Italian politician (1833–1898)
Benedetto Brin (17 May 1833 in Turin, Piedmont – 24 May 1898 in Rome, Lazio) was an Italian naval administrator and politician. He played a major role in modernizing and expanding the Italian ("Royal Navy") from the 1870s to the 1890s, designing several major classes of warships, including the large ironclad warships of the , , and es, the pre-dreadnought battleships of the and es, and the armored cruisers of the and es. His contributions to Italian naval power were marked by the naming of the second "Regina Margherita"-class battleship as , among other commemorations.
Biography.
Born in Turin, he worked with distinction as a naval engineer until the age of forty. In 1873, Admiral Simone Antonio Saint-Bon, Italy's Minister of the Navy, appointed him undersecretary of state. The two men collaborated on major projects: Saint-Bon conceived a type of ship, and Brin made the plans and directed its construction.
On the advent of the Left to power in 1876, Brin was appointed Minister of the Navy by Agostino Depretis, a capacity in which he continued the policies of Saint-Bon, while enlarging and completing the project in such a way as to form the first organic scheme for the development of the Italian fleet. The huge ironclads of the and es were his work, though he briefly abandoned their type in favour of smaller and faster armored cruisers of the and the es, before returning to large capital ships with the s and later the of pre-dreadnought battleships. Through his initiative, the Italian naval industry, almost non-existent in 1873, made rapid progress.
During his eleven years in the ministry (1876–1878 with Depretis, 1884–1891 with Depretis and Francesco Crispi, 1896–1898 with Antonio Starabba, Marchese di Rudinì), he succeeded in creating large private shipyards, engine works and metallurgical works for the production of armour, steel plates and guns.
In 1892, he entered the Giovanni Giolitti cabinet as Minister of Foreign Affairs, accompanying, in that capacity, King Umberto I and Queen Margherita to Potsdam, but chose not to act against France on the occasion of the massacre of Italian workmen at Aigues-Mortes. He died while Minister of the Navy in the Rudini cabinet.
Footnotes.
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