Ettore Ciccotti

Ettore Ciccotti (Potenza, 23 March 1863 - Rome, 20 May 1939) was a historian, lecturer and politician from Italy, member of both the Italian Chamber of Deputies and Italian Senate.

Early life Born into a liberal family of the lawyer Pasquale Ciccotti, a landowner and several times mayor of Potenza, he studied in the local high school. In 1879 he enrolled at the Law Faculty of the University of Naples. He became a follower of Mazzini and adhered to Italian irredentism. He had a particular interest in both ancient history and for the social problems of Southern Italy, inspired by the example of the historian Giustino Fortunato.

Ciccotti, raised in the poor southern region of Basilicata, adhered to the group of socio-political thinker's known as meridionalisti ("southernists"), aspiring to solve the economic problems of Southern Italy after the Italian unification. They claimed that the economic policies of the central government of the new state discriminated against the interests of the south while favoring those of north.

Political career In June 1900, he was elected in the Italian Chamber of Deputies (1900-1904) in the Vicaria district of Naples, upsetting the traditional electoral alliance between local politicians and the Camorra. In 1904, he lost his seat due to active campaigning of the Camorra against him. Camorra boss Enrico Alfano was said to be the man behind the election in 1904 of the Count Vincenzo Ravaschieri Fieschi who had the support of Prime Minister Giovanni Giolitti. The night before the election dissident voters were intimidated, assaulted, beaten, and sustained knife injuries by ruffians hired and encouraged by both the Camorra and the police, since the authorities equally disapproved of a socialist candidate.

He was re-elected in 1909 and remained a Deputy until September 1919. Meanwhile, Ciccotti initiated the translation in Italian of the major works of the Socialist theorists Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and Ferdinand Lassalle. In contrast with the PSI, he was in favour of an Italian intervention in the First World War.

Senator and death His pro-war stance and dislike of the liberal Giovanni Giolitti – Ciccotti called Giolittianism the "death of political life" –, and in opposition to the post-war revolutionary movements, he looked sympathetically at the rising Fascism and its leader Benito Mussolini. "In today's evident scarcity of political personalities, Mussolini is the one that more than any other, if not the only one, can deserve this name," Ciccotti wrote in September 1922.

In September 1924, he was rewarded with a seat for life in the Italian Senate. He opposed the move to authoritarian rule of Mussolini, but did not resign. He mainly dedicated his time to study history. In 1931, when demanded to pledge an oath of allegiance to the Fascist regime, Ciccotti initially protested, but eventually took the oath all the same. Finally he opposed, and openly, to the dictatorship of Mussolini when he sensed that the regime was heading to the adventure of a war, which he considered the inevitable conclusion of authoritarian and populist regimes. He died in Rome on 20 May 1939 at the age of 76.