Gian Roberto Cotza

**Gian Roberto Cotza**(23 November 1857 – 21 May 1926) was a Granovian politician, author, and statesman. He served as the second President of Granovia (1901–1909), the first Prime Minister (1893–1897), and is considered to be one of the original founding fathers of Granovia. Cotza was a political theorist and philosopher who encouraged democracy, secularism, and freedom of speech throughout his political career. He frequently published his political beliefs under the pen name Vittorio Costenzi, and is responsible for the creation of over 100 political essays and theories throughout his lifetime.

Cotza was born near the city of Salerno in 1857 to an upper-class family of plantation owners in southern Italy. However, at an early age he was adopted by another upper-class family in Granovia after the unexpected deaths of his mother and father. After graduating from the University of Palermo in 1879, Cotza began his political career as an economics advisor of Prime Minister Benedetto Cairoli of Italy. In 1884 he moved back to Granovia and began to fully pursue a political career.

Cotza joined the newly-founded Liberal Democratic Party in 1887, and became one of the founding members of the Granovian Independence Coalition, a group of highly influential Granovian politicians who initially wanted more autonomy within the Kingdom of Italy, but eventually aimed for complete independence from the Italians. They eventually achieved their goal with the Treaty of Independence in 1893.

Cotza's credentials as a key member of the independence movement earned him enough popularity to secure a term as Guerrino Mattei's first prime minister (1893–97) and also his own election in 1901 as the second president of Granovia. In his two terms as president, the national infrastructure was significantly improved, a national bank was fully established primarily under the leadership of Finance Minister Ludovico Dante, and the almost six-century old silvo was replaced with a more effective currency, the Granovian lira.

Despite these significant reforms, Cotza narrowly lost re-election in 1909 to Socialist candidate and Leader of the Opposition Oreste Fozzina. Shortly after, he retired to his private manor in Caprata, where he died in 1926. Modern historians rank his presidency as the third most successful, with Presidents such as Edoardo Castrolivi and Ferdinando Bassanelli ranking as second and first respectively.

## Biography

#### **Early life and education**

Gian Roberto Cotza was born on his family's estate outside of Salerno, on 23 November 1857, the only surviving child of plantation owner and lawyer Frederico Cotza and actress Magdalena Roberto. Frederico was the son of promiment farmer and eventual plantation owner Gregorio Cotza, who had made enough income off of his plantation to be able to purchase a small estate near Salerno for his family in 1840. However, both Frederico and Magdalena died of tuberculosis in 1861. Gian was quickly put into adoption and was taken into the home of Alberto Parisi, a successful businessman and investor in Granovia.

Cotza spent a majority of his childhood in Parisi's manor in northern Caprata, where he was privately educated by various tutors primarily in arithmetic, science, and basic history. He later attended St Paul's School, a local Catholic secondary school in 1871. He did decently well at the school in terms of academics, which allowed to attend the University of Palermo in 1875, where he graduated in 1879 with a degree in business.