Italians in Africa, Africans in Italy in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

CYCLE: Between Two Shores
SPEAKER: Dionigi Albera (Université d’Aix-Marseille)
DATE: December 15, 2025 - 6:00 p.m.
WHERE: Museo Nazionale Romano, Palazzo Massimo

Since prehistory, the Italian Peninsula and the African coast have been connected by their geographical proximity. Consequently, migrations from one shore to the other have been a traditional element. In the context of the last three centuries, flows in both directions did not overlap almost simultaneously, but rather saw: first, a decrease in arrivals from Africa (by the mid-19th century even the presence of slaves in the Peninsula declined) and an increase in Italians overseas due to successive Risorgimento exiles and progressive colonial pushes; then, after World War II, the return of colonists and their children, the arrival of exiles and African students in the 1960s, the first labor migrations in the following decade, and finally the arrivals of migrants and refugees in the last quarter of the 20th century and the first of the 21st.

Matteo Sanfilippo is Full Professor of Modern History at the University of Tuscia. He specializes in the study of migrations of people and ideas between the Old and New Worlds, with particular attention to the religious dimension. He studied at Sapienza University of Rome and Ottawa University (Canada) and obtained his Ph.D. in History of the Americas from the University of Genoa (1990).

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