Geopolitics and the geographical imagination in Fascist Italy

The thesis provides a critical history of the Italian geopolitical movement of the interwar period and especially its journal Geopolitica (l939-1942). The discourse is situated amidst the wider contexts of the inter-war debates surrounding geopolitics and our anglophone histories of this episode. Similarly, the movement is positioned within the political, academic and cultural contexts of Fascist Italy and the cultures of Italian geography in this era. Substantial chapters consider the origins and development of geopolitical ideas as they-were re-negotiated in Fascist Italy; the regime's promotion of an Italian geographical imagination and its consequent support for Geopolitica; and the programme of Geopolitica itself. The.cartography of the journal, its representations of colonial space in Africa and its analysis of the Mediterranean and Balkan regions are also addressed at length. Finally, the various contestations of geopolitics and its key terms are rehearsed, as is the journal's probable impact and its eventual closure. The legacies and histories ofthis episode are briefly considered.