Space and Administrative Boundaries at the Birth of the Italian Kingdom

The essay analyses the relationship between administration and territory at the birth of the Italian unitary state. Following the discussions of the time involving scholars of diverse disciplinary provenance, politicians, and administrators, the essay highlights the main problems encountered by the design of the administrative districts of the new Kingdom of Italy: the territorial contradictions and the imbalances that conditioned their initial structure and subsequent history; the legacy of the boundaries and internal territorial divisions of the ancient states of the peninsula; the various proposals put forward for the county’s regional organization by geographers, statisticians and politicians, even before the completion of unification; the territorial and administrative problems of the new state: natural or artificial districts, small or large provinces, the weight of municipalities, projects of regionalization; the contribution of new sciences, such as geography and statistics; the choice of administrative centralization, with its inevitable consequences on the boundaries of territorial partitions, linked to the ‘exceptionality’ of the historical moment.