Carlo Cattaneo: Biography
1801
Carlo Cattaneo was born in Milan on 15 June 1801, the third child of a family from the lower middle classes that had developed as a result of growth in urban activities and changes to the Lombard rural system as a whole. His father, Melchiorre, was an artisan and goldsmith, while his mother, Maria Antonia Sangiorgi, was a housewife. The sacrifices they made to ensure their children received a decent education were rewarded primarily by Carlo, the future writer, who attended seminary schools in Lecco and Monza, and then high schools in Milan, where he came into contact with some high-quality, stimulating teachers. These included the historian Giambattista De Cristoforis, a contributor to Il Conciliatore, who opened Carlo’s mind to “the idea of the Middle Ages and the vast world of Asia and to other sources not found within the circle of ancient studies” (SSG 3: 51), and the grammarian Giovanni Gherardini, who introduced him to the study of linguistics, giving him access to no shortage of materials with which to develop his “broad, modern concept of history”, as one of the leading linguists of the late nineteenth century Graziadio Isaia Ascoli put it (Ascoli 1900, Ambrosoli 1960).
1820–1821
Cattaneo enrolled in the Faculty of Law at the University of Pavia, but was unable to attend the official courses for financial reasons. Not wanting to be a burden to his family, he taught Italian grammar at a municipal high school in Milan, while studying privately at the law school run by Giandomenico Romagnosi (1761–1835), who himself had previously taught at Pavia. Many years later Cattaneo would say to the friend who had advised him to take this course of action: “That suggestion of yours changed my life” (EP 4: 102). Indeed, it was under Romagnosi’s guidance that the young Carlo was first able to study the subjects that would become some of the most important themes of his mature reflection, such as life in society, the factors behind civilization, and the characteristics of human knowledge and philosophy itself, which, in order to understand thought properly, must scrutinize it “in histories, in languages, in religions, in arts, and in sciences” (SF 1: 53).
His multiple interests were nurtured in the public and private libraries to which he had unrestricted access, in Milan and elsewhere. Later on, in 1864, he would write in the following terms of the Biblioteca Ambrosiana and the Gabinetto Numismatico (directed by one of his relatives): “I will never forget the kind priest Cighera, who encouraged me to read Petrarch and allowed me to use the library [Biblioteca Ambrosiana] even during the many hours and the many days when it was closed to everyone else, and did not look too carefully at what I was rummaging through the shelves for. Now I realize what an advantage it was for me to have had free access to that library, and indeed to the library of the Gabinetto Numismatico devised and compiled by my cousin Gaetano, and to those, valuable albeit not quite as extensive, of one of my father’s brothers and one of his uncles on his father’s side at Casorate, who allowed me to read every volume of travel writing in LaHarpe’s collection undisturbed” (EP 4: 260; Lacaita et al. 2003: 22–27).
Of the private libraries he frequented, he reserved special mention for that of Giuseppe Montani. Montani, who had collaborated with Il Conciliatore, and who “left him in charge of his rooms and his fine library, where I spent days on end”, also published Cattaneo’s first article, in Vieusseux’s Florence-based journal Antologia (in August 1822): a review of Romagnosi’s book on natural law (Assunto primo della scienza del diritto naturale, published in 1820).
The time Cattaneo spent immersing himself in “agricultural matters” was also to have a profound effect on him. Thanks to his relatives who lived and worked as tenants and sharecroppers in the Lombard countryside, he was able to study the functions and practices of various of the figures who worked within the Lombard rural system, the tools they used, the regulations passed on or introduced by the agricultural engineers, and the close network of relations between the city and the countryside, which he later described most effectively in what are some of his most memorable writings (SST 1969).
Luigi Einaudi later collected many of Cattaneo’s agricultural writings in a volume entitled Saggi di economia rurale (Cattaneo 1939). In this collection, Einaudi emphasized how these writings are able to shed light on the centuries-old practices that Cattaneo summed up in his concept of an “artificial country”, defined as the immense wealth of labour, capital and acts of intelligence accumulated in a given area over a long period of time (see pp. 215–216 of this volume).
1820–1824
Cattaneo witnessed the liberal conspiracy of 1820–1821, in which Romagnosi was involved, being put down brutally. He himself was called to give testimony in July 1821, and the answers he gave no doubt contributed to his elderly infirm teacher being found not guilty of the charges of wrongdoing.
In 1821 Cattaneo travelled to the heart of the Swiss Confederation, as far as Zurich, with his friend from Canton Ticino Stefano Franscini (1796–1857), who would subsequently become a prominent scholar and future politician of Italian-speaking Switzerland.
After graduating in summer 1824, Cattaneo decided to continue with his preferred course of studies, remaining close to Romagnosi his teacher (EP 4: 103, 3: 180). In his teaching, meanwhile, he had progressed from “grammar” to “the humanities”. He planned to write an essay on the influence of the great barbarian migration on the Italian language (Influenza della gran trasmigrazione di barbari sulla lingua italiana), which, however, was to remain unfinished (SL 1: 249–254; 2: 21–28). An application for employment at the library at Brera which was submitted unsuccessfully in 1826 shows he was fluent in several languages, both ancient (Greek, Latin and Hebrew) and modern (German, French and English). He accepted a commission to revise and translate two textbooks from German to Italian, which were subsequently published under the titles of Elementi di geografia moderna and Rudimenti della storia de’ nuovi stati. Together with Franscini, he also translated Heinrich Zschokke’s History of Switzerland (Istoria della Svizzera pel popolo svizzero, 1829–1830), and would later also translate several German texts for the periodical Annali di giurisprudenza pratica.
It was also in 1825 that Cattaneo first met a sensitive and educated young lady from a noble Anglo-Irish family, Miss Anna Pyne Bridges Woodcock. The family were comfortable but not wealthy. Cattaneo and Anna would eventually marry ten years later.
1828–1838
Cattaneo began writing for Annali Universali di Statistica, a journal directed by Romagnosi and published by Francesco Lampato (1774–1852), who previously had been an official in the Napoleonic regime (La Salvia 1977). The journalistic and editorial experience which Cattaneo obtained working alongside Romagnosi and Lampato was significant. He wrote all kinds of articles, and conceived and edited the Bollettino di Notizie Statistiche Italiane e Straniere, a bulletin of statistical information from Italy and elsewhere which was later taken over by the larger, more influential journal. “It must indeed be acknowledged that the Annali are the only periodical journal in which practical information from statistics and ethnography is accompanied by reasoned, theoretical discussion of public economy. It was here that attempts were first made to bring together economics, law and morality, and to illustrate the ill-known reasons behind true civilization” (EP 1: 390), very much in line, in other words, with the main tenets of Romagnosi’s thought.
He also wrote for other newspapers such as L’Eco, La Moda, and in particular L’Eco della Borsa (1836–1837), the leading Milanese economic broadsheet, to which he contributed articles on the silk trade and industrial development (SST: 70–72).
1835
Romagnosi died on 8 June, attended to by his young friends and favourite pupil Cattaneo in particular. The latter recalled his passing in the following terms: “After fifteen years of friendship I wrote his will. I asked him to provide for a line to be added, allowing us to choose where he would be buried, far from the horrific graveyards cursed by Foscolo […]. I held up his quivering, venerable head with my own hand. On his deathbed, with Count Bolza of the Austrian police present, I opened subscriptions for a monument to him to be erected at the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, I lent one of my shoulders, along with Ferrari, De Filippi and Calderini, for his body to be carried into church […]” (EP 4: 503–504).
Also in 1835, Cattaneo gave up high-school teaching in order to devote himself more fully to his scholarly and freelance journalism activities.
He and Anna Woodcock married on 19 October.
1836
Cattaneo published his famous essay on the historical restrictions placed on the Jews in the Annali di giurisprudenza pratica with the title “Ricerche economiche sulle interdizioni imposte dalla legge civile agli Israeliti”, a work which “reveals the full range of Cattaneo’s learning, vigorous originality, and splendid style for the first time”, as Gaetano Salvemini wrote (see now Cattaneo [1922] 2006: 54). He later republished the essay with the abbreviated title Interdizioni israelitiche.
Again in 1836, he responded critically to the attacks on Romagnosi and his thought made by the spiritualist philosopher Antonio Rosmini, reiterating his opposition to the metaphysical tendencies of the period, and stressing his preference for a modern, positivist, historical and experimental approach.
He also published a wide-ranging essay on the links between the Vlach and Italian languages and nations (“Nesso della nazione e della lingua Valacca coll’Italiana”), published in the Annali universali di statistica in May 1837, and urged his compatriots to participate in the innovation processes underway at the time. He wrote about gas lighting and railways, and became secretary to the Lombard-Venetian society for the railway from Milan to Venice, a position he was to hold until August 1838. Describing a distinctive feature of his personality and writing, he would later say that he felt he had been “created to live only in the region of ideas and contemplation of the world to come” (EP 2: 425, 2: 14). He intervened in the important public debate on the Lombard-Venetian railway, advocating for the “line of the cities” (from Milan to Venice via Padua, Vicenza, Verona and Brescia) with original and effective arguments, and clarifying many aspects of the designs and the line’s reciprocal connections.
1839
Cattaneo, who was keen to have a learned journal of his own, acquired a licence from a chemist (the priest Ottavio Ferrario) and journalist (Giambattista Menini) to publish a new periodical under the title of Il Politecnico. (In 1836 Cattaneo had been unsuccessful in his application for a licence for L’Ateneo, a journal which he wanted to launch with his friend Giuseppe Ferrari, who was well known in Romagnosi’s circle as the scholar and publisher of Vico’s works.) The journal’s mission was, as its sub-title suggests, to serve as a “monthly compendium of studies applied to prosperity and social culture”, and invitations were extended to Italian “minds” to develop applications of “human knowledge to uses commensurate with the most sophisticated forms of coexistence”, and to play their part in the ongoing struggle “between progress and inertia, between thought and ignorance, between nobility and barbarianism, between emancipation and slavery” (SF 1: 234). This did not mean he was not prepared to discuss weightier issues of philosophy, literature and civil commitment, but often he did so by treating them, as he himself said on several occasions, like “contraband”, for such issues were subject to much closer scrutiny from the censor.
Between the years of 1839 and 1844, Cattaneo managed to involve more than eighty collaborators from the most wide-ranging disciplines, producing 42 issues in a total of seven volumes of approximately 600 pages each. The director and editor of the journal’s hand is visible on every page of it that was published. It was with justification that he could later write: “my spirit lives in it”. Not only did the various issues consist largely of articles either signed by him or which he wrote anonymously, he also revised many of his collaborators’ articles, at times going through them “with a fine-toothed comb”.
With the consistency of its message, developed in the course of the six years in which it was published, Il Politecnico won the confidence of the Risorgimento intelligentsia. “Our generation”, the mathematician and politician Francesco Brioschi was to say many years later, “may never forget how much we owe that publication” (Brioschi 2003: 57).
1843
With his appointment as standing member of the Istituto Lombardo di Scienze Lettere ed Arti, the principal Lombard academic institution of the time (which had been founded under the Napoleonic regime and was maintained by the Austrian government), Cattaneo received official recognition of his role in the intellectual life of Lombardy-Venetia. “My name”, he wrote in a letter, “had been included in the Institute’s shortlists of three candidates on several occasions, but my candidature had always been rejected, until in 1843, because the Scientists’ Congress of 1844 had been announced, the members proposed three shortlists, and my name was included in all three of them, which rather forced the government’s hand” (EP 3: 465).
1844
For the occasion of the sixth Congress of Italian Scientists to be held in Milan, Cattaneo proposed a publication to celebrate the work of Lombardy as a whole rather than merely the capital, as the city administration had wanted. With this in mind Cattaneo, together with some of his friends who were experts in their respective fields, compiled independently the Notizie naturali e civili su la Lombardia, published in two volumes. The aim of this interdisciplinary endeavour was described thus: to inspire the realization of similar works “in every region of Italy”, so as to represent the “variety of natural and civil conditions” existing in them, in order to have a “less obscure notion of what we are” (SSG 1: 254). Only the first volume was published, however (the preparatory materials for the second have recently been published in EN, S, III, 2).
The most famous part of this work is the celebrated introduction to the first volume, which Gaetano Salvemini described as “a model of regional anthropology” (see now Cattaneo [1922] 2006: 56).
1845
The publication of Il Politecnico was interrupted as a result of disagreements with both printer and government. Meanwhile Cattaneo agreed to serve as representative of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts and Trades of Milan, that had been founded in 1838 by a group of Milanese entrepreneurs under the leadership of the silk industrialist and banker of German origin Enrico (or Heinrich) Mylius (1769–1854). Between 1845 and 1848 Cattaneo became the prime mover of the initiatives by which the Society sought to promote technological innovation and to disseminate the knowledge required by the modernization of productive activities in the areas of industry, agriculture and commerce (Lacaita 2002).
At the same time he wrote for the Rivista Europa edited by Carlo Tenca (1816–1883), contributing articles on a variety of topics ranging from exploration of the Mexican isthmus to ancient and modern India. He also commenced the first collection of his own writings, which was published by Borroni and Scotti in Milan in 1846–1847 in three volumes under the title Alcuni scritti. The first of these volumes, published in April 1846, focused on literature and linguistics, the second (October 1846) on matters of universal history, and the third (Spring 1847) on matters of “civil philosophy”. He also wanted a fourth volume to be published of his work on “natural philosophy” (including his essays on geological varieties, chemical varieties for non-chemists—republished in this collection—and Alexander Humboldt’s Cosmos), as well as other major contributions to “public affairs”; the publisher, however, was not in agreement.
1848–1849
Given his commitment to advanced reforms, Cattaneo had remained external to any revolutionary conspiracies. Indeed, at the start of 1848 he was part of a commission established by the Istituto Lombardo to draw up a programme for educational reform of all degrees and levels (TO IV: 3–54). To young people who were ready to rise up he urged prudence, knowing full well that the enemy was merciless and inclined to use military force. When news came of the insurrection in Vienna and the fall of Metternich, his first thought was to set up a new newspaper with the title Il Cisalpino, the opening words of which were “Arms and freedom for all the Empire’s nations, each within its own borders”. But as soon as the movement which came to be known as the Five Days of Milan began (18–22 March), as he saw the high number of working-class populations participating, any doubts he had were dispelled and he immediately joined the council of war, taking a leading role in the struggle to liberate the city. He also opposed the moderates in the provisional government, who were pressing to merge with the Kingdom of Savoy in exchange for Carlo Alberto’s military assistance. The moderates’ hostility forced him into isolation, from which he emerged to take part in the resistance as a war commissioner for Lecco, Bergamo and Brescia. Following the Austrians’ definitive return to Milan, Cattaneo and his wife took shelter in Canton Ticino, from where they went to Paris (on 16 August) to raise support for the Italian cause. While in the French capital he wrote L’Insurrection de Milan (Paris: Amyot, 1848), translating it into Italian and publishing it once back in Switzerland with the title Dell’insurrezione di Milano nel 1848 e della successiva guerra (Lugano: Tipografia della Svizzera Italiana, 1849). In a letter written many years later, he would describe the book’s origins in the following terms: “If I wrote L’Insurrection de Milan while in Paris in August and September 1848, it was because the Piedmontese agents were telling everyone in the French salons that our people were so Austrian they were shooting the Piedmontese soldiers trying to defend Milan in the back” (EP 3: 294).
1850–1858
Having set up home in Castagnola near to Lugano, Cattaneo devoted himself to reading the historical documents he had collected, which he published under the title of Archivio triennale delle cose d’Italia dall’avvenimento di Pio IX all’abbandono di Venezia (in three volumes: the first two were published in 1850–1851, by the Tipografia Elvetica in Capolago, the third in January 1855, by the Tipografia Sociale in Chieri). In these years, which allowed Cattaneo to reflect on and express his political thoughts more openly, he expounded his view of democratic federalism, which included both the structure of powers within the nation state itself, divided and sub-divided in such a way as to protect individual and collective autonomies, and the creation of a supranational entity, which, by combining the continent’s populations to form a “United States of Europe”, would allow them to live together peacefully and prosperously. The concluding remarks of Dell’insurrezione di Milano indeed were as follows: “And now the nations of Europe must join together by means of a different union: not the material unity of domination, but the moral principle of equality and liberty. […] We shall have true peace, when we have the United States of Europe” (SSG 4: 329). And in the “Considerations” which he added to the first volume of the Archivio triennale, he wrote: “The day that Europe […] writes on its forehead: the United States of Europe, not only will it remove itself from the tragic need for battles, fires and gallows, but it will also have gained a hundred thousand million lire” (SSG 2: 178–179).
Invited by his friend Stefano Franscini and the other Swiss liberals, Cattaneo took an active part in the cultural and political life of Canton Ticino, and in 1858 he was granted honorary Swiss citizenship for his services to the public. First he tackled the reform of the education system, then the reclamation of the Magadino flatlands, an area burdened by archaic legal and economic institutions, then the issue of local and transalpine railways, coming down in favour of central line through the Gotthard Pass, which for him was preferable for political, economic and strategic reasons, with the prospect of increasing relations between the most industrialized part of Europe and the Orient via the Suez Canal (already at the construction stage by this time).
Having contributed to the establishment of the new cantonal high school in Lugano, in 1852 he accepted a position to teach philosophy there, for a salary of 2,000 Swiss francs. This new task enabled him to return to some of the major themes of his thought: philosophy which is grounded in the results of individual sciences that differ in terms of method as well as the subject of their enquiry, and which in turn helps the different sciences to enquire into common or relevant problems.
With this in mind, he structured his course in five parts (SF 1 and 2): Cosmology, which is the study of humanity in space, time, and order; Psychology, which looks at the different aspects of the human psyche, ranging from instincts (first and foremost, the instincts of “sociability and imitation”) to sensations, to memory, association, and imagination, followed by reflection and “rational and deliberate volition”; Ideology, which studies how ideas “are formed” in human individuals and groupings, and are organized around “principles” and evolve as collective historical constructions; Logic, which involves examining the “connection between ideas”, including relationships of gender and species, and the link between “unity” and “diversity”; and lastly, Law, Morality and Economics, namely the study of human action in the different areas of life in society (family, state, nation, humanity).
At the invitation of several Milanese young people, Cattaneo also took part once again in the national debate, in Carlo Tenca’s Il Crepuscolo published in Milan, and in the Rivista Contemporanea which was published in Turin. In the former, which Cattaneo considered to be “the leading newspaper in Italy”, he published numerous articles in the years from 1854 to 1859, on subjects ranging from the Kalevala (a collection of works of folklore and mythology by the ancient Finnic peoples), to Augustin Thierry’s Formation and Progress of the Third Estate, the American poet Henry Wordsworth Longfellow, Giovanni Cantoni’s Manuale di fisica, and the thought of Tommaso Campanella, plus his essays on “The City Considered as the Ideal Principle of Italian Histories” ([1858] 1957), on British and Lombard agriculture compared, and on “On Thought as a Principle of Public Economy” ([1861] 1956 SE 3:337–372, translated 2010). In the latter, meanwhile, he published two articles on transalpine railway projects in support of the Gotthard route (the Piedmontese government favoured the Lukmanier solution), and his Invitation to Lovers of Philosophy (included in this collection: 3–15), in which he reiterated the main points of his views on the subject.
1859
On the subject of the Second War of Independence which saw Napoleon III and Vittorio Emanuele II join forces against Austria, Cattaneo declared himself in favour of volunteers participating: “Armed and free men may accept or reject war as they see fit. But defenceless peoples and prisoners […] must embrace every opportunity for war” ([1859] EN, C, I, 4: 150).
1860–1862
With Lombardy now delivered from Austrian rule, in 1860 he resumed publication of Il Politecnico, having reached an agreement with the publisher Daelli. He also republished a series of his own writings on economics under the title Memorie d’economia publica (MEP).
In March 1860, just three days before the political elections, he finally accepted the overtures made insistently to him in democratic circles to stand as a candidate, and was elected in three Lombard constituencies. Of these, he chose Milan but did not enter parliament, for he refused to swear loyalty to the Savoy monarchy. He preferred instead to debate the nation’s problems in the pages of Il Politecnico.
On 15 September he decided to accept Garibaldi’s invitation to go to Naples, after the former had liberated the southern part of the Italian peninsula. Cattaneo was opposed to the south’s immediate and unconditional annexation, and so advocated the establishment of southern parliaments before the annexation took place: “I believe in the need for permanent assemblies, with the twofold objective of achieving concord and progress. What is needed is for the peoples of Italy to become brothers, not to remove peoples” (EP, 3: 418).
In the three years from 1860 to 1862, Cattaneo published more than seventy articles in the second series of Il Politecnico. However, it proved harder than anticipated to edit the journal from Lugano. Its publisher Gino Daelli, with whom Cattaneo had entered into an agreement at the end of 1859, refused to respect the editor’s wishes, often accepting articles not approved by Cattaneo for publication, or which were not consistent with the journal’s stated aims. He also failed to maintain the administrative records for the journal with the required accuracy.
1863
Cattaneo ceased editing and writing for Il Politecnico. He did, however, allow some of his writings recently published elsewhere to be included in it, in the hope that sooner or later he would return to directing the journal. Instead, it was transferred from Daelli to the financier and industrialist Andrea Ponti, who gave it first to Ernest Stamm, a French engineer from Alsace who had worked in Italy since 1861, then Brioschi, who had sided with the moderate liberals that had been governing the country since Cavour’s death.
Cattaneo expounded his democratic and reformist political views in a variety of newspapers in addition to Il Politecnico, notably Il Diritto, La Gazzetta di Milano, La Nuova Europa, Il Sole, and even The Times of London. He urged incisive reforms in every field, ranging from criminal law, to administrative bureaucracy, to tax legislation, stating that “everything that is shared must be absolutely and thoroughly progressive”.
1864
Cattaneo drafted a statute for the federation of Italian workers’ societies, based on the conviction that if their union was organized, it would give further impetus to their efforts for emancipation ([1864] 1965 SP 4: 409–414).
At the same time, in the years from 1859 to 1866 he delivered a series of six lectures to the Istituto Lombardo di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti on the subject of the psychology of associated minds, in which he developed the ideas he had already outlined in the course of his philosophy lectures in Lugano. The psychology Cattaneo advocated had a twofold objective: on the one hand, to investigate “the conditions” that made possible the birth, growth and development of “sciences”, and also “languages, laws, religions and all institutions”, as the collective work of “the associated faculties of several individuals and several nations”; and on the other, to clarify “by which the highest number of minds can be stimulated and helped to undertake all this additional mental activity that exceeds the limits of the lowest level of common sense” ([1859–1866] translated 2019: 61 and 57).
He was also still deeply involved with the Gotthard railway and the other lines in Canton Ticino, which he saw as preparing the way for the Alpine route’s development. He developed close relations with some of the leading figures involved in this complex project, keen to contribute to the realization of works he considered highly progressive, but also to increase his own meagre finances (Caizzi 2007: 149).
1865
On the question of railways, Cattaneo clashed with the president of the council for Canton Ticino Luigi Maria Pioda, who on 28 October addressed him in the following terms: “Remember you are one of my employees”. Cattaneo tendered his resignation from the Lugano high school, and said goodbye to his students in a long letter dated 18 November (EP 4: 372–373).
1867
After rejecting an offer to stand as a candidate for the Como constituency in February, he agreed to have his name put forward for the political elections in Milan in March, and was elected in the first constituency. He also went to Florence, the new kingdom’s capital (following the convention between Italy and France in September 1864), but again refused to take part in the proceedings at the Chamber of Deputies. He set out his position on the issues of the day in a series of nine letters addressed to the Free Electorate published in La Gazzetta di Milano between 5 April 1867 and 11 January 1868.
1868
Cattaneo’s health rapidly deteriorated.
1869
Cattaneo died at 2 o’clock in the morning on 5 February. At his deathbed was his friend and doctor Agostino Bertani, who left an emotional record of the moment in a letter he wrote to Alberto and Jessie White Mario: “Our friend’s heart beats no more; and we shall never again see him throw open his arms joyfully when we surprise him in his study at Castagnola […]” (Mario 1884: 157–159). Cattaneo’s wife Anna died on 25 October.
Figure 1
Carlo Cattaneo, charcoal portrait by Carlo Sasky, post-February 1869. Formerly held by the Museo del Risorgimento, Milan
Soon after, Bertani, who had become the owner of his friend’s books and papers, began the process of collecting and organizing Cattaneo’s works, a process that has not yet been completed (see the Editors’ Note to this volume).