Napoleone Colajanni
| Napoleone Colajanni | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
27 April 1847 Castrogiovanni, Italy |
| Died | 2 September 1921 (aged 74) Castrogiovanni, Italy |
| Nationality | Italian |
| Occupation | Writer, journalist, criminologist, socialist, republican and politician |
Napoleone Colajanni (Castrogiovanni, 27 April 1847 – Castrogiovanni, 2 September 1921) was an Italian writer, journalist, criminologist, socialist and politician. In the 1880s he abandoned republicanism for socialism, and became Italy’s leading theoretical writer on the issue for a time. He has been called the father of Sicilian socialism. Due to the Socialist party’s discourse of Marxist class struggle, he reverted in 1894 to his original republicanism. Colajanni was an ardent critic of the Lombrosian school in criminology. In 1890 he was elected in the national Italian Chamber of Deputies and was re-elected in all subsequent parliaments until his death in September 1921.
Colajanni was born in Castrogiovanni (now Enna) in Sicily in a family of intense patriotic feelings. His father Luigi Colajanni and mother Concetta Falautano were small entrepreneurs in the sulfur industry.
At a young age he was inspired by Giuseppe Garibaldi and attempted to join the Redshirts in the Expedition of the Thousand for the unification of Italy in 1860 escaping to Palermo at the age of 13, but without success. A relative recognised the young boy and brought him back home. Two years later, in 1862, when Garibaldi passed by Castrogiovanni in his Expedition against Rome, Colajanni joined the troops. He reached the Aspromonte, where he was captured by government troops and deported to the island of Palmaria. Liberated after an amnesty he returned to Sicily but volunteered again with Garibaldi’s troops in the Third Italian War of Independence in 1866 and participated in the Battle of Bezzecca in Trentino, northern Italy, in July 1866.
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