- Sidney Sonnino
Infobox Officeholder
name = Sidney Sonnino
order = 28th and 30th Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Italy
monarch = Victor Emmanuel III
monarch2 = Victor Emmanuel III
term_start2 =December 11 ,1909
term_end2 =March 31 ,1910
predecessor2 =Giovanni Giolitti
successor2 =Luigi Luzzatti
term_start =February 8 ,1905
term_end =May 29 ,1906
predecessor =Alessandro Fortis
successor =Giovanni Giolitti
birth_date = birth date|1847|3|11|mf=y
death_date = death date and age|1922|11|24|1847|3|11|mf=y
birth_place =Pisa ,Italy
party = Liberal-Conservative
religion =Anglicanism Baron Sidney Costantino Sonnino (March 11 ,1847 –November 24 ,1922 ) was an Italianpolitician .Sonnino was born in
Pisa to an Italian father of Jewish heritage (Giorgio Sonnino , who converted himself toAnglicanism ) and a Welsh mother. He was raised as aProtestant .In 1876, Sonnino traveled 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 analysed the lives of the island's landless peasants. Leopoldo Franchetti's half of the report, "Political and Administrative Conditions in Sicily", was an analysis of theMafia in the nineteenth century that is still considered authoritative today. Franchetti would ultimately influence thinking about the Mafia more than anyone else untilGiovanni Falcone over a hundred years later. "Political and Administrative Conditions in Sicily" is the first convincing explanation of how the Mafia came to be.Dickie, "Cosa Nostra", p. 43-54]In 1878, Sonnino started a newspaper ("La Rassegna Settimanale"), which changed from weekly economical reviews to daily political issues. In 1893, after working in several governmental positions, he became finance minister of Italy. He worked in the opposition after the fall of his party from power as a result of the lost
Battle of Adwa . He served twice briefly as Prime Minister, in 1906 and again from 1909 to 1910.After the events in 1914, Sonnino was initially supportive to the side of
Germany andAustria-Hungary , but after becoming foreign minister in November 1914, he sided with the Allied forces, and signed the Treaty of London in 1915. Italy consequently declared war on Austria-Hungary on May 23, 1915.When his territorial ambitions towards Austria-Hungary were shattered during the Paris Peace Conference, his party lost power again, and Sonnino retired from politics.
References
*Dickie, John (2004). "Cosa Nostra. A history of the Sicilian Mafia", London: Coronet ISBN 0-340-82435-2
External links
*it icon [http://sonnino.sp.unipi.it Centro Studi Sidney Sonnino]
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