‘unpatriotic’. It is now considered one of the most coherent and comprehensive accounts of the Sicilian mafia and its surroundings. In Eritrea Franchetti, as an agricultural advisor of the Italian government in Eritrea, estimated that there was plenty of land and few people in Eritrea and recommended the colonization of the highlands by Italian settlers. He undertook the first land expropriations in 1893 with the vision that two million Italian peasants would settle down in Eritrea. Large tracts of land were declared public and all grazing land was declared state owned, which was a clear interference with the traditional land right system in the highlands. However, the highlands were only sparsely populated because of the great famine in 1888–92 as a result of rinderpest (see 1890s African rinderpest epizootic) and subsequent epidemics. Returning to their villages they had abandoned because of the famine, they saw their land confiscated. Riots and revolts broke out and most of the Italian settlers returned to Italy in dismay. Civil passion In 1880 Franchetti moved to Città di Castello and in 1900 married Alice Hallgarten born in New York in 1874, with whom he moved into the recently completed Villa della Montesca. The educator and reformer Maria Montessori collaborated with Hallgarten on the creation of a seminar which gave life to the first publication of the Method for Scientific Pedagogy, universally known as the Montessori Method. Montessori's first training course for teachers was conducted at Villa della Montesca in 1909. Franchetti died of mysterious causes, perhaps suicide, after the dawn of the defeat in the Caporetto in World War I and left his estate to a charitable organization and his farm to the farmers who worked it. References Dickie, John (2004). Cosa Nostra. A history of the Sicilian Mafia, London: Coronet Gambetta, Diego (1993).The Sicilian Mafia: The Business of Private Protection, London: Harvard University Press, Servadio, Gaia (1976). Mafioso. A history of the Mafia from its origins to the present day'', London: Secker & Warburg 1847 births 1917 deaths 19th-century Italian people 19th-century Sephardi Jews Italian people of Tunisian-Jewish descent Jewish Italian politicians Franchetti family Livornese Jews Jewish Italian writers Historians of the Sicilian Mafia People from Città di Castello 1917 suicides