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Francesco Saverio Nitti

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(Redirected from Francesco Nitti) Italian economist and political figure (1868–1953) For other uses, see Nitti (disambiguation).
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Francesco Saverio Nitti
Nitti in 1920
Prime Minister of Italy
In office
23 June 1919 – 15 June 1920
MonarchVictor Emmanuel III
Preceded byVittorio Emanuele Orlando
Succeeded byGiovanni Giolitti
Ministerial offices
Minister of the Interior
In office
23 June 1919 – 15 June 1920
Prime MinisterHimself
Preceded byVittorio Emanuele Orlando
Succeeded byGiovanni Giolitti
Minister of the Treasury
In office
30 October 1917 – 18 January 1919
Prime MinisterVittorio Emanuele Orlando
Preceded byPaolo Carcano
Succeeded byBonaldo Stringher
Minister of Agricolture, Industry and Commerce
In office
29 March 1911 – 21 March 1914
Prime MinisterGiovanni Giolitti
Preceded byGiovanni Raineri
Succeeded byGiannetto Cavasola
Parliamentary offices
Member of the Senate of the Republic
In office
8 May 1948 – 20 February 1953
(Ex officio)
Member of the Constituent Assembly
In office
25 June 1946 – 31 January 1948
ConstituencyItaly at-large
Member of the Chamber of Deputies
In office
30 November 1904 – 25 January 1924
ConstituencyMuro Lucano
Personal details
BornFrancesco Saverio Vincenzo de Paola Nitti
(1868-07-19)19 July 1868
Melfi, Kingdom of Italy
Died20 February 1953(1953-02-20) (aged 84)
Rome, Italy
Political partyHistorical Far Left (1880s–1904)
PR (1904–1922)
PLD (1922–1926)
Independent (1926–1946; 1948–1953)
UDN (1946–1948)
Other political
affiliations		Independent Left (1948–1953)

Francesco Saverio Vincenzo de Paola Nitti (19 July 1868 – 20 February 1953) was an Italian economist and statesman. A member of the Italian Radical Party, Nitti served as Prime Minister of Italy between 1919 and 1920. An opponent of the fascist regime in Italy, he opposed any kind of dictatorship throughout his career. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia in "Theories of Overpopulation", Nitti was also a staunch critic of English economist Thomas Robert Malthus and his Principle of Population; Nitti wrote Population and the Social System (1894). He was an important meridionalist and studied the origins of Southern Italian problems that arose after Italian unification.

Career

Born in Melfi, Basilicata, Nitti studied law in Naples and was subsequently active as journalist. He was correspondent for the Gazzetta Piemontese (English: Piedmontese Gazette) and was one of the editors of the Corriere di Napoli (Courier of Naples). In 1891, he wrote a work about Christian socialism, titled Il socialismo cattolico (Catholic Socialism). In 1898, when he was only 30 years old, he became professor of finance at the University of Naples. Nitti was chosen in 1904 for the Italian Radical Party to serve in the Italian Parliament. From 1911 to 1914, he was minister of agriculture, industry, and trade under the then prime minister Giovanni Giolitti. In 1917, he became minister of finance under Vittorio Emanuele Orlando and held it until 1919.

On 23 June 1919, Nitti became prime minister and interior minister, after Orlando had resigned following the disappointed Italian gains at the Paris Peace Conference, resulting in widespread indignation within Italy about an alleged mutilated victory. A year later, Nitti was also minister of the colonies. His cabinet had to deal with great social unrest and dissatisfaction over the peace treaties. Particularly troublesome was the agitation over Fiume led by Gabriele D'Annunzio. Nitti had great difficulty keeping the administration functioning at all, thanks to the enmity between the extremely divergent political factions of communists, anarchists, and fascists. After less than a year as head of government, he resigned and was succeeded by the veteran Giolitti on 16 June 1920. In social policy, Nitti's government passed a law setting up compulsory insurance for unemployment, invalidity and old age.

From 1901 to 1924, Nitti was a member of the country's Chamber of Deputies, first for the Italian Radical Party and then for the Italian Democratic Liberal Party. Still a member of the Italian Parliament, Nitti offered resistance to the nascent power of Italian fascism and openly despised Benito Mussolini. In 1924, Nitti decided to emigrate, and returned to Italy only after World War II, and joined the National Democratic Union and was a member of the Senate for the Republic in the Independent Left group from 1948 until his death in 1953. As a secularist and anticlerical, he opposed Christian Democracy and staunchly opposed NATO membership. In his 1927 book Bolshevism, Fascism and Democracy, Nitti correlated fascism with Bolshevism, saying: "There is little difference between the two, and in certain respects, Fascism and Bolshevism are the same." At the same time, as a positivist, for Nitti both politics and history boiled down to facts. Like World War II, the Russian Revolution was a fact. Against the opinion of Georges Clemenceau, who considered the Russians to be perfectible ignorant barbarians and the Germans to be imperfectly educated barbarians, Nitti wondered what would have prevented them from getting along with Bolshevik Russia, once they had got along well with the Russia of the Tsars. Referring to modernisation, he wrote: "Transplanting the principles and methods of the Russian Revolution into a country like Italy ... would be certain ruin. But it can be added that there is something in the spirit of the Russian Revolution that even Italy cannot ignore."

Notable works

References

  1. As member of the Constituent Assembly he was automatically nominated senator.
  2. Francesco Saverio Nitti, L'Italia all'alba del secolo XX, Casa Editrice Nazionale Roux e Viarengo, Torino-Roma, 1901
  3. Francesco Saverio Nitti, Domenico De Masi, Napoli e la questione meridionale, Guida, Napoli, 2004
  4. La scienza della finanza 1903-1936
  5. Democracy and Social Policy by Yusuf Bangura
  6. Francesco Saverio Nitti (1927), Bolshevism, Fascism and Democracy, New York: NY: Macmillan Co., p. 130
  7. Francesco Saverio Nitti, Rivelazioni, p. 95
  8. Francesco Saverio Nitti, Meditazioni dell'esilio, p. 125

External links

Political offices
Preceded byVittorio Emanuele Orlando Prime Minister of Italy
1919–1920 		Succeeded byGiovanni Giolitti
Italian Minister of the Interior
1919–1920
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