Adriano Balbi and the definition of oceans, seas and “Open Mediterraneans”. The dialogue between geography and cartography with Evangelista Azzi

Abstract

In the first half of the 19th century, Adriano Balbi (1782–1848) was one of the greatest geographers in Italy and Europe, having an extremely vast and constantly updated scientific output. He tried to keep up with new discoveries of ‘unknown and unexplored' territories. His work influenced geographers and cartographers, who used it as a source. Evangelista Azzi (1793–1848), a cartographer and military topographer from Parma Duchies, produced a wide corpus of school maps. His Mappamondo (1838) was conceived as an enormous wall map (2 × 4 mt), that summarised the geographical, historical and ethnographic knowledge of the time, as an encyclopaedic work. To collect data, he used contemporary geographical and cartographic works, including those of Adriano Balbi, having a close epistolary relationship with him. Balbi understood the importance of a cartographic restitution of his works and supported Azzi transferring numerous notions to him. Among these were the seas and oceans, which in the world map are named according to Balbi's works. The Mappamondo is the first map where the Balbi's definition of “Open Mediterraneans” appears. The paper's primary objective is to identify the dialogue between geographers and cartographers in conveying a common narrative of the seas. Considering Azzi's cartographies as the visual synthesis of Balbi's geographical proposals, the paper explores a direct transposition of knowledge from text to map. Finally, the metaphor of water and liquid worlds lends itself well to observing the dynamism of small pre-unitary Italian actors that dialogued on global issues, going beyond state borders and moving within a common Risorgimento context.