Leopoldo Franchetti

Leopoldo Franchetti (Livorno, May 31, 1847 – Rome, November 4, 1917), was an Italian publicist and politician. He was a deputy in the Italian Chamber of Deputies and later became a Senator. He was very active in promoting education and concrete solutions for economic, social and political problems in Italy.

Early life

Baron Franchetti was born in Livorno into a family in good standing. The Franchetti family came to Livorno from Tunisia in the last decades of the eighteenth century. From the Napoleonic era to the second half of the 1830s they were one of the most important families in the local Jewish community.

Leopoldo Franchetti was influenced by the ideas of John Stuart Mill and became a liberal. His relation with his Jewishness was so conflictual that no trace of it can be found in his public activity. In 1873 he took a sabbatical in southern Italy and became one of the foremost authorities regarding the "problems of southern Italy", and pioneer of meridionalism.

Inquiry into the Mafia