The year is marked by the fight over a new coercive Public Safety bill introduced by Prime Minister Luigi Pelloux after the Bava Beccaris massacre in May 1898 in Milan. The Radicals and Socialist start an obstructionist campaign.
February
Prime Minister Luigi PellouxA 1899 FIAT advertisement by Giovanni Battista Carpanetto.
February 4 – A new coercive Public Safety bill is introduced by the government of Luigi Pelloux and adopted by Parliament. The law made strikes by state employees illegal; gave the executive wider powers to ban public meetings and dissolve subversive organisations; revived the penalties of banishment; and preventive arrest for political offences, and; tightened control of the press by making authors responsible for their articles and declaring incitement to violence a crime.[1] The Radicals and Socialist start an obstructionist campaign using the filibuster: points of order, endless speeches and other procedural delaying tactics.[2]
May
May 14 – Prime Minister Pelloux resigns over his Chinese policy. Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs Felice Napoleone Canevaro had demanded that the Chinese Empire grant it a lease for a naval coaling station at China's Sanmen Bay (known as "San-Mun Bay" to the Italians) similar to the lease the German Empire had secured in 1898 at Kiautschou Bay. China refused to comply and Italy had to withdraw its ultimatum, becoming the first and only Western power to fail to achieve its territorial goals in China. The fiasco was an embarrassment that gave Italy – still stung by its defeat at the hands of the Ethiopian Empire in the Battle of Adowa in 1896 – the appearance of a third-rate power.[3] Pelloux and his fellow cabinet ministers stated that Canevaro had acted without informing them, and it was widely believed that king Umberto I was the one who had given Canevaro the orders to acquire a concession in China.[4] Pelloux forms a new government, the most decisively conservative since 1876, without Canevaro.[1]
June
June 22 – Pelloux's patience with the obstruction to his public safety provisions snaps and he issues an unconstitutional royal decree. The decree was fiercely obstructed by the Socialist Party of Italy (PSI) and Extreme Left. More moderate politicians like Giuseppe Zanardelli and Giovanni Giolitti also join the opposition.[2]
July
July 11 – The automobile manufacturer Fiat, an acronym for Fabbrica Italiana di Automobili Torino, is established in Turin by a group of investors including Giovanni Agnelli. The company would become the major car making industry of Italy. The first Fiat plant opened in 1900 with 35 staff making 24 cars.
November 10 – Pietro Caruso, Italian Fascist and head of the Italian police during the final part of World War II who organised the massacre in Fosse Ardeatine (died 1944)
November 16 – Carlo Rosselli, Italian political leader, journalist, historian and anti-Fascist activist (died 1937)
November 29 – Emma Morano, Italian supercentenarian (d. 2017)
^Coco, Orazio (24 April 2019). "Italian diplomacy in China: the forgotten affair of Sān Mén Xiàn (1898–1899)". Journal of Modern Italian Studies. 24 (2): 328–349. doi:10.1080/1354571X.2019.1576416. S2CID150961616.
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