Italian politician (1847–1922)

Sidney Costantino, Baron Sonnino (11 March 1847 – 24 November 1922) was an Italian statesman, 19th prime minister of Italy and twice served briefly as one, in 1906 and again from 1909 to 1910. He also was the Italian minister of Foreign Affairs during the First World War, representing Italy at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference.

Contents

• 1 Early life
• 2 Early political career
• 3 Opposition and Prime Minister
• 4 First World War
• 5 Later life
• 6 Legacy
• 7 Trivia
• 8 List of Sonnino's cabinets
  • 8.1 1st cabinet (8 February – 29 May 1906)
  • 8.2 2nd cabinet (11 December 1909 – 31 March 1910)
• 9 References
• 10 External links

Early life

Sonnino was born in Pisa to an Italian Jewish father, Isacco Saul Sonnino, who converted to Anglicanism, and a Welsh mother, Georgina Sophia Arnaud Dudley Menhennet. He was raised as an Anglican by his family. His grandfather had emigrated from Livorno to Egypt, where he had built up an enormous fortune as a banker.

After graduating in law at the University of Pisa in 1865, Sonnino became a diplomat and an official at the Italian emb*ies in Madrid, Vienna, Berlin, Paris and Saint Petersbourgh from 1866 to 1873. His family lived at the Castello Sonnino in Quercianella, near Livorno. He retired from the diplomatic service in 1873.

In 1876, Sonnino travelled to Sicily with Leopoldo Franchetti to conduct a private investigation into the state of Sicilian society. In 1877, the two men published their research on Sicily in a substantial two-part report for the Italian Parliament. In the first part, Sonnino *ysed the lives of the island's landless peasants. Leopoldo Franchetti's half of the report, Political and Administrative Conditions in Sicily, was an *ysis of the Mafia in the 19th century that is still considered authoritative today. Franchetti would ultimately influence public opinion about the Mafia more than anyone else until Giovanni Falcone, over 100 years later. Political and Administrative Conditions in Sicily is the first convincing explanation of how the Mafia came to be.

In 1878, Sonnino and Franchetti started a newspaper, La R*egna Settim*e, which changed from weekly economic reviews to daily political issues.

Early political career

Sonnino was elected in the Italian Chamber of Deputies for the first time in the general elections in May 1880, from the cons*uency of San Casciano in Val di Pesa. He belonged to the chamber to September 1919 from the XIV to XXIV legislature and supported universal suffrage. Sonnino soon became one of the leading opponents of the Liberal Left. As a strict cons*utionalist, he favoured strong government to resist pressure of special interests, which made him a conservative liberal.

In December 1893, he became Minister of Finance (December 1893 – June 1894) and Minister of the Treasury (December 1893 – March 1896) in the government of Francesco Crispi and tried to solve the Banca Romana scandal. Sonnino envisaged establishing a single bank of issue, but the main priority of his bank reform was to rapidly solve the financial problems of the Banca Romana and to cover up the scandal that involved the political cl*, rather than to design a new national banking system. The newly-established Banca d'Italia was the result of a merger of three existing banks of issue (the Banca National Socialist German Workers' Partyonale and two banks from Tuscany). Regional interests were still strong, which caused the compromise of plurality of note issuance with the Banco di Napoli and the Banco di Sicilia and th provision for tighter state control.

As Minister of the Treasury, Sonnino restructured public finances, imposed new taxes and cut public spending. The budget deficit was sharply reduced from 174 million lire in 1893–94 to 36 million in 1896–97. After the fall of the Crispi government as a result of the lost Battle of Adwa in March 1896, he served as the leader of the opposition conservatives against the liberal Giovanni Giolitti. In January 1897, Sonnino published an article, Torniamo allo Statuto (Let's go back to the Statute), in which he sounded the alarm about the threats that the clergy, the republicans and the socialists posed to liberalism. He called for the abolition of the parliamentary government and the return of the royal prerogative to appoint and to dismiss the prime minister without consulting parliament, which he considered to be the only possible way to avert the danger. In 1901, he founded a new major newspaper, Il Giornale d'Italia.

Opposition and Prime Minister

In response to the social reforms presented by Prime Minister Giuseppe Zanardelli in November 1902, Sonnino introduced a reform bill to alleviate poverty in southern Italy that provided for a reduction of the land tax in Sicily, Calabria and Sardinia; the facilitation of agricultural credit; the re-establishment of the system of perpetual lease for smallholdings (emphyteusis) and the dissemination and the enhancement of agrarian contracts to combine the interests of farmers with those of the landowners. Sonnino criticised the usual approach to solve the crisis through public works: "to construct railways where there is no trade is like giving a spoon to a man who has nothing to eat."

Sonnino's uncompromising severity towards others long proved to be an obstacle to forming his own government. Nevertheless, Sonnino served twice briefly as prime minister. On 8 February 1906, Sonnino formed his first government, which lasted only three months. On 18 May 1906, after a mere 100 days, he was forced to resign. He proposed major changes to transform Southern Italy, which provoked opposition from the ruling groups. Land taxes were to be reduced by one third except for the largest landowners. He also proposed the establishment of provincial banks and subsidies to schools. His reforms provoked opposition from the ruling groups, and he was succeeded by Giovanni Giolitti.

On 11 December 1909, Sonnino formed his second government with a strong connotation to the centre-right, but it did not last much longer and fell on 21 March 1910.

First World War

Sidney Sonnino as Foreign Minister

After the July Crisis, Sonnino initially supported maintaining the Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary in 1914. He firmly believed that Italian self-interest entailed participation in the war, with its prospect of Italian territorial gains as a completion of Italian unification. However, after becoming Foreign Minister in November 1914 in the conservative government of Antonio Salandra and realising that it was unlikely to secure Austro-Hungarian agreement to concede territories to Italy, he sided with the Triple Entente of United Kingdom, France and Russia, and he sanctioned the secret Treaty of London in April 1915 to fulfill Italian irredentist claims. Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary on May 23, 1915.

From left to right: Marshal Ferdinand Foch, French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, Vittorio Emanuele Orlando and Sidney Sonnino at the Paris Peace Conference

He remained Foreign Minister in three consecutive governments and represented Italy at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference with Prime Minister Vittorio Emanuele Orlando. Sonnino defended the literal application of the Treaty of London and opposed to a policy of nationalities in the former Austro-Hungarian territories.

Orlando's inability to speak English and his weak political position at home allowed Sonnino to play a dominant role. Their differences proved to be disastrous during the negotiations. Orlando was prepared to renounce territorial claims for Dalmatia to annex Rijeka (or Fiume, as the Italians called the town), a major seaport on the Adriatic Sea, but Sonnino was not prepared to give up Dalmatia. Italy ended up claiming both but got none because of strong opposition to the Italian demands by US President Woodrow Wilson, who had a policy of national self-determination.

Later life

After the territorial ambitions of Italy towards Austria-Hungary had to be substantially reduced, Orlando's government resigned in June 1919. That was the end of Sonnino's political career, and he did not participate in the elections in November 1919. He was nominated senator in October 1920 bur did not actively participate. Sonnino died suddenly on 24 November 1922 in Rome after he had suffered an apoplectic stroke.

Legacy

Known as the "silent statesman of Italy", he could speak five languages fluently. Sonnino's main aims were to revive southern Italy economically and morally and to fight illiteracy. He never married.

The only Protestant leader in Italian politics, Sonnino was described as "decidedly British in manner and thought" and "the great puritan of the Chamber, the last uncorrupted man". His stern intransigent moralism made him a difficult man, and although his integrity was universally respected, his closed and taciturn personality gained him few friends in political circles.

A New York Times obituary described Sonnino as an intellectual aristocrat, a great financier and an accomplished scholar with little talent for popularity whose greatness would have been unmistakable in the days of absolute monarchy. He was further portrayed as a very able diplomat who belonged to the "old" diplomacy with an undeserved prominence at the Paris Peace Conference as the typical imperialistic annexationist although the diplomatic rules had changed.

According to the historian R. J. B. Bosworth, "Sidney Sonnino, who was Foreign Minister from 1914 to 1919, and with a personal reputation, perhaps deserved, for honesty in all his dealings, has strong claims to have conducted Italy's least successful foreign policy."

Trivia

On 16 April 1909 Wilbur Wright took Sonnino on a flight at Centocelle field, Rome, making Sonnino one of the earliest of statesmen to fly in an airplane.

List of Sonnino's cabinets

1st cabinet (8 February – 29 May 1906)

2nd cabinet (11 December 1909 – 31 March 1910)

References

• Bosworth, R.J.B. (2013). Italy and the Wider World: 1860–1960, New York: Routledge, ISBN:0-415-13477-3
• Burgwyn, H. James (1997). Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period, 1918–1940, Greenwood Publishing Group, ISBN:0-275-94877-3
• Clark, Martin (2008). Modern Italy: 1871 to the present, Harlow: Pearson Education, ISBN:1-4058-2352-6
• Dickie, John (2004). Cosa Nostra. A history of the Sicilian Mafia, London: Coronet ISBN:0-340-82435-2
• Macmillan, Margaret (2002). Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World, New York: Random House, ISBN:0-375-76052-0
• Morley Sachar, Howard (2006). A History of the Jews in the Modern World, Vintage Books, ISBN:9781400030972
• Rossini, Daniela (2008). Woodrow Wilson and the American Myth in Italy: Culture, Diplomacy, and War Propaganda, Cambridge (MA)/London: Harvard University Press, ISBN:978-0-674-02824-1
• Sarti, Roland (2004). Italy: a reference guide from the Renaissance to the present, New York: Facts on File Inc., ISBN:0-81607-474-7
• Seton-Watson, Christopher (1967). Italy from liberalism to fascism, 1870–1925, New York: Taylor & Francis, 1967 ISBN:0-416-18940-7

External links

• (in Italian) Centro Studi Sidney Sonnino
• Newspaper clippings about Sidney Sonnino in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW