Pietro Bastogi

Pietro Bastogi (Livorno, 15 March 1808 – Florence, 21 February 1899) was an Italian politician, financier and industrialist.

Early life and career Bastogi was born in 1808 in Livorno to Michelangelo Bastogi and his wife Riccarda Regini, into a family of merchants originally from Civitavecchia. In his youth he was attracted by patriotic ideas and joined Giuseppe Mazzini's Young Italy, where he also served as treasurer. A friend of Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi, in 1836 Bastogi helped him publish his work The Siege of Florence. In the meantime, he devoted himself to the family business, namely trade and finance, becoming a skilled businessman, with financial investments in both the public and private sectors. In 1847, Leopold II, Grand Duke of Tuscany asked for a loan from private Tuscan banks, including the Bastogi, who received as collateral the income from a mining company that held a government licence to exploit the iron mines of Follonica.

Italian government positions Having entered Parliament, Bastogi sat on the benches of the Right, forming part of the Tuscan group led by Ricasoli. On 3 February 1861, elections were held to renew Parliament, to allow the entry of deputies from Southern Italy, recently conquered by Giuseppe Garibaldi. After being re-elected, Bastogi was invited to join the Cavour cabinet, accepting the role of the new Kingdom of Italy’s first Minister of Finance, a position he also held, after Cavour's death, in the first Ricasoli government.

The objective of Bastogi’s new venture was to secure public contracts for the building of railways, but this immediately threatened the dominant interest in developing railways across Europe, led by the Rothschilds. By controlling the investment of so much French capital, they had succeeded up till then in preventing rival companies from taking on the construction and operating contracts for the Italian railway network. The Rothschilds' goal was to obtain the concession for the new central and southern railways, with the aim of connecting them with those of Lombardy, Veneto, and southern Austria, which they controlled either directly or through subsidiaries. They were able to persuade the first Rattazzi government to offer them a renewed the concession of the Lombard and Emilian lines up to Ancona, as well as the contract to complete the Adriatic line and its connection with Naples (16 June 1862).

Archive The documentation relating to the activity of the Società Italiana per le Strade Ferrate Meridionali , which later became Bastogi SpA, is preserved in the Bastogi Historical Archive, declared of notable historical interest in 1984 by the Archival Superintendency of Lombardy, and was transferred from the State Archives of Milan to the Fondazione Istituto per la storia dell'età contemporanea (ISEC) in July 2002.

Honours