Philip Mazzei


Philip Mazzei, originally Filippo Mazzei, and sometimes erroneously cited as Philip Mazzie, was an Italian physician, philosopher, diplomat, winemaker, merchant, and author. A close friend of Thomas Jefferson, he was a strong supporter of the American Revolution and the American colonies' war for independence from Britain.

Early life and education

Mazzei was born in Poggio a Caiano in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany as a son of Domenico and Elisabetta. After his studies in medicine between Prato and Florence, in 1752, following disagreements with his older brother Jacopo over the management of the family heritage, he settled in Pisa and then in Livorno, practicing as a doctor but after only two years he left the city and moved to Smyrna as a surgeon following a local doctor.

Career

Mazzei practiced medicine in the Middle East for several years before moving to London in 1755 to take up a mercantile career as an importer.
In London, he worked as a teacher of Italian language. While in London he met the American Benjamin Franklin. While doing work for Franklin, Mazzei shared his idea of importing Tuscan products, wine and olive trees, to the New World. Here Filippo Mazzei will cultivate vineyards, olives, and other Mediterranean fruit with the help of Italians.
On September 2, 1773, Mazzei boarded a ship from Livorno to the Colony of Virginia, bringing with him plants, seeds, silkworms, and 10 farmers from Lucca. He was also joined by a widow, Maria Martin, whom he married in 1778, and his friend Carlo Bellini who between 1779 and 1803 would become the first teacher of Italian at an American university, the College of William & Mary in Virginia.
He visited Jefferson at his estate, and the two became good friends. Jefferson gave Mazzei an allotment of land for an experimental plantation. Mazzei purchased more land adjoining this gift of acreage and established a plantation he named Colle. They shared an interest in politics and liberal values, and maintained an active correspondence for the rest of Mazzei's life.
In 1774 he published a pamphlet containing the phrase "All men are by nature equally free and independent":
In 1779, following the emergence of the independent United States after the colonial victory in the American Revolutionary War, Mazzei returned to Italy as a secret agent for Virginia, tasked with securing a loan and purchasing military supplies in Italy. During the voyage, his ship was seized by a British privateer. Suspecting betrayal by his captain, Mazzei threw overboard a pouch containing his credentials and the political instructions from the Virginian authorities. He eventually reached La Rochelle, in France, but was unable to engage in official negotiations. He subsequently made his way to Italy and between 1781 and 1782 lived in Tuscany, where he attempted to build ties with the United States. The initiative failed, as the Grand Duke, Leopold, expected a British victory in the war and was distrustful. Mazzei returned to Paris and, after residing in the United States again between 1783 and 1785, he travelled throughout Europe promoting republican ideals. His wife remained in the United States until her death in 1788 at the estate, which Mazzei had donated in 1783 to his stepdaughter, Margherita Maria Martini and to her husband, the Frenchman Justin Pierre Plumard, Count De Rieux.
He wrote a political history of the American Revolution, Recherches historiques et politiques sur les États-Unis de l'Amerique septentrionale, and published it in Paris in 1788. It was the first history of the American Revolution published in French. The work is still a valuable source of information on the movement that sparked the American Revolution.
While in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth he became attached as a Privy Councilor at the court of King Stanislaus II. There he became acquainted with Polish liberal and constitutional thought, like the works of Wawrzyniec Grzymała Goślicki and ideas of Golden Freedoms and Great Sejm. King Stanislaus appointed Mazzei to be Poland's representative in Paris, where he again met Jefferson.
After Poland was partitioned between Russia and Prussia in 1795, Mazzei, along with the rest of the Polish court, was given a pension by the Russian crown. He later spent more time in France, becoming active in the politics of the French Revolution under the Directorate. When Napoleon overthrew that government Mazzei returned definitively to Tuscany, settling in Pisa where in 1796 he married Antonina Tonini, with whom he had a daughter, Elisabetta, in 1798.
Mazzei always remained nostalgic for Virginia and his American friends, who hoped for his return and with whom he never interrupted his epistolary contact. He died in Pisa in 1816 without ever returning to America. After his death the remainder of his family returned to the United States at the urging of Jefferson. They settled in Massachusetts and Virginia.
He was buried at the Suburbano Cemetery in Pisa.

The friendship between Mazzei and Jefferson

The friendship between Thomas Jefferson and Filippo Mazzei is attested by the numerous letters they exchanged, an estimate that was confirmed in letters to third parties:
Many biographers believe Jefferson and George Washington had a falling out over a letter Jefferson sent to Mazzei in Italy, which called the Washington Administration "Anglican, monarchical, and aristocratical," and claimed that Washington had appointed as military officers "all timid men that prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty... t would give you a fever were I to name to you the apostates who have gone over to these heresies, men who were Samsons in the field and Solomons in the council, but who have had their heads shorn by the harlot England." The letter was eventually published overseas and then re-translated back into English by Noah Webster and published in the United States.

Mazzei's writings

In English

  • Filippo Mazzei. My Life and Wanderings. Translated by S. Eugene Scalia. Edited by Margherita Marchione. Morristown, NJ: American Institute of Italian Studies, 1980..

In French

  • Filippo Mazzei: Recherches Historiques et Politiques sur les Etats-Unis de l'Amérique Septentrionale, 2019. Four Volumes.
  • Filippo Mazzei, Stanisław August Poniatowski, Lettres de Philippe Mazzei et du roi Stanislas-Auguste de Pologne., Roma : Istituto storico italiano per l'età moderna e contemporanea, 1982

In Italian

  • Filippo Mazzei: Memorie della vita e delle peregrinazioni del fiorentino Filippo Mazzei, edited by Gino Capponi, Lugano, Tip. della Svizzera Italiana, 1845–1846, 2 volumes
  • Filippo Mazzei: Del commercio della seta fatto in Inghilterra dalla Compagnia delle Indie Orientali , edited by Silvano Gelli, Poggio a Caiano, Comune di Poggio a Caiano, 2001.

Influence

John F. Kennedy, in his 1958 book A Nation of Immigrants, asserted that Philip Mazzei influenced the drafting of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, stating that:

Legacy

A 40-cent United States airmail stamp was issued in 1980 to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Mazzei's birth.
In 1980, a park at Mace and Pauldings Avenue on Williamsburg Road in the Bronx, New York, was renamed "Mazzei Playground" in honor of Philip Mazzei.
In 1994, the United States Congress designated October 1993 and October 1994 as "Italian-American Heritage and Culture Month". In the joint resolution's introductory "Whereas" clauses, Congress stated that the phrase "All men are created equal" in the Declaration of Independence was suggested by the Italian patriot and immigrant Philip Mazzei.
The World War II Liberty Ship was named in his honor.

In English

  • Philip Mazzei: My Life and Wanderings, ed. Marchione, Sister Margherita, American Institute of Italian Studies, Morristown, NJ, 1980, 437pp. Translation to English of Mazzei's autobiography.
  • Marchione: Philip Mazzei: Selected Writings and Correspondence:
  • Marchione, Sister Margherita: Philip Mazzei: Jefferson's "Zealous Whig", American Institute of Italian Studies, Morristown, NJ, 1975, 352 pp.
  • Marchione: The Adventurous Life of Philip Mazzei – La vita avventurosa di Filippo Mazzei, University Press of America, Lanham, MD, 1995, 235 pp.
  • Marchione: The Constitutional Society of 1784, Center for Mazzei Studies, Morristown, NJ, 1984, 49 pp.
  • Marchione: Philip Mazzei: World Citizen , University Press of America, Lanham, MD, 1994, 158 pp.
  • Renee Critcher Lyons: Foreign-Born American Patriots-Sixteen Volunteer Leaders In The Revolutionary War, 2014. North Carolina-McFarland Publishing.

In Italian

  • Filippo Mazzei: Scelta di scritti e lettere:
  • Marchione, Sister Margherita: Istruzioni per essere liberi ed eguali, Cisalpino-Gogliardica, Milan, 1984, 160 pp
  • Marchione: The Adventurous Life of Philip Mazzei - La vita avventurosa di Filippo Mazzei, University Press of America, Lanham, MD, 1995, 235 pp

Others books about Mazzei

In English

  • Biaggi, Mario: An Appreciation of Philip Mazzei – an Unsung American Patriot, in CONGRESSIONAL RECORD, Washington, D.C., September 12, 1984
  • Di Grazia, Marco: Philip Mazzei, a hero of American independence. Illustrations and cover Marcello Mangiantini, translation Miranda MacPhail Tuscan Regional Government, Poggio a Caiano. 1990, 52p
  • Gaines, William H.: Virginia History in Documents 1621-1788, Virginia State Library, Richmond, 1974
  • Garlick, Richard, Jr: Philip Mazzei, Friend of Jefferson: His Life and letters, Baltimore-London-Paris, The Johns Hopkins Press-Humphrey Nilfort Oxford University Press – Société d'Editions Les Belles Lettres, 1933
  • Garlick: Italy and the Italians in Washington's time, New York Arno Press, 1975
  • Guzzetta, Charles: Mazzei in America, in DREAM STREETS – THE BIG BOOK OF ITALIAN AMERICAN CULTURE, Lawrence DiStasi editor, Harper & Row, New York, 1989
  • Kennedy, John F.: A Nation of Immigrants, Perennial, 2008
  • Lippucci, Mary Theresa: The correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and Philip Mazzei, 1779–1815, 1939
  • Malone, Dumas : Dictionary of American Biography, VOL. VI, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1933
  • Marraro, Howard R.: An Unpublished Jefferson Letter to Mazzei, Italica, Vol. 35, No. 2, pp. 83–87
  • Marraro: Jefferson Letters Concerning the Settlement of Mazzei's Virginia Estate, The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. 30, No. 2, pp. 235–242
  • Marraro: Philip Mazzei - Virginia's Agent in Europe, New York Public Library, 1935
  • Marraro: Philip Mazzei and his Polish friends sn, 1944
  • Sammartino, Peter: The Contributions of Italians to the United States before the Civil War: a conference to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the birth of Philip Mazzei, Washington, D.C., April 18–20, 1980, Washington, D.C., National Italian American Foundation, 1980.
  • Schiavo, Giovanni Ermenegildo: Philip Mazzei: one of America's founding fathers, New York: Vigo Press, 1951
  • Masini, Giancarlo, Gori, Iacopo: How Florence Invented America - Vespucci, Verrazzano, Mazzei and their Contributions to the Conception of the New World, New York: Marsilio Publishers, 1999.

In Italian

  • AA.VV., Dalla Toscana all'America: il contributo di Filippo Mazzei, Poggio a Caiano, Comune di Poggio a Caiano, 2004.
  • Becattini Massimo, Filippo Mazzei mercante italiano a Londra , Poggio a Caiano, Comune di Poggio a Caiano, 1997.
  • Bolognesi Andrea, Corsetti Luigi, Di Stadio Luigi: Filippo Mazzei mostra di cimeli e scritti, exhibition catalog edited by, Poggio a Caiano, Palazzo Comunale, July 3-25, 1996, Comune di Poggio a Caiano, 1996.
  • Camajani Guelfo Guelfi,Filippo Mazzei : un illustre toscano del Settecento : medico, agricoltore, scrittore, giornalista, diplomatico, Firenze, Associazione Internazionale Toscani nel Mondo, 1976.
  • Ciampini Raffaele, Lettere di Filippo Mazzei alla corte di Polonia , Bologna : N. Zanichelli, 1937
  • Corsetti Luigi, Gradi Renzo: Bibliografia su Filippo Mazzei Avventuriero della Libertà edited by, with writings by Margherita Marchione e Edoardo Tortarolo, Poggio a Caiano, C.I.C Filippo Mazzei – Associazione Culturale "Ardengo Soffici", 1993.
  • Di Stadio Luigi, Filippo Mazzei tra pubblico e privato. Raccolta di documenti inediti, edited by, Poggio a Caiano, Biblioteca Comunale di Poggio a Caiano, 1996.
  • Gerosa Guido, Il fiorentino che fece l'America. Vita e avventure di Filippo Mazzei 1730–1916, Milano, SugarCo Edizioni, 1990.
  • Gradi Renzo, Un bastimento carico di Roba bestie e uomini in un manoscritto inedito di Filippo Mazzei, Poggio a Caiano, Comune di Poggio a Caiano, 1991.
  • Gradi Renzo, Parigi: luglio 1789. Scritti e memorie del fiorentino Filippo Mazzei, edited by Comune di Poggio a Caiano, 1989.
  • Gullace Giovanni, Figure dimenticate dell'indipendenza americana, Filippo Mazzei e Francesco Vigo, Roma : Il Veltro, 1977.
  • Masini Giancarlo, Gori Iacopo, L'America fu concepita a Firenze, Firenze : Bonechi, 1998.
  • Tognetti Burigana Sara, Tra riformismo illuminato e dispotismo napoleonico; esperienze del "cittadino americano" Filippo Mazzei, Roma, Edizioni di Storia e letteratura, 1965.
  • Tortarolo Edoardo, Illuminismo e Rivoluzioni. Biografia politica di Filippo Mazzei, Milano, Angeli, 1986.
  • Łukaszewicz, Witold, Filippo Mazzei, Giuseppe Mazzini; saggi sui rapporti italo-polacchi, Wroclaw, Poland Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1970.