Geografia antica e geografia moderna del Caucaso in alcune relazioni di viaggio del Settecento francese

This essay deals with the geographical tradition of Antiquity as a set of tools used by 17th and 18th-century French writers to form a modern geography of Caucasia. This process started before but later connected to the scientific exploration of the region during the first steps of Russian imperialism at the end of the 18th century. Texts by the travelers Jean Chardin and Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, the consul Charles Claude de Peyssonnel and the savant Sainte-Croix are used here to show how the study of ancient geography was instrumental to define the identity of a modern place by matching ancient rivers, cities and peoples to modern ones. This technique could result less in the revision of the tradition than in the perception of historical continuities and/or discontinuities. Most of all, it could have an impact on present-day issues such as French commercial interests in the Black Sea and the reestablishment of the trade route between India and Europe via the Caucasus mentioned by Pliny and Strabo.