“Patriotic” statistics.

Not long ago in the preface to our Abrégé de Géographie we did not hesitate to indicate the wide and numerous deficiencies that we still see in the very geography and in the statistics of Italy considered as a whole. We do not yet know any work both satisfying the needs of the enlightened time in which we live and the progress made by these two sciences … we see the best geographies and the most renowned itineraries describing minutely or outlining in detail a statue, a painting, a medal, or the remains of an ancient building, while not mentioning an immense tunnel bored in the bowels of a mountain to open a new road in order to promote industry and commerce … or [the gigantic structures built] to connect two manufacturing and commercial places … or to save large tracts of countryside from flooding. Thus in 1834 the Venetian geographer and statistician Adriano Balbi expressed the irritation felt by many Italian intellectuals towards the conventional descriptions of Italy, products of an erudite gaze which looked at the country as a repository of antiquities, and of endless travelers' accounts portraying the Mediterranean peninsula as a picturesque realm to be exploited for tourists' delight. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]