Umberto Meoli

Umberto Meoli
Born	August 26, 1920 Padua
Died	May 17, 2002
Occupation	Historian of economics
Spouse(s)	Rachel Toulmin

Umberto Meoli (August 26, 1920 – May 17, 2002) was an Italian historian of economics, known as a maverick of the Italian Left who eschewed Marxism in favour of British pragmatism.

Meoli was born in Padua, one of nineteen brothers; his father was a pharmacist from a small town near Benevento, and his mother was from Padua.

In 1940, at age 20, Meoli began his service in the Italian Army fighting in World War II, and, three years later, with the Resistance after the 1943 armistice between Italy and the Allied armed forces. As a result, Meoli was imprisoned by the Benito Mussolini Fascist government, and spent several months in the Palazzo Giusti detention center in Padua. The Palazzo Giusti detention center was notorious for the cruelty of some Fascists in Padua during the Italian Social Republic. For example, Giovanni Gonelli, a barely literate jail keeper at Palazzo Giusti in Padua and a member of the Banda Carità, apparently enjoyed dehumanizing his prisoners by refusing their requests for food or blankets. The sentence of the Appellate Court of January 8, 1946 states that Gonelli would tell prisoners who asked for water to "piss and drink." There is no doubt that Meoli experienced such cruelty while imprisoned in Palazzo Giusti, and that this cruelty affected his thoughts.

In 1961 Meoli married Rachel Toulmin, an Englishwoman and lecturer at Padua University. Rachel Toulmin was the younger sister of Stephen Toulmin, a historian and philosopher of science at the University of Southern California.

...
Wikipedia