ABSTRACT
This chapter examines efforts to map, understand, and ultimately resuscitate the Maremma. In 1767, the mathematician-astronomer Leonardo Ximenes (1716-86) visited the Sienese coast to report on the conditions of its lands. He and his associates commissioned the production of a large map. This map was used not only as an instrument to exercise control over territories and natural resources, but also as a tool to reform the social landscape of specific areas: it was a guide to political action. Ximenes’ project highlights the tensions between customary rural arrangements and the interventionist designs of enlightened reform. It also suggests that the abstract rules of political economy needed to be informed by an understanding of the challenges and possibilities of the natural environment. Economics could not be divorced from materially grounded ways of knowing.
