Geografia e sapere locale nell'Europa del Settecento. La Erdbeschreibung di Anton Friedrich Büsching nelle sue traduzioni italiane

This essay examines the developments of geography science in eighteenth-century Italy by studying the reception of the Erdbeschreibung by Anton Friedrich Büsching, one of the most relevant works of German "statistical science". A thorough analysis of its Italian editions appeared in three different historical contexts - the Tuscany of Peter Leopold, Venice and Naples during the 1780s - will show that Italian geography was not aimed at the scientific description of the world, but intended to revive the social awareness of space in eighteenth-century Italy. Rearranged in order either to sustain and celebrate the reforms of the Italian "Enlightened absolutism" or to present an Enlightened view of the world, the Erdbeschreibung also attests to the continuity of a geographical method based on a network of trustrelationships with local informants and on the social perception of space.