La poliedrica morfologia di un sistema difensivo costiero. Il caso del Golfo di Diano di fronte ai Barbareschi (secc. XVI-XVIII)

The militarization of the Italian and Spanish coasts is certainly the most studied form of defense among those used in the Mediterranean, during the Early modern age, to counter the predatory activity carried out by the Barbary corsairs to the detriment of the maritime communities. However, the morphology of the fortifications built in the Gulf of Diano, a stretch of the western Ligurian Riviera placed under the control of the Genoa’s Republic, allows us to highlight and prove some recent acquisitions made by historians on that theme. Firstly, how the specific environmental and anthropic conditions could push the defensive systems not only to a linear, punctiform and flattened on the coast shape, as has been said for a long time, but also to a relatively deeper, dense, and extended towards the nearby inland one. Secondly the reconsideration of the exclusively land perspective through which historiography has always read the militarization of the coasts in response to the Barbarian privateering. In fact, alongside the control and defense’s dimension of litoral areas and coastal populations, there was in a synergistic and complementary position also the direct protection provided by the fortifications to merchant shipping. This is because from the last decades of the XVIth century the corsairs directed their activity less and less against the demographic heritage of the coastal hamlets, and more and more towards the maritime operators active along the Mediterranean routes.