Ambiente e storiografia sul fascismo

This essay examines how the environment, both as a field of investigation and as an analytical tool, has been included in historiographical studies on Fascism. The article aims at reconstructing the evolution of historiographical inquiries concerning the imagined or indeed transformed environment, during the two decades of Fascism, especially in the field of agricultural history. From the 1970s until the late 1990s, agricultural history extensively investigated environmental problems at the time of Fascism, especially as a backdrop for the country’s modernization processes. Subsequently, with the rise of other environmental issues and the growth of studies focused on regional and local environmental matters, historians began to interpret those processes and problems with new awareness. Historical research on land reclamation during Fascism, in particular, shifted the focus of environmental history from an essentially economic perspective, to a broader ecological one.