GALANTI, GIUSEPPE MARIA. - Historian and economist, b. at Santacroce del Sannio on 25 Nov. 1743, d. at Napoli on 6 Oct. 1806. A disciple of Genovesi, he devoted himself to historical, geographical, and statistical research on the Kingdom of Napoli.
His earliest works, including an Elogio del Genovesi (Napoli 1772), in defense of reformism, were marked by an Enlightenment optimism which, in the Descrizione dello stato antico ed attuale del contado del Molise (ibid. 1781), gave way to a pessimistic realism grounded in the study of the country’s economic conditions. He saw in feudalism and the privileges of the clergy the principal source of the country’s misery. He also wrote an incomplete Descrizione delle Sicilie (ibid. 1786–94), and a Testamento forense (Venezia 1806). Drawn into the revolutionary movement of 1799, he maintained a critical attitude toward II.
M. G., in Samnium, 12 (1939), pp. 133–52; 13 (1940), pp. 135–50; G. De Ruggiero, Il pensiero politico meridionale, 2nd ed., Bari 1946, see index. Sergio Cotta