Nitti, Francesco Saverio

(1868–1953)

   One of the few politicians of national standing to emerge from the rural southern region of Basilicata (another is Emilio Colombo), Francesco Saverio Nitti entered politics in 1904 after a career as a university teacher of jurisprudence. He served as a minister in Giovanni Giolitti’s governments from 1911 to 1914, and in 1917 became minister of the treasury in the government of Vittorio Emanuele Orlando. Nitti succeeded Orlando as prime minister in June 1919 and was forced to deal with a country that was on the point of institutional and social collapse. He vainly tried to hold together a territory ravaged by the economic costs of the war; the violence and nationalism of the disillusioned former soldiers enrolled in the Fasci italiani di combattimento, precursor of the Partito Nazionale Fascista/National Fascist Party (PNF); and the rising tide of working-class revolutionary syndicalism, but the effort was too much for him. His failure to deal with the challenge posed to his authority by Gabriele D’Annunzio’s seizure of Fiume in the summer of 1919 was symptomatic of his entire experience as prime minister. Nitti’s professorial, abstract, rational approach to government was simply inadequate for the demands of the time. In June 1920, he was forced to hand over the reins of government to Giolitti.

   Nitti was willing to give Fascism a chance to prove itself, but his tolerance was not reciprocated. Forced to flee abroad on the eve of the 1924 elections, he spent the years of Benito Mussolini’s dictatorship in exile—and was even briefly held prisoner by the Nazis in 1943. He returned to Italy in 1945, and together with Benedetto Croce, Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, and Ivanoe Bonomi, fought the elections of June 1946 under the colors of the so-called Unione Nazionale/National Union Party. Nitti was elected to the Constituent Assembly, but he was only able to play a marginal role in a Parliament dominated by the Democrazia Cristiana/Christian Democracy Party (DC).

   Nitti was made a life senator in 1948 and in his elder statesman’s role was an opponent of the Italian decision to sign the North Atlantic Treaty in April 1949. He died in Rome in 1953. In addition to his long political career, Nitti was the author of several interesting, if not particularly profound or original, works of political philosophy during his years in exile.