Geopolitical Perspectives from the Italian Border: Introducing Gianfranco Battisti, Triestino Geographer

This book frames the work of Gianfranco Battisti on Geopolitics in north-eastern Italy and proceeds in putting this into a contemporary and global perspective. Alongside introducing Battisti's biography and work to the English speaking community, it delves into his approaches (of using historical geographies as tools to explain contemporary geopolitics, while maintaining a high attentiveness to data-driven research) and Geopolitics - the "geography of geographies" on a local, regional and global scale. This work showcases the production and evolution of the Triestino school of geography that started from the same French and German classics that shaped Anglo American geography in the 19th century. The concept of Geography as an industry is discussed in detail, in a local as well as a global context. Realities and problems of borderlands are portrayed in a historic and local context, as well as how geopolitical maps and ideas were instrumentalized by Napoleon, during the first and second World War and the geopolitical rationale that shaped the times between. The book continues to give an outlook, how Europe reconstructed itself geopolitically, the implications thereof and a comparison of how this fits in with geopolitical agendas on a global scale.