Spazio e tempo nella geografia di Cesare Battisti: confini storici e geografici del Trentino

Cesare Battisti’s geographic work is the outcome of complex theoretical approaches interaction related to the context of European geography in late 19th century. His thinking was shaped by Giovanni Marinelli’s teaching, which stressed the importance of positivist data and the pre-eminence of statistics and cartography in geography. In this perspective geography is a synchronic performance that, like photography, describes the reality of a territory. Not by chance Marinelli had defined geography as the discipline of «how and where»: regional geography was therefore dedicated to geographical phenomena localisation and distribution on the earth surface (chorology) and to its exterior depiction (morphology) by means of comparison. Another contribution to Battisti’s geographical understanding is related to Friedrich Ratzel. In Ratzel’s perspective historical movements played a fundamental role in determining phenomena distribution, upon genetic and organicistic precepts of anthropogeography. These different aspects allowed Battisti to put into question the difference between a natural and an historical region, the first almost secure upon mountain relief and hydrology, the second mutable in space and time, enlarged or circumscribed by wars, conquests and migrations.