Pietro Maestri

Pietro Maestri (28 February 1816 – 4 July 1871) was an Italian risorgimento-patriot. Although he trained as a physician, he is better remembered for his activism in support of a democratic and liberated Italy, as well as for his subsequent career as an economist-statistician. He inherited a passion for statistics from his father, and worked for the government after 1861 as Director of the National Statistical Council (la "Giunta centrale di statistica"). He was something of a pioneer in the field of government statistics and probability theory, although for Maestri Statistics were very much a device of politics and national economics. It would be left to his successor in the post, Luigi Bodio, to demonstrate the extent to which, during a time of rapid social and economic change, government statistics could become a tool to build understanding of social facts and developments.

Biography Provenance and early years Pietro Maestri was born and grew up in Milan. Antonio Maestri, his father, became a vice-president and the Central Government Accounting Office for Lombardo-Veneto, where he worked between 1801 and 1848. Although he inherited a love of statistical studies from his father, when it came to his university choices Pietro Maestri enrolled in 1835 at the Medical Faculty of the University of Padua where he studied Medicine, graduating in 1841. As a student he began to engage clandestinely in politics. belonging to what he later described as a "secret society of democratic students". They engaged in competitive political discussion at lengthy secret meetings, and also gathered little collections of "politically subversive" books and journals which they shared around. He is identified in the participants' listing as a "surgeon at the Milan Sanatorium" ("...medico chirurgo presso la casa de salute di della citta Milano").

1848 In 1848 Maestri participated in the March insurrection, joining up with his friend Bertani to organise an improvised ambulance service. The expulsion of the Austrian troops meant an end to censorship and unleashed a proliferation of leaflets, pamphlets and newspapers. Maestri teamed up with Romolo Griffini to launch "Voce del popolo" ("Voice of the people"), a daily tabloid-sized newspaper published in Milan between 26 March and 29 July 1848, with a cover price of 5 centesimi. The newspaper was unusual, even among democratic-republican publications of the time, in the extent to which it demonstrated a concern with social problems. At least one source reports that Maestri fought valiantly as an insurrectionist. After Field Marshal Radesky returned with a much larger army and reimposed Austrian control Pietro Maestri was imprisoned in the Castello Sforzesco, the large fortress in the city centre from where, traditionally, the city was garrisoned by the Imperial army. He nevertheless escaped death.

The fight continues Although Milan came back under Austrian control in the high summer of 1848, many other territories hitherto inside the Austrian sphere of influence on the Italian peninsula retained their liberties for many more months. It was not till August 1849 that the Venice region following a long siege, a famine and a destructive cholera epidemic, came back under Austrian control. As Milan capitulated in July/August 1848, Pietro Maestri and Giuseppe Mazzini escaped to Genoa and then made their way back inland to Lugano. Almost immediately Maestri moved on again, this time to Venice, where he arrived on 13 September 1848 in order to organise the republican forces there on behalf of Mazzini. Subsequently he moved on the Florence and from there to Rome. In Florence between November 1838 and January 1849 he was a leading promoter of the Provisional Central Committee created as a precursor to a National Constituent Assembly in Rome where, during the early months of 1849, he was one of the most prominent supporters of that development.

Back in Turin, in January 1849 Maestri stood for election to the short-lived Second Legislature of the Kingdom of Sardinia. His rival for the votes of the electors in the Borgomanero electoral district was the Abbot Antonio Rosmini. Maestri secured a majority of the votes cast, but not an overall majority of the votes of those entitled to vote, but then on 3 February 1849 his election was annulled on the grounds that fewer than a third of those entitled to vote had actually done so. Following the proclamation of the Roman Republic during February 1849, Maestri was at once sent back to Florence to campaign for a unification of the Roman Republic with Tuscany where the return of the Grand Duke and his Austrian backers appeared imminent, while power was still shared in the meantime through an informal and unstable understanding between street politicians and a three man "provisional republican government". The idea of a merger between the Roman Republic and Tuscany, which would have further antagonised Austria, failed to gain significant traction with the most powerful member of the governing trio, Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi, who at the end of March 1849 had his role within the triumvirate strengthened when he accepted the title of "dictator", apparently with the support of the French government, which viewed the continuing political crisis on the Italian peninsula with intensifying concern. Returning again to Rome, Maestri participated in that city against the French who, following recent régime change in Paris, intervened by landing an army at Civitavecchia - the sea port for Rome - on 25 April 1949. After Rome was surrendered to the French at the start of July 1849, and with the Grand Duke returned to power in Florence through the threat of an imminent Austrian invasion at the end of the same month,

While in Paris, Maestri became a regular contributor to the Journal des économistes, an economic review magazine committed to liberalism and free trade. In addition to trying to explain Italy to the French, he also committed himself to reporting the events in France to his compatriots on the south side of Mont Blanc. Of particular significance, in this connection, is a series of articles he wrote under the series title "La Francia contemporanea" ("France Today") for Cattaneo's review journal, "Politecnico" after the 1859 war.

Government statistician It is likely that Pietro Maestri would have found much to commend in the 1948 Italian constitution which features Regions ("regioni d'Italia") which in most cases more or less correspond to the kingdoms, duchies and equivalent territories into which the Italian peninsula was divided before 1860. Since 1948 there has been a sustained programme of devolution, transferring power from the central government to the regions and, within the regions, to the provinces and major cities. In 1860, however, vision that inspired the constitutional arrangements selected for the newly united Italy came not from North America, Austria or Switzerland but from France. France was one of the two major states in western Europe where central governments had been systematically and effectively gathering power to themselves for at least five centuries. There was something tantalisingly logical and pre-packaged in Napoleon's blueprint for a modern European state, but for Pietro Maestri the centralising model that so appealed to Cavour and his king was quite unsuitable (except, perhaps, for France). Nevertheless, despite his disappointment at the centralising instincts of the Cavour government, Pietro was no longer subject to any residual ban. In 1862 he returned to settle in Italy where, for the most part, he now avoided commenting on constitutional matters, and successfully re-invented himself as a high-flying pioneering establishment economist-statistician. The organisational framework which Maestri created was later applied without major modification in several subsequent censuses and other government-mandated exercises in statistical data capture. In addition to overseeing the production and distribution of governmental statistical reports, keeping the records up to date in respect of certain fast moving data, and developing the necessary systems to support these tasks in a period during which the statistical usage and practice was undergoing rapid change, Maestri's responsibilities also included participation at a considerable number of international conferences.

In 1868 Maestri had a falling out with Emilio Broglio, his minister. Details of their dispute are not available, but it led to Maestri being suspended from his position for a month, with a corresponding loss of salary.

Awards and honours