The Atlantic Republic of Letters (Pennsylvania, 2026) offers an alternative intellectual history of early America. Focusing on Benjamin Franklin’s Philadelphia, the book frames Euro-American colonialism as an intellectual enterprise, established not only through military and economic means but also through books, ideas, and cultural institutions.

Through extensive archival research, Diego Pirillo (Italian) brings together two interconnected histories. First, he recovers the place of British America in the cosmopolitan world of the Republic of Letters, studying the communication system that facilitated the transatlantic circulation of knowledge. Second, he shows that knowledge was weaponized in the effort to survey and control North America. 

He is joined by Brian DeLay (History).