Politics, Education, and Geography in the Early Modern Period: Notes for a Histor-ical Analysis. – This article explores the connection between political au-thority, education, and geography in the early modern period, analyzing how the teaching of geography became a fundamental tool for managing and controlling emerging territories. In a context of fragmented educa-tional systems, the article highlights how geography was used to address the new political, economic, and social needs of European powers. Schools, both secular and religious, particularly those run by orders like the Jesuits, played a key role in transmitting this knowledge, contributing to the creation of new skills essential for colonial expansion. Finally, the article underscores how geography, understood as both a scientific disci-pline and a political tool, became a point of convergence between educa-tion and power, legitimizing the imperial ambitions of European.

Lagoon geopolitical culture: Geographical, military and political knowledge at the Accademia Veneziana. – In 1558, the newly founded Accademia Veneziana, established and directed by patrician Federico Badoer upon his return from his embassy to Charles V and Philip II, conceived a monumental encyclopaedic programme of printed publications in all branches of knowledge: the Somma delle opere che in tutte le scienze et arti più nobili et in varie lingue ha da mandare in luce l’Academia Venetiana. Among all these “works in all the most noble sciences and arts”, those dealing with geographical and political topics occupy a unique position, quite new for the time. In this setting, which was eminently Venetian but oriented towards Europe and the world, took shape for the first time the project of a “reason of state”, conceived as a (geo)political science, i.e. inseparably geographical, military and political.

Global Event and Local Responses: The Case of the Flu Pandemic 1918-1919. – The experience of the flu pandemic in the year 1918 is considered an important event for understanding the First World War. The flu showed the interconnection due to political-military, commercial, information and news that allowed the virus to be physically transported to every continent and from there to find the possibility of spreading in every nation. Beyond the medical- health characteristics and the consequences derived from its seriousness, this episode shows the ability reached since the early years of the twentieth century to think of itself as an interconnected network that was used by the disease to advance rapidly and pro-voke its harmful consequences.

From Botero’s times until now every international system has always developed a geographical
knowledge, used in every nation or empire with different aims. Why? Because the geographical morphologies have been used in different ways through the History. This was the Reclus’ thought, taken from the Nouvelle géographie universelle. In that conviction he was keeping in mind both historical and technological evolution of the world. Geopolitics was born from each part of it, substituting the political geography in the last thirty years.