GALANTI, Giuseppe Maria. – Historian and economist, b. at Santacroce del Sannio on 25 Nov. 1743, d. at Naples on 6 Oct. 1806. A pupil of Genovesi, he devoted himself to historical, geographical and statistical research on the Kingdom of Naples.
His early works, including an Elogio del Genovesi (Naples 1772), in defence of reformism, are marked by an Enlightenment optimism which gives way, in the Descrizione dello stato antico ed attuale del contado del Molise (ibid. 1781), to a pessimistic realism based on the study of the country’s economic organisation. He saw feudalism and clerical privileges as the principal source of the country’s poverty. He also wrote a Descrizione delle Sicilie (ibid. 1869–91), incomplete, and a Testamento forense (Venice 1806). Carried along by the revolutionary slogan of 1799, he maintained a critical attitude towards II.