Giovanni Giolitti

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(b. Mondovì, 22 Oct. 1842; d. 17 July 1928) Italian; Prime Minister five times between 1892 and 1921 Born into a wealthy professional family in Piedmont, Giolitti went to university in Turin where he graduated in law at the age of 19, though he afterwards said that he distinguished himself mainly as a fencer. He became a Treasury civil servant in 1862 and then transferred to the Court of Accounts; in 1882 he became a member of the Council of State, the senior administrative tribunal, and in the same year was elected to the Chamber of Deputies for the constituency of Cuneo (Piedmont). He was nominated as Prime Minister following the government crisis 1892, but had to resign after being implicated in the banking crisis of 1893. This interrupted his political career for nearly a decade. He returned first as Interior Minister in 1901 and then as Prime Minister in 1903, and dominated Italian politics for the next two decades.

Giolitti's method, sometimes referred to as transformism, consisted in the relatively unscrupulous manipulation of the electoral system, so as to ensure the return of deputies sympathetic to his policies or at least to his continuation in power. The transformism consisted in the continual changes in the governmental majority in parliament depending on the particular measure. In this way Giolitti secured relatively stable government in a parliament whose largest grouping, the Liberals, was a collection of notables rather than a modern party.

Giolitti is credited with using these less than transparent methods to secure policy advances in social reform, which resulted in the closer integration of the reformist wing of the Italian Socialist movement; when this broke down over foreign policy, Giolitti developed good relations with the other great excluded group of Italian politics, the Catholic social organizations. He believed in the tactical use of diplomacy and military force to reduce Italy's traditional dependence on the European great powers, and was firmly neutralist during the First World War. He returned to power in 1919 in a parliament dominated for the first time by the Catholic and Socialist parties, for which his methods were much less suitable. Like many others, he underestimated the emerging threat of the Fascists, and believed initially they could be brought into the constitutional fold as the Socialists had been. The dissolution of parliament in 1921 at his behest and the elections which followed mark the end of Giolitti's influence. He opposed the Fascist dictatorship, particularly after 1925.

Giolitti was always a controversial figure during his political career, and he remains so. His two decades of power are known as the Giolittian period by supporter and critic alike, and for better or worse are regarded as typical of what the Liberal state was capable of; he was described (among others by the historian Benedetto Croce) as the greatest statesman of the Liberal period after Cavour, and by the radical Gaetano Salvemini as the "minister for the underworld".

The Italian statesman Giovanni Giolitti (1842-1928) enacted an extensive program of constructive social legislation. He has been criticized for his manipulation of Italian political factions.

Born on Oct. 27, 1842, at Mondovi in Piedmont, Giovanni Giolitti was the son of mountain peasants. Finishing his juridical studies at the University of Turin in 1861, he entered government service, specializing in financial administration. In 1882 he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies. In 1889-1890 he served as minister of treasury. In 1892 he first became prime minister. His government, consisting mainly of the representatives of the left, lasted 18 months. It ended with Giolitti's resignation because of his involvement in the enormous scandal of the Bank of Rome.

In 1897 Giolitti resumed his political career. Between 1901 and 1903 he was minister of the interior. In 1903 he organized his second Cabinet, which lasted until 1905. In May 1906 he became prime minister for the third time, but now for a full 3-year term. He gave priority to economic problems, organized public works on a large scale, and, having adopted much of the program of the Socialists, promoted a policy of significant reforms which included legislation on public health, housing, work conditions, woman and child labor, workers' disability, and old-age pensions.

In 1911 Giolitti formed his last prewar government, but it became increasingly difficult for him to maintain the balance in his parliamentary coalition. In the midst of growing domestic difficulties, in October 1911 he involved Italy in a war with Turkey. However, this conflict did not mitigate the mounting conflicts inside the country. Therefore, for fear of a revolution, Giolitti made further concessions to the lower classes, including the enactment of almost universal manhood suffrage. Following the general elections in October and November 1913, the parliamentary majority set up by Giolitti from heterogeneous elements proved to be excessively difficult to handle. Therefore, although having won the election in March 1914, he chose to resign once more.

After the outbreak of World War I, Giolitti became a spokesman of the political neutrality of Italy. But after the disaster of Caporetto he pleaded for an all-out effort in the defense of the country. In the difficult postwar situation Giolitti's long political experience seemed to promise that he would be able to check the threatening anarchy. In 1920 he organized his fifth Cabinet, which lasted until the following year. He stopped the wave of strikes and the occupation of factories in August and September 1920 by promising to enact reforms demanded by the workers. But his actions satisfied neither the industrialists nor the Socialists. Moreover, he incurred the disfavor of Nationalists because of the Treaty of Rapallo in 1920, which dealt a terrible blow to Italian aspirations on the Dalmatian coast. He antagonized the Church by his tax policy and the big landowners by his proposal for agrarian reform.

Giolitti granted his silent approval to the Fascists, and he supported Benito Mussolini. But after 1924 he openly attacked Fascist policies. Giolitti died on July 17, 1928, in Cavour in Piedmont.

Giolitti is a most controversial figure. Severely criticized, he has also been defended as a great statesman. He was an expert at manipulating party combinations, and his enemies contemptuously called his tactics the "Giolittian manner." But this method of government, which he had inherited from his predecessors, proved to be the only workable one in Italy at that time. His constructive social legislation gave the Italians a period of real advance and prosperity. His role as a liberal statesman can be properly assessed only against a background of the totalitarian state that then emerged.

Further Reading

Much material on Giolitti's life and political activities is in his autobiography, Memoirs of My Life, translated by Edward Storer (1923). There is no biography of Giolitti in English. A. William Salomone, Italy in the Giolittian Era: Italian Democracy in the Making, 1900-1914 (1945; 2d ed. 1960), contains an exhaustive study of Giolitti's political activities before World War I. George Terhune Peck, Giovanni Giolitti and the Fall of Italian Democracy, 1919-1922 (1945), deals with Giolitti's postwar activities.

Additional Sources

Peck, George Terhune, Giovanni Giolitti and the fall of Italian democracy, 1919-192, 1942.

Giovanni Giolitti
19th, 25th, 29th, 32nd and 37th Prime Minister of Italy
In office May 15, 1892 – December 15, 1893
Monarch	Umberto I
Preceded by	Marchese di Rudinì
Succeeded by	Francesco Crispi
In office November 3, 1903 – March 12, 1905
Monarch	Victor Emmanuel III
Preceded by	Giuseppe Zanardelli
Succeeded by	Tommaso Tittoni
In office May 29, 1906 – December 11, 1909
Monarch	Victor Emmanuel III
Preceded by	Sidney Sonnino
Succeeded by	Sidney Sonnino
In office March 30, 1911 – March 21, 1914
Monarch	Victor Emmanuel III
Preceded by	Luigi Luzzatti
Succeeded by	Antonio Salandra
In office June 15, 1920 – July 4, 1921
Monarch	Victor Emmanuel III
Preceded by	Francesco Saverio Nitti
Succeeded by	Ivanoe Bonomi
Born	October 27, 1842(1842-10-27)
Died	July 17, 1928 (aged 85)
Political party	Liberal / Italian Liberal Party

Giovanni Giolitti (October 27, 1842 – July 17, 1928) was an Italian statesman. He was Prime Minister of Italy five times between 1892 and 1921.

Contents 1 Biography 2 Economic policies 3 See also 4 References

Biography

Giolitti was born at Mondovì (Piedmont). After a rapid career in the financial administration he was, in 1882, appointed councillor of state and elected to the Chamber of Deputies (the lower house of Parliament). As deputy he chiefly acquired prominence by attacks on Magliani, treasury minister in the Depretis cabinet, and on 9 March 1889 was himself selected as treasury minister by Prime Minister Crispi. On the fall of the di Rudinì cabinet in May 1892, Giolitti, with the help of a court clique, succeeded to the premiership.

Giolitti's first term as Prime Minister (1892-1893) was marked by misfortune and misgovernment. The building crisis and the commercial rupture with France had impaired the situation of the state banks, of which one, the Banca Romana, had been further undermined by maladministration. A bank law passed by Giolitti failed to effect an improvement. Moreover, he irritated public opinion by raising to senatorial rank the director-general of the Banca Romana, Bernardo Tanlongo, whose irregular practices had become a byword, The senate declined to admit Tanlongo, whom Giolitti, in consequence of an interpellation in parliament upon the condition of the Banca Romana, was obliged to arrest and prosecute. During the prosecution Giolitti abused his position as premier to abstract documents bearing on the case.

Simultaneously a parliamentary commission of inquiry investigated the condition of the state banks. Its report, though acquitting Giolitti of personal dishonesty, proved disastrous to his political position, and obliged him to resign. His fall left the finances of the state disorganized, the pensions fund depleted, diplomatic relations with France strained in consequence of the massacre of Italian workmen at Aigues-Mortes, and Sicily and the Lunigiana in a state of revolt, which he had proved impotent to suppress.

After his resignation Giolitti was impeached for abuse of power as minister, but the Constitutional Court quashed the impeachment by denying the competence of the ordinary tribunals to judge ministerial acts. For several years he was compelled to play a passive part, having lost all credit. But by keeping in the background and giving public opinion time to forget his past, as well as by parliamentary intrigue, he gradually regained much of his former influence. He made capital of the Socialist agitation and of the repression to which other statesmen resorted, and gave the agitators to understand that were he premier they would be allowed a free hand. Thus he gained their favour, and on the fall of the Pelloux cabinet in 1900 he became minister of the Interior in Zanardelli's administration, of which he was the real head.

His policy of never interfering in strikes and leaving even violent demonstrations undisturbed at first proved successful, but indiscipline and disorder grew to such a pitch that Zanardelli, already in bad health, resigned, and Giolitti succeeded him as prime minister (November 1903). But during his second tenure as Prime Minister (1903-1905) he, too, had to resort to strong measures in repressing some serious disorders in various parts of Italy, and thus he lost the favour of the Socialists. In March 1905, feeling himself no longer secure, he resigned, indicating Fortis as his successor. When Sonnino became premier in February 1906, Giolitti did not openly oppose him, but his followers did, and Sonnino was defeated in May, Giolitti becoming Prime Minister once more (1906-1909). Giolitti returned to office as Italian Prime Minister from 1911 to 1914. During this time, he bowed to nationalist pressure and fought the controversial Italo-Turkish War which made Libya an Italian colony. He opposed Italy's entry into World War I in 1915 on the grounds that Italy was militarily unprepared. He became Prime Minister for the last time from 1920-1921 during Italy's "red years," when fear of a communist takeover led the political establishment to tolerate the rise of the fascists. Giolitti enjoyed the support of the fascist squadristi and did not try to stop their forceful takeovers of city and regional government or their violence against their political opponents.

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Giovanni Giolitti

When Mussolini marched on Rome, Giolitti was on vacation in France and no longer prime minister. He supported Mussolini's government initially, sharing the widespread hope of that the fascists would become a more moderate and responsible party upon taking power, but withdrew his support in 1924. He remained in Parliament until his death in 1928.

Antonio Giolitti, the post-War leftist politician, is his grandson.

Economic policies

Under Giovanni Giolitti's reign several policies of government intervention were enacted. Besides putting in place several tariffs, subsidies and government projects, he also nationalized the private phone and railroad operators. Liberal proponents of free trade criticized the "Giolittian System". Giolitti himself saw the development of the "national economy" as essential in the "production of wealth."

Preceded by Giovanni Nicotera	Italian Minister of the Interior 1892-1893	Succeeded by Francesco Crispi
Preceded by Giuseppe Saracco	Italian Minister of the Interior 1901-1903	Succeeded by Giuseppe Zanardelli
Preceded by Giuseppe Zanardelli	Italian Minister of the Interior 1903-1905	Succeeded by Tommaso Tittoni
Preceded by Sidney Sonnino	Italian Minister of the Interior 1906-1909	Succeeded by Sidney Sonnino
Preceded by Luigi Luzzatti	Italian Minister of the Interior 1911-1914	Succeeded by Antonio Salandra
Preceded by Francesco Saverio Nitti	Italian Minister of the Interior 1920-1921	Succeeded by Ivanoe Bonomi

Preceded by Antonio Starabba, Marchese di Rudinì	Prime Minister of Italy 1892-1893	Succeeded by Francesco Crispi
Preceded by Giuseppe Zanardelli	Prime Minister of Italy 1903-1905	Succeeded by Tommaso Tittoni
Preceded by Sidney Sonnino	Prime Minister of Italy 1906-1909	Succeeded by Sidney Sonnino
Preceded by Luigi Luzzatti	Prime Minister of Italy 1911-1914	Succeeded by Antonio Salandra
Preceded by Francesco Saverio Nitti	Prime Minister of Italy 1920-1921	Succeeded by Ivanoe Bonomi

See also

• Trasformismo

References

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
• Coppa, Frank J. Economic and Ethical Liberalism in Conflict: The extraordinary liberalism of Giovanni Giolitti (1986).

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