richly informative and finely printed, reflecting both its value and contemporary limitations.