Moneta, Ernesto Teodoro, << moh NAYT uh, ayr NEHS toh tay oh DAWR oh >> (1833-1918), an Italian journalist and peace activist, was awarded half of the 1907 Nobel Prize for peace for his work promoting world peace. The other half of the prize was awarded to Frenchman Louis Renault.
Moneta was born in Milan, Italy. Moneta spent much of his time between 1848 and 1866 fighting for Italian unification and independence. Moneta became editor of Il Secolo (The Century), a daily newspaper to which he had previously contributed theater reviews. Despite being a Roman Catholic, he allowed Il Secolo to take a secular (nonreligious) stance in the interests of Italian unity. He founded the Lombard League for Peace in 1887 and organized several peace conferences in Italy. He was also the Italian representative to the International Peace Bureau, founded in 1891.
After retiring as editor of Il Secolo, Moneta founded an annual almanac called L’Amico della Pace (The Friend of Peace) and a pacifist periodical, La Vita Internazionale (International Life). He wrote a four-volume work, Wars, Insurrections and Peace in the Nineteenth Century, which was published between 1903 and 1910.
Moneta was often called a “militant pacifist” because he campaigned for patriotism and national defence on the one hand, and international peace on the other. In 1911, he supported Italy’s war against Turkey and, in 1915, he argued that Italy should enter World War I (1914-1918) to combat Austria-Hungary and Germany.
