Biography

Pietro Repishti is a historian of urbanism and religion in West Africa. He obtained his PhD in African History from the University of Pavia, jointly supervised with Sciences Po-Paris, with a dissertation on the social and urban history of Porto-Novo (1724-1874). He also holds an MA in Anthropology from the University of Milan-Bicocca, a BA in History, and a diploma in documentary filmmaking. He is a member of the Italian Association of Africanists (ASAI), of the Société des Africanistes (Paris) and he is an associate researcher at IMAF (Institut des mondes africains). He has also been a visiting researcher at the Institut Fondamental d’Afrique Noire (IFAN) in Dakar. Since 2019, he has conducted field research in southern Benin focusing on vodun cults, urban history, and methodological issues related to the writing of history. He currently teaches African Urban History at Université Paris Cité.
 

Project Summary

The project “Atlantic Bastions” explores how Renaissance Italian military architectural knowledge circulated beyond Europe and contributed to shaping fortifications along the Gulf of Guinea during the Atlantic slave trade (15th–18th centuries). While Italian engineers were not directly involved in constructing West African coastal forts, their expertise in fortificazione alla moderna significantly influenced Iberian military theory, printed treatises, and cartographic traditions that circulated through Portuguese and Spanish imperial networks. Addressing a gap between European architectural history and African Atlantic studies, the project examines how Italian knowledge was transmitted, adapted, and transformed beyond Europe. It combines military architectural history, archival research, and visual analysis to trace the movement of ideas across continents and cultures, highlighting how imperial spatial models were applied and reinterpreted in African contexts. The research also investigates the roles of intermediaries such as military architects, engineers, travelers, traders, printers, and cartographers in transmitting this knowledge, and how it was reshaped through transimperial networks of exchange and expertise. Finally, it seeks to consider how African rulers and chiefs negotiated the establishment of these imported models along the coast, often exploiting rivalries between European nations. By situating the Gulf of Guinea within broader networks of intellectual exchange, the project tries to reposition Renaissance Italy within an African-centered understanding of the early Atlantic world.