The irredentist geographer

Cesare Battisti’s planimeter (Cesare Battisti, 1875-1916) permitted to measure a plane figure’s surface area, drawn in scale 1:75,000. This scale of reproduction was imposed by the Habsburg Empire. For those who don’t know it, besides being a well-known patriot, irredentist and Italian journalist, Battisti was a geographer too. He was interested into cartography and during the World War I, behind the trenches in Karst Plateau, he drew the borders that he was dreaming of for Italy and Austria, since he was an Austrian who was fighting for the Italian army.