Giovanni Giolitti

Biography

Giovanni Giolitti was born in Mondovì, Piedmont, in 1842 and lost his father as an infant; he was raised by his mother's family in Turin. He took a law degree at the University of Turin and spent the next two decades as a civil servant in the justice and finance ministries, rising to senior posts in the tax administration.

Elected to the Chamber of Deputies for the Historical Left in 1882, he became Francesco Crispi's treasury minister in 1889 and prime minister in 1892. His first government fell in late 1893 amid the Banca Romana scandal, in which a parliamentary inquiry cleared him of personal dishonesty but damaged him politically.

Giolitti returned as interior minister in 1901 and dominated Italian politics until 1914, serving as prime minister three more times in what became known as the Giolittian Era. A master of trasformismo, he governed from the centre, tolerated strikes, nationalised the railways and telephones, passed social legislation and in 1912 extended the vote to almost all adult men. His fourth government conquered Libya in the war with the Ottoman Empire, and in 1913 he secured Catholic electoral support through the Gentiloni Pact.

After the First World War he formed a fifth government in 1920-1921, which concluded the Treaty of Rapallo with Yugoslavia and used force to end Gabriele D'Annunzio's occupation of Fiume. He initially backed Mussolini's government but turned against it in 1924, and he remained in parliament until his death at Cavour in 1928.