Giuseppe Sapeto (1811 – 24 August 1895) was an Italian priest,

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

, and colonial agent as well as a member of the Order of San Lazaro who traveled the shores of the

Red Sea The Red Sea is a sea inlet of the Indian Ocean, lying between Africa and Asia. Its connection to the ocean is in the south, through the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait and the Gulf of Aden. To its north lie the Sinai Peninsula, the Gulf of Aqaba, and th ...

and was one of the proponents of Italian colonial expansionism.

Early life

Sapeto was born in 1811 in

Carcare Carcare (; ; , locally ) is a (municipality) in the Province of Savona in the Italian region Liguria, located about west of Genoa and about northwest of Savona. Carcare borders the following municipalities: Altare, Cairo Montenotte, Cosseria, ...

Genoa Genoa ( ; ; ) is a city in and the capital of the Italian region of Liguria, and the sixth-largest city in Italy. As of 2025, 563,947 people live within the city's administrative limits. While its metropolitan city has 818,651 inhabitan ...

Career

In 1837, Giuseppe Sapeto settled in

Adwa Adwa (; ; also spelled Adowa or Aduwa) is a town and separate woreda in Tigray Region, Ethiopia. It is best known as the community closest to the site of the 1896 Battle of Adwa, in which Ethiopian soldiers defeated Italian troops, thus being ...

and wrote some works on

Eritrea Eritrea, officially the State of Eritrea, is a country in the Horn of Africa region of East Africa, with its capital and largest city being Asmara. It is bordered by Ethiopia in the Eritrea–Ethiopia border, south, Sudan in the west, and Dj ...

and

Abyssinia Abyssinia (; also known as Abyssinie, Abissinia, Habessinien, or Al-Habash) was an ancient region in the Horn of Africa situated in the northern highlands of modern-day Ethiopia and Eritrea.Sven Rubenson, The survival of Ethiopian independence, ...

. Between 1851 and 1855 he traveled, together with Father Giovanni Giacinto Stella, among the peoples of the Mensâs, the Bogos and the Hababs, following which he published an account of the places the pair journeyed to. Following this initial African adventure, he later he taught the Arabic language in Paris, Florence and Genoa. In 1862, Sapeto returned to Africa, and in November 1869 he bought the bay of

Assab Assab or Aseb (, ) is a port city in the Southern Red Sea Region of Eritrea. It is situated on the west coast of the Red Sea. Languages spoken in Assab are predominantly Afar language, Afar, Tigrinya language, Tigrinya, and Arabic. After the Ita ...

on behalf of Raffaele Rubattino's shipping company, which with the transfer to the Kingdom of Italy in 1882 would become the first Italian colonial possession, and was the stepping stone for Italian expansion into

. As a representative of the Rubattino Company, he assisted in the first logistical phases of the Assab settlement, under the guidance of Captain De Amezaga, up until the appointment of Gustavo Branchi as Italian Commissioner of Assab. He left Assab in December 1880, never to return.

Death and legacy

He died 24 August 1895 in Genoa. The city of Genoa, where he died, and Rome both have streets named after him in the San Martino district and a central square respectively.

Works

* ''Catholic Journey and Mission among the Mensâ, the Bogos and the Hababs, with a Geographical and Historical Mention of Abyssinia'', Tip. of the Holy Congreg. of Propaganda Fide, 1857, original in the Public Library of Lyon (Bibliothèque Jésuite des Fontaines). * ''Italy and the Suez Canal: Popular Operetta'', Tip. Pellas, 1863, original at the University of Lausanne. * ''Vulgar Arabic Grammar for Use in Technical Schools'', Florence, 1866. * "Assab and his Critics", Genoa, Pellas, 1879.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sapeto, Giuseppe 1811 births 1895 deaths 19th-century Italian writers