Francesco Crispi

Francesco Crispi (October 4, 1818 – August 11, 1901) was an Italian patriot and statesman. He was among the main protagonists of the Italian Risorgimento and a close friend and supporter of Giuseppe Mazzini and Giuseppe Garibaldi, and one of the architects of the unification of Italy in 1860.

He was Italy's Prime Minister for six years, from 1887 until 1891 and again from 1893 until 1896. Crispi was internationally famous and often mentioned along with world statesmen such as Bismarck, Gladstone and Salisbury. Originally an enlightened Italian patriot and democrat liberal he went on to become a bellicose authoritarian prime minister and ally and admirer of Bismarck. His career ended amid controversy and failure: he got involved in a major banking scandal and fell from power in 1896 after the devastating loss of the Battle of Adwa, which repelled Italy's colonial ambitions over Ethiopia. He is often seen as a precursor of Benito Mussolini.

Early life

Crispi’s paternal family came originally from the small agricultural community of Palazzo Adriano, in south-western Sicily. It had been founded in later fifteenth century by Orthodox Albanians (Arbëreshë), who settled in Sicily after the Ottoman occupation of Albania. His grandfather was an Arbëreshë Orthodox priest; the parish priests were married men, and Albanian was the family language down to the lifetime of the young Crispi. Crispi himself was born in Ribera, Sicily, to Tommaso Crispi, a grain merchant and Giuseppa Genova from Ribera; he was baptised as a Greek Orthodox. Belonging to a family of Albanian descent, he spoke Italian as his third or fourth language. His uncle Giuseppe wrote the first monograph on the Albanian language.