Geografia, economia e politica dell'Adriatico orientale: i rapporti italo-balcanici in uno studio di Carlo Maranelli del 1907

The 1907 VI Italian Geographical Congress took place at the eve of the Austro-Hungarian annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Balkans were a potential area of economic, political and strategic expansion � then only at the beginning � of the Kingdom of Italy, which in those times was allied and competitor of the Hapsburg Empire. The Geographer Carlo Maranelli�s (radical-democrat and soon collaborator of Salvemini) interesting report analysed the geographico-economic situation of the Eastern Adriatic seacoast and also the Italo-Austrian competition. It caught limits and potentialities of the Italian penetration into those areas, thus wishing a pacific Italo-Balkanic collaboration. But the analyses and descriptions of territories and communications, of coasts and harbours, were certainly useful also for Italian politicians and military by then involved � such as the Austrian ones � in strategic considerations and war studies in the Adriatic. The various military institutes� involvement in the congress showed, in fact, how geography, military art and Italian expansionism were getting more and more interconnected.