Images of Lombardy in historiography

The historiography of contemporary Lombardy has been dominated by in-depth studies of local contexts but has rarely addressed the regional dimension. Those studies that have had a regional outlook have drawn divergent and fluid regional boundaries, rarely connected to the administrative and by now political reality of the region of Lombardy. This article aims to reconstruct some of the most salient moments of this ‘identification’ of Lombardy in the economic, social and administrative history of the region. It tries to trace the cultural roots and persistence of this identification, which has sometimes been embroiled in political controversy. Focusing mainly on more recent studies, this article will also address the aporias and unsolved issues surrounding the study of Lombardy.