Celso Caesar Moreno

Celso Caesar Moreno (1830 – March 12, 1901) was a soldier of fortune, a controversial political figure on the world stage, and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Hawaii under Kalākaua. Born in Italy, he fought in the Crimean War and lived throughout Asia, Hawaii and the United States. He moved from one career to another, one grand scheme to another, usually trying to convince governments to pay huge sums of money for his proposals. His efforts at establishing a trans-Pacific telegraph cable got official government authorization, but no financial backers. He became a naturalized American citizen in 1878, and a naturalized citizen of Hawaii in 1880. Moreno spent his final years living in Washington, D. C., trying to eliminate the padrone system that created slavery conditions within the immigrant Italian labor force.

Celso Caesar Moreno, also known as Cesare Moreno and C. C. Moreno, was born into a Roman Catholic family in the Piedmont region of Italy. According to testimony he gave in an 1896 court trial, he was born in 1830, and became a naturalized United States citizen in California in 1878. His family was financially well off enough to send him to private Catholic schools where he became fluent in multiple languages. After furthering his education at a military academy, Moreno enlisted in the Piedmontese regular army, serving in the Crimean War. Before the war's end, he decided against a military career, and enrolled in the University of Genoa, graduating as a civil engineer in 1856.

He quickly lost interest in working as a civil engineer, and became captain of his own steamship, eventually arriving in Indonesia. In the Dutch East Indies territory of Sumatra, Moreno changed his occupation once again, and was in the service of the Sultan Alauddin Ibrahim Mansur Syah 1859–1862, marrying one of the sultan's daughter. After running afoul of the Dutch government, he abandoned his wife and fled the Dutch East Indies, returning to Europe. He began lobbying efforts in Italy and France advocating a colonization of Sumatra, first with Victor Emmanuel II and then with Napoleon III. Neither of those efforts came to fruition, but Napoleon III was sufficiently impressed by Moreno to send him as a representative to Tonquin in Vietnam.

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