Background
He was an Italian physician, politician, and historian, was born in San Giorgio Canavese, then in the Kingdom of Sardinia, on Nov. 6, 1766. In 1786 he received a degree in medicine from the University of Turin, but his revolutionary views on Italian independence cost him a two-year prison term and exile to France in 1795. He joined the forces of Napoleon as a surgeon and served with the French armies, following them to Venice. He went on the expedition to Corfu and did not return to Italy until 1798, at which time Napoleon appointed him a member of the French provisional government of Piedmont. Botta approved of the French annexation of Piedmont in the hope that it might eventually lead to complete Italian independence. After the annexation in 1802 he was appointed to the French legislative corps in Piedmont. Botta later returned to Paris, where he wrote Storia della guerra dell' independenza degli Stati Uniti (1809) to explain the American Revolution to Italian readers. Botta's greatest work, Storia d'Italia (1824), reflected his advanced liberal and nationalistic ideas. He died in Paris on Sept. 10, 1837.