Maps, boundary conflicts and toponymic disputes in 18th century Liguria: place names as historical products

The paper presents a cartographic document produced in the 1759 by Matteo Vinzoni and the Count of Exilles to solve some boundary conflicts between the communities of Seborga, Vallebona and San Remo in western Liguria. The map represents the territory of Seborga; for a number of border sites, Vinzoni recorded the descriptions of both Seborga inhabitants and Vallebona and San Remo ones. Both descriptions are often different or even opposite, and places names are especially debated. The map has been georeferenced; place names have been vectored, and compared with later maps, as the 1851 “Gran Carta degli Stati Sardi” [Great Map of Sardinian States]. To conclude, this paper has two objectives: first, to underline the great number of places names recorded in 18th century maps, which have not been registered in later maps; second, to shed new light on the historical processes which influenced local places names that involved also jurisdictional conflicts