Pietro Maestri (28 February 1816 – 4 July 1871) was an Italian risorgimento-patriot. Although he trained as a physician, he is better remembered for his activism in support of a democratic and liberated Italy, as well as for his subsequent career as an economist-statistician. He inherited a passion for statistics from his father, and worked for the government after 1861 as Director of the National Statistical Council (la "Giunta centrale di statistica"). He was something of a pioneer in the field of government statistics and probability theory, although for Maestri Statistics were very much a device of politics and national economics. It would be left to his successor in the post, Luigi Bodio, to demonstrate the extent to which, during a time of rapid social and economic change, government statistics could become a tool to build understanding of social facts and developments.
Biography Provenance and early years Pietro Maestri was born and grew up in Milan. Antonio Maestri, his father, became a vice-president and the Central Government Accounting Office for Lombardo-Veneto, where he worked between 1801 and 1848. Although he inherited a love of statistical studies from his father, when it came to his university choices Pietro Maestri enrolled in 1835 at the Medical Faculty of the University of Padua where he studied Medicine, graduating in 1841. As a student he began to engage clandestinely in politics. belonging to what he later described as a "secret society of democratic students". They engaged in competitive political discussion at lengthy secret meetings, and also gathered little collections of "politically subversive" books and journals which they shared around.
Following his graduation he took a post as a medical assistant at a Milan hospital. Starting in 1843 he also became a contributor to "Gazzetta medica di Milano", a newly-founded journal produced by his student near-contemporary Agostino Bertani. The two of them shared a passion for medicine, strongly oriented towards contextualisation within a social plan. They also shared, on the political front, a youthful dedication to the cause of democratic-republicanism. As inhabitants of a puppet state taking its orders from Vienna, this made them, by definition, opponents of the political status quo. An important - and particularly lengthy - article that Maestri contributed to "Gazzetta medica di Milano" focused on various aspects of the need for reform of the criminal justice system. Maestri's views on the issues came to wider attention and triggered a lively debate that drew in, among others, the young economist-activist Carlo Cattaneo and the distinguished aristocrat-economist Carlo Ilarione Petitti di Roreto.
Travels and observations In 1845, wishing to complete his education, Maestri undertook a lengthy visit to Paris and London. He met up with Giuseppe Mazzini, who had been exiled in London, living in conditions of some material hardship, since 1837, following the failure of uprisings against Austrian hegemony earlier in the 1830s. Mazzini became a prodigious and inspiring author during his time in England, and by the time Maestri met him in London he was an iconic figure among young Italian men committed to the causes of what was known as "patriotism" and impatient for revolution. Maestri later reported that he had been favourably impressed by Mazzini, whom he thought a "giovine eccellente" ("excellent young man"). He nevertheless later claimed to have identified a risk, even in 1845, that Mazzini might succumb to "the usual tendency of [brilliant men], and substitute thoughts based on theory for the need for [simple] insurrectionary action".
Back home in Milan, Maestri contributed to "Gazzetta medica di Milano" a lively set of "Reminiscences on the trip by a hypochondriac doctor to Paris and London". Based on his experiences he included some trenchant observations on the causes of industrial crises which are contextualised as much in terms of socio-economic philosophy as of medicine. His time in Paris and London had evidently forced him to confront the "true nature of factory work". Industry, he had concluded, "gathers together those accustomed to squalor and hunger, and measures their output as though they were industrial steam engines. More and more products are produced. The more the factory workers produce, the more they have to produce, until one day you reach the point where there is no one left to buy what is produced. The market is glutted. The doors of the factory are inexorably closed. Industry has created a population of production workers which is now transmuted into a population of proletarians".
Networking In September 1846 Dr. Pietro Maestri attended the 8th Congress of Italian Scientists which was held, that year, at Genoa. He is identified in the participants' listing as a "surgeon at the Milan Sanatorium" ("...medico chirurgo presso la casa de salute di della citta Milano").
1848 In 1848 Maestri participated in the March insurrection, joining up with his friend Bertani to organise an improvised ambulance service. The expulsion of the Austrian troops meant an end to censorship and unleashed a proliferation of leaflets, pamphlets and newspapers. Maestri teamed up with Romolo Griffini to launch "Voce del popolo" ("Voice of the people"), a daily tabloid-sized newspaper published in Milan between 26 March and 29 July 1848, with a cover price of 5 centesimi. The newspaper was unusual, even among democratic-republican publications of the time, in the extent to which it demonstrated a concern with social problems. The "Voce" was aimed at a mass audience but represented an interesting experiment in Lombard journalism, and a test of the skills of its two young editorial-controllers. It was, of course, unflinching in its backing for republicanism and democracy, but it was nevertheless non-confrontational in its attitude to the provisional government in Milan, accepting that the detailed nature of future political institutions could only be determined once the war was over, but without yielding in its "people's war" supportive attitude to the national guard, constitutional principles and universal suffrage. The relatively conciliatory spirit in respect of moderate-liberal opinion was summed up in a strikingly "constructive mission statement" printed and signed by the two editors on 26 March 1848: "Our political approach, for now, is to be helpful, supportive and obedient to the provisional government" ("Il nostro motto politico è, per ora, aiuto, soccorso, obbedienza al Governo provvisorio"). At least one source reports that Maestri fought valiantly as an insurrectionist. After Field Marshal Radesky returned with a much larger army and reimposed Austrian control Pietro Maestri was imprisoned in the Castello Sforzesco, the large fortress in the city centre from where, traditionally, the city was garrisoned by the Imperial army. He nevertheless escaped death.
Towards the final part of Milan's summer of independence, on 7 July 1848, Maestri was summoned to become a member of the "Extraordinary Central Committee for arming the national guard In 28 July 1848 Pietro Maestri, together with Francesco Restelli and Manfredo Fanti, joined the "Committee of Public Safety" which struggled in vain to organise resistance against the Austrian army, now greatly reinforced recently victorious against Charles Albert of Sardinia at Custoza.
Through the preceding four months Maestri had vented an implacably republican opposition to any merger of Lombardo-Veneto into the neighbouring Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont (which had emerged from the Napoleon nightmare with its autonomy formally intact). Nevertheless, in the 60 page booklet he produced with Francesco Restelli on 15 August 1848, providing a factual but emotionally charged account of the sad events that marked an end to Milan's summer of independence, Maestri was bitterly critical of King Charles Albert of Sardinia, accusing the Sardinian leader of "treachery", on account of the Sardinian army's failure to resist the Austrian recapture of Milan more effectively.
The fight continues Although Milan came back under Austrian control in the high summer of 1848, many other territories hitherto inside the Austrian sphere of influence on the Italian peninsula retained their liberties for many more months. It was not till August 1849 that the Venice region following a long siege, a famine and a destructive cholera epidemic, came back under Austrian control. As Milan capitulated in July/August 1848, Pietro Maestri and Giuseppe Mazzini escaped to Genoa and then made their way back inland to Lugano. Almost immediately Maestri moved on again, this time to Venice, where he arrived on 13 September 1848 in order to organise the republican forces there on behalf of Mazzini. Subsequently he moved on the Florence and from there to Rome. In Florence between November 1838 and January 1849 he was a leading promoter of the Provisional Central Committee created as a precursor to a National Constituent Assembly in Rome where, during the early months of 1849, he was one of the most prominent supporters of that development.
Back in Turin, in January 1849 Maestri stood for election to the short-lived Second Legislature of the Kingdom of Sardinia. His rival for the votes of the electors in the Borgomanero electoral district was the Abbot Antonio Rosmini. Maestri secured a majority of the votes cast, but not an overall majority of the votes of those entitled to vote, but then on 3 February 1849 his election was annulled on the grounds that fewer than a third of those entitled to vote had actually done so. Following the proclamation of the Roman Republic during February 1849, Maestri was at once sent back to Florence to campaign for a unification of the Roman Republic with Tuscany where the return of the Grand Duke and his Austrian backers appeared imminent, while power was still shared in the meantime through an informal and unstable understanding between street politicians and a three man "provisional republican government". The idea of a merger between the Roman Republic and Tuscany, which would have further antagonised Austria, failed to gain significant traction with the most powerful member of the governing trio, Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi, who at the end of March 1849 had his role within the triumvirate strengthened when he accepted the title of "dictator", apparently with the support of the French government, which viewed the continuing political crisis on the Italian peninsula with intensifying concern. Returning again to Rome, Maestri participated in that city against the French who, following recent régime change in Paris, intervened by landing an army at Civitavecchia - the sea port for Rome - on 25 April 1949. After Rome was surrendered to the French at the start of July 1849, and with the Grand Duke returned to power in Florence through the threat of an imminent Austrian invasion at the end of the same month, In Milan, with the Austrians firmly back in control, the so-called "Radesky Proclamation", issued on 12 August 1849, included a lengthy listing of Milanese who would not be able to return home "because of their unjustifiable perseverance in support of revolution and their subversive tendencies". Pietro Maestri was back on the run.
Political exile