Napoleone Colajanni

Napoleone Colajanni (27 April 1847 – 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 Italian Socialist Party's discourse of Marxist class struggle, he reverted in 1894 to his original republicanism and joined the Italian Republican Party. Colajanni was an ardent critic of the Lombrosian school in criminology. In 1890, he was elected in the national Chamber of Deputies and was re-elected in all subsequent parliaments until his death in September 1921.

Early life and family

Colajanni was born in Castrogiovanni (now Enna) in Sicily, then part of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, in a family of intense patriotic feelings. His father Luigi Colajanni and mother Concetta Falautano were small entrepreneurs in the sulfur industry.

Redshirts

At a young age, Colajanni 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. In 1862, two years later, when Garibaldi passed by Castrogiovanni in his expedition against Rome, Colajanni joined the troops. He reached the Battle of 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.