Luca Tedesco, Università degli Studi Roma Tre Guglielmo Ferrero (1871-1942) Historian / Chronicler; Journalist; Novelist. Active 1897-1942 in Italy Guglielmo Ferrero was a sociologist, historian and novelist. His international notoriety is linked to his monumental Grandezza e decadenza di Roma [The Greatness and Decline of Rome] (1902-1907) and to his reflections on the theory of political legitimacy, which he questioned right up until the release of Pouvoir [The Principles of Power. The Great Political Crises of History], published the same year as his death. Ferrero was born in Portici (Naples), where his father, who was a railway engineer originally from Piedmont, had been transferred. Ferrero first attended university in Pisa, then in Turin, where in 1889 he met Cesare Lombroso, whose daughter Gina he would marry, and later in Bologna. His association with Lombroso led him, from a scientific perspective, to subscribe to the views of positivism and to engage in research in the field of criminal anthropology (La donna delinquent [The Female Offender] (1893), written with Lombroso, Mondo criminale italiano [The Italian Criminal World] (1893-4), with Augusto Guido Bianchi and Scipio Sighele, and Cronache criminali italiane [Italian Criminal Histories] (1896), once again with Sighele), and, in the political sphere, after initial allegiance to republican and radical political circles in his university years, to approach socialism, as evidenced by his collaboration with the journal Critica Sociale, founded in 1891 by the socialist leader Filippo Turati. In 1897 Ferrero had begun to collaborate closely with the daily publication Il Secolo, organ of the most avant-garde wing of the liberal-democratic ranks.and, in the political sphere to approach socialism, as evidenced by his collaboration with the journal Critica Sociale, founded by the socialist leader Filippo Turati. After initial allegiance to republican and radical political circles in his university years, by 1897 Ferrero had begun to collaborate closely with the daily publication Il Secolo, of most avant-garde wing of the liberal- democratic. In the last years of the century Ferrero joined the Giornale degli economisti, directed by the economist Antonio de Viti de Marco. It was in reaction to the attempt of the liberal ruling class to suppress civil liberties in the late nineteenth century that Ferrero’s views on anti-protectionism and anti-militarism matured, as evidenced in the publication of the manifesto of the Lega antiprotezionista (Anti-Protection League), founded in March, 1904. The criticism of protectionism by the free-traders, including Luigi Einaudi, Maffeo Pantaleoni and Vilfredo Pareto, was not only economic but also political; they denounced protectionism not only because it did not allow for the optimal allocation of resources but also because it guaranteed the economic interests of a select few to the detriment of the majority of society, and proved incompatible with a genuinely liberal rule of public affairs. In the 1894 pamphlet Il fenomeno Crispi e la crisi italiana [The Crispi Phenomenon and the Italian Crisis],