Following the armistices of the First and the Second World Wars, the allied powers met in Paris twice, first in 1919 and then in 1946 to establish a new geopolitical order of Europe. In the reterritorialization of the Upper Adriatic, the borders should have been mainly based on ethnic criteria and only marginally according to economic or strategic needs. The aim of this paper is to present some significant examples of ethnic maps of the areas straddling the border between Italy and Yugoslavia compiled at that time. These maps should translate onto the page the idea of the borders drawn on “principle of nation” criteria, a search for the elusive equilibrium between a natural border and a human one, or rather between an area in which to exercise one’s sovereignty and an area in which one can identify one’s own nationality.This brief list of ethnographic maps shows how, during the first half of the XX century, cartography with his rich toolbox of techniques played an important role both in the diplomatic context, as geopolitical problem-solving devices, and also in that of public opinion, as medium of communication for local propaganda and consensus making.
