Ernesto Teodoro Moneta was an Italian

Italian people

The Italian people are an ethnic group that share a common Italian culture, ancestry and speak the Italian language as a mother tongue. Within Italy, Italians are defined by citizenship, regardless of ancestry or country of residence , and are distinguished from people...

 journalist, nationalist, revolutionary soldier and later a pacifist and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. He was a native of Milan

Milan

Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...

. He launched the motto In varietate unitas!: that motto inspired EU's one: In varietate concordia - United in diversity.

As a 15-year old boy, Moneta already participated in the "Five Days of Milan

Five Days of Milan

The Five Days of Milan was a major event in the Revolutionary Year of 1848 and the start of the First Italian War of Independence. On March 18th, the city of Milan, rose, and in five days of street fighting drove Marshal Radetzky and his men from the city....

" (1848 uprising against Austrian rule). Afterwards he attended the military academy in Ivrea

Ivrea

Ivrea is a town and comune of the province of Turin in the Piedmont region of northwestern Italy. Situated on the road leading to the Aosta Valley , it straddles the Dora Baltea and is regarded as the centre of the Canavese area. Ivrea lies in a basin that, in prehistoric times, formed a great lake...

. In 1859 he joined Garibaldi's Expedition of the Thousand

Expedition of the Thousand

The Expedition of the Thousand was a military campaign led by the revolutionary general Giuseppe Garibaldi in 1860. A force of volunteers defeated the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, leading to its dissolution and annexation by the Kingdom of Sardinia, an important step in the creation of a newly...

, and also fought in the ranks of the Italian Army against the Austrians in 1866

Third Italian War of Independence

The Third Italian War of Independence was a conflict which paralleled the Austro-Prussian War, and was fought between the Kingdom of Italy and the Austrian Empire.-Background:...

.

Subsequently, he became an international peace activist, despite his strong Italian nationalism

Nationalism

Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...

.

Between 1867 and 1896 he was editor of the Milan Democratic paper Il Secolo, belonging to the Sonzogno publishing house of Edoardo Sonzogno

Edoardo Sonzogno

Edoardo Sonzogno was an Italian publisher.A native of Milan, Sonzogno was the son of a businessman who owned a printing plant and bookstore; when he inherited the business upon his father's death he set about turning it into a publishing house, Casa Sonzogno, which opened in 1874...

.

In 1887 he founded The Lombard Association for Peace and Arbitration (Unione Lombarda per la Pace e l'Arbitrato), which called for disarmament and envisaged the creation of a League of Nations

League of Nations

The League of Nations was an intergovernmental organization founded as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first permanent international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace...

. He won (with Louis Renault

Louis Renault (jurist)

Louis Renault was a French jurist and educator, the cowinner in 1907 of the Nobel Prize for Peace....

) the Nobel Peace Prize

Nobel Peace Prize

The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes bequeathed by the Swedish industrialist and inventor Alfred Nobel.-Background:According to Nobel's will, the Peace Prize shall be awarded to the person who...

 in 1907.

In the last years of his life, however, Moneta's Italian nationalism

Italian nationalism

Italian nationalism refers to the nationalism of Italians or of Italian culture. It claims that Italians are the ethnic, cultural, and linguistic descendants of the ancient Romans who inhabited the Italian Peninsula for centuries. The origins of Italian nationalism have been traced to the...

 reasserted itself and got the better of his pacifism. He expressed public support for both the Italian Conquest of Libya in 1912 and Italy's entry into the First World War

Italy in World War I

This article is about Italian military operations in World War I.Italy, though nominally allied with Germany and Austria-Hungary, refused to join them when the war started. Instead Italy entered the war on the Allied side in May 1915....

in 1915.