Baron Sidney Costantino Sonnino was an Italian politician. He was the 19th Prime Minister of Italy and twice served briefly as one, in 1906 and again from 1909 to 1910. He also was the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs during the First World War, representing Italy at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference.
Background
Sonnino was born in Pisa to an Italian father of Jewish heritage (Isacco Saul Sonnino, who converted to Anglicanism) and a Welsh mother, Georgina Sophia Arnaud Dudley Menhennet. He was raised an Anglican by his family. His grandfather had emigrated from the ghetto in Leghorn to Egypt where he had built up an enormous fortune as a banker.
Education
After graduating in law in Pisa in 1865, Sonnino became a diplomat and an official at the Italian embassies in Madrid, Vienna, Berlin and Paris, from 1866 until 1871. His family lived at the Castello Sonnino in Quercianella, near Leghorn. He retired from the diplomatic service in 1873.
Career
But in 1873, he returned to Italy and busied himself in scholarly studies of the nation's rural population. In 1880, after establishing himself as an authority on the peasantry and starting a career in journalism, he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies. He took his seat with the Conservatives. Sonnino's first Cabinet post came in 1893; he served over two years as minister of finance, distinguished by his success in meeting financial crisis by the unpopular but effective device of raising taxes. In 1906 and again in 1909/1910 he briefly held the post of prime minister. But Sonnino's governments were just interim affairs; he was no match for Giovanni Giolitti, who dominated Italian parliamentary life in the decade before 1914.
At the outbreak of World War I Sonnino was at once in favor of intervention. He was known to be pro-German, and, in fact, wanted Italy to join the Central Powers. In the aftermath of the battle of the Marne, however, he shifted to consider intervention on the side of the Entente. When he became foreign minister in November 1914, following the death of Antonio Di San Giuliano, he convinced Prime Minister Salandra to negotiate with both sides over the winter, while the army patched itself up for a spring campaign.
Sonnino saw that the war offered Italy the chance for substantial territorial expansion. In December 1914, as negotiations were getting under way with the Central Powers, he expanded Italy's foothold in Albania by seizing the port of Valona. In February 1914, when he found Austria reluctant to meet Italian demands for Trieste and the Trentino, Sonnino quickly turned to the Entente. Happy to negotiate with either side, he felt nonetheless that the Dardanelles campaign, just begun, might expand the war in the Mediterranean or perhaps end the entire conflict. In either case, Italy's needs required that it be a belligerent.
By April 1915, Sonnino had his agreement. The Treaty of London, negotiated in the face of vigorous Russian opposition, gave Italy notable gains in the Adriatic, such as Istria, central Dalmatia, Valona, as well as the Brenner frontier with Austria and the Dodecanese Islands between Crete and Asia Minor.
As Seton-Watson has put it, Sonnino and Salandra had not sought limitless gains but "strong frontiers, Adriatic security, and a balance of power in the Mediterranean." Portions of the Adriatic, notably the port of Fiume, were left for later assignment to one of the Slavic states of the western Balkans. Sonnino looked to a short and limited conflict that would crown Italy's war efforts without upsetting the status quo completely. His vision of a postwar Europe included a stable, if shrunken, Habsburg Empire and new and cordial diplomatic links with Vienna and Berlin for Italy. Sonnino clung with iron consistency to this policy throughout the war. But consistency did not always serve Italy's interests.
The war was not short. Sonnino had failed to ask economic aid in the London pact, although Italy was destined to need it in large amounts over the terrible years ahead. Italian possession of the Dalmatian coast meant antagonizing the South Slavs, who were already forming a Yugoslav Committee in London to promote their vision of a united postwar state. A limited war against Austria meant antagonizing Italy s allies as well; for example, the Treaty of London required Italy to declare war on all of the enemies of the Entente. Sonnino distrusted public opinion anywhere. He had negotiated the Treaty of London in the utmost secrecy; now, less reasonably, he made no effort to build support in public opinion abroad for what was to be a vastly expanded postwar Italy.
Sonnino was capable of bending before some strong winds. It was the timid Salandra, not he, who held out against declaring war on Germany. Sonnino acceded to the calls of General Luigi Cadorna, the commander of the Italian army, to send troops for a joint effort with Britain and France in Salonika. But, in general, Sonnino went his own way. He avoided attending Allied conferences; not until March 1916 did he finally go to his first one. The Italian foreign minister refused to ease the critical Balkan situation in the summer of 1915 by pledging territorial compensation to Serbia if Serbia would make concessions to the wavering Bulgarians. As a result, Bulgaria joined the Central Powers and most of the Balkans fell to the enemy. When he heard that Britain and France were planning the partition of the Ottoman Empire (in the Sykes-Picot Agreement of February 1916), Sonnino at once expanded Italian territorial claims to include Smyrna and adjacent territories in Asia Minor.
With the fall of Salandra in June 1916, Sonnino continued on, his position and power unchanged, in the new cabinet of Paolo Boselli. Fending off Allied attempts to conclude a peace of reconciliation with Vienna kept Sonnino busy in early 1917. At St. Jean de Maurienne, he got the reassurances he demanded; thus, the door remained opened to territorial gains at Austria's expense. By the winter of 1917/1918, Vittorio Orlando, Italy's new premier, had taken office after the military catastrophe at Caporetto. Sonnino then found his diplomatic designs threatened from a number of sides. Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points called for the principle of nationality to be applied to Italy's territorial readjustments; this imperiled claims to Dalmatia. The Bolshevik Revolution in Russia led to the publication of the Treaty of London, making clear Italy's designs in the Adriatic. In the aftermath of the Italian defeat at Caporetto, Orlando initiated a more conciliatory attitude toward South Slav representatives. He welcomed the Congress of Oppressed Nationalities that met, without official government status, in April 1918 at Rome.
Sonnino saw two ways to shore up Italy's claims dating from 1915. He resolutely vetoed Allied moves to grant the Yugoslav Committee in London official recognition. At the same time, he pushed reluctant Italian military leaders like General Armando Diaz into a full-scale offensive; thus Italy's allies could not claim that Rome had failed to pull its weight on the battlefield.
The Versailles Peace Conference showed Sonnino's travails to have been in vain. Efforts in January 1919 to trade unconditional Italian support for French claims on the Rhine for French support in the Adriatic drew a quick rebuff. Paris would not choose Italy over its more powerful allies. Sonnino's main goal, possession of the Dalmatian coast, fell victim to Woodrow Wilson's solid opposition. The aristocratic Sonnino found himself engulfed in an uncontrollable tide of national frenzy at home. Fiume, which he had never claimed, became the focal point for Italian nationalist shrieks about a government sellout, a "mutilated victory." Even Premier Orlando, who had followed Salandra and Boselli in permitting Sonnino the utmost latitude in directing foreign policy, was caught up in the hue and cry for Fiume. Worst of all, he was willing to trade Dalmatia to get it.
When Orlando dramatically left the peace talks in April 1919, Sonnino had no choice but to follow him and to endure a heated public welcome in Rome. But the Allies did not budge on the Adriatic question, the moves toward a peace treaty with Germany went forward, and Italy had to return meekly to the conference. Sonnino started off on his own again in May 1919, ordering Italian military forces to expand their small foothold in Asia Minor. This meant that a clash with Greece, whose forces were also in the area, was likely to add to Italy's other problems. But Sonnino did not remain in office long enough to pursue this path.
The Orlando cabinet collapsed on June 19, 1919, fallen victim to growing domestic problems but especially to its lack of success at Paris. Sonnino retired to private life. He died in Rome, November 24, 1922.