Une microhistoire de l’environnement côtier: les plages de Ligurie à la fin de l’Ancien Régime

[Machine translation] This essay discusses the emergence of the theme of beach history as a central object of the environmental, political and social history of the Mediterranean. In particular, it presents some results of a long-term research project on the history of Ligurian beaches, which intends to offer an analytical reconstruction of these processes (with a microhistorical approach), with the aspiration of making historical research dialogue with current planning policies. A first part concerns the issue of the privatization of parts of the Ligurian coast during the eighteenth century (beach sites), and the local dynamics that prompted those operations promoted by the government of the Republic of Genoa. A second one is dedicated to the period immediately following the fall of that government, and to the years of the Jacobin Republic and the Napoleonic Empire, and shows how the statistical and administrative documents of the time discussed the economic relevance but also the very material “nature” of the beaches.