Sub-Saharan Africa between the Mediterranean and the Global World (1450–1600)

CYCLE: Lost Horizons
SPEAKER: Angelo Cattaneo (ISEM CNR)
DATE: October 13, 2025 - 6:00 p.m.
WHERE: VIVE - Vittoriano and Palazzo Venezia, Sala del Refettorio (Palazzo Venezia)

The lecture will explore the history of European maps of Africa, beginning with Iberian voyages and their reception within European mercantile and knowledge networks. From 1441, Iberian merchants came into contact with the kingdoms of West Sub-Saharan Africa, highlighting their political structures and forms of sovereignty. In light of recent historiographical debates, particularly Herman L. Bennett’s African Kings and Black Slaves (2018), the lecture will show how these relations were not only mercantile and asymmetrical, but also diplomatic and political, going beyond the slave trade and the affirmation of racial differences and hierarchies. Through the analysis of selected written, cartographic, and material sources, the lecture will take audiences on a journey across trade routes, diplomatic relations, and religious proselytism, restoring the image of Africa not as peripheral, but as an active and plural protagonist in the connections between the Mediterranean and the global world of the early modern age.

Angelo Cattaneo is Senior Researcher at the Institute of History of Mediterranean Europe of the National Research Council (ISEM CNR). He has directed numerous research projects, including two at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas – FCT-The Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology. He is currently Principal Investigator of the national research project “Mapping and Translating Spaces, Cultures, and Languages” within the framework of early modern missions (2023–2026).