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Sidney Sonnino
28th and 30th Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Italy
In office February 8, 1905 – May 29, 1906
Monarch	Victor Emmanuel III
Preceded by	Alessandro Fortis
Succeeded by	Giovanni Giolitti
In office December 11, 1909 – March 31, 1910
Monarch	Victor Emmanuel III
Preceded by	Giovanni Giolitti
Succeeded by	Luigi Luzzatti
Born	March 11, 1847(1847-03-11) Pisa, Italy
Died	November 24, 1922 (aged 75)
Political party	Liberal-Conservative
Religion	Anglicanism

Baron Sidney Costantino Sonnino (March 11, 1847 – November 24, 1922) was an Italian politician.

Sonnino was born in Pisa to an Italian father of Jewish heritage (Giorgio Sonnino, who converted himself to Anglicanism) and a Welsh mother. He was raised as a Protestant.

In 1876, Sonnino traveled to Sicily with Leopoldo Franchetti to conduct a private investigation into the state of Sicilian society. In 1877, the two men published their research on Sicily in a substantial two-part report for the Italian Parliament. In the first part Sonnino analysed the lives of the island's landless peasants. Leopoldo Franchetti's half of the report, Political and Administrative Conditions in Sicily, was an analysis of the Mafia in the nineteenth century that is still considered authoritative today. Franchetti would ultimately influence thinking about the Mafia more than anyone else until Giovanni Falcone over a hundred years later. Political and Administrative Conditions in Sicily is the first convincing explanation of how the Mafia came to be.^[1]

In 1878, Sonnino started a newspaper (La Rassegna Settimanale), which changed from weekly economical reviews to daily political issues. In 1893, after working in several governmental positions, he became finance minister of Italy. He worked in the opposition after the fall of his party from power as a result of the lost Battle of Adwa. He served twice briefly as Prime Minister, in 1906 and again from 1909 to 1910.

After the events in 1914, Sonnino was initially supportive to the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary, but after becoming foreign minister in November 1914, he sided with the Allied forces, and signed the Treaty of London in 1915. Italy consequently declared war on Austria-Hungary on May 23, 1915.

When his territorial ambitions towards Austria-Hungary were shattered during the Paris Peace Conference, his party lost power again, and Sonnino retired from politics.

• Dickie, John (2004). Cosa Nostra. A history of the Sicilian Mafia, London: Coronet ISBN 0-340-82435-2

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