A flexible and novel instrument prepared by the best Italian scholars as a response to the growing demand for greater knowledge of the history of our regions. "A strange destiny that of Liguria, caught somewhere between a very precocious definition of its regional identity and blurred contours that still today cannot be said to have been defined". Liguria has achieved a sort of record in the history of central-north Italy, where other regions have struggled greatly to attain a political unity or identity, or have never achieved either. Guided by the capital Genoa, long one of Italy's most affluent and dynamic cities, Liguria instead experienced early unification but over the centuries its regional confines have been continually redefined, due to the changing dynamics of national politics. The same can be said for the region's economy, which has always been strongly influenced by the industrial and financial dynamics of the broader central-European area. This book addresses the history, from antiquity to today, of a territory - more than a region tout court - with a weak, plural, identity, that has taken shape gradually, driven not so much by local as by national and international impulses.