Italian politician and historian, born in Molfetta, Puglia, SE Italy. He was an active member of the Socialist Party, a contributor to the review Critica sociale, and an expert on the Southern Italian question. Critical of Giolitti's Southern policy, he advocated the end of protectionism, universal suffrage, and federalism. He left the Socialist Party, which he saw as too tightly connected to Northern workers. He founded the weekly L'Unità in 1911, and was strongly opposed to Fascism and contributed to the Rosselli brothers' periodical Non mollare. While in exile (192548) he co-founded the Justice and Freedom movement.
Gaetano Salvemini (November 8, 1873 - September 6, 1957) was an Italian anti-Fascist politician, historian and writer.
Biography
Salvemini was born in Molfetta, Apulia.
After graduating in literature in Florence in 1896, he taught History at the universities of Messina (during the 1908 Messina heartquake he was the only survivor of his entire family), Pisa and Florence. As member of the Italian Socialist Party he fought for Universal Suffrage and for the moral and economic rebirth of Italy's Mezzogiorno (southern Italy), and against corruption in politics.
After his arrest in 1925 for opposing the newly-formed Italian fascist regime, he left Italy but continued to actively organise resistance to Mussolini in France, England and finally in the USA.
He wrote mainly about recent and contemporary history, but was also noted for his studies of the medieval Italian commune.
He died in Sorrento in 1957.
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