Philip Mazzei (25 December 1730 – 19 March 1816), originally Filippo Mazzei (Italian pronunciation: [fiˈlippo matˈtsɛi]), and sometimes erroneously cited as Philip Mazzie, was an Italian physician, philosopher, diplomat, winemaker, merchant, and author. A neighbor of Thomas Jefferson, he was a supporter of the American Revolution and the American colonies' war for independence from Britain.
Filippo Mazzei was born on 25 December 1730 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 (then part of the Ottoman Empire) as a surgeon following a local doctor.
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 2 September 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 on 19 March 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:
[Mazzei] possesses first rate abilities .... He has been a zealous whig from the beginning and I think may be relied on perfectly in point of integrity. He is very sanguine in his expeditions of the services he could render us on this occasion and would undertake it on a very moderate appointment.
I am induced to this quick reply to [your letter] by an alarming paragraph in it, which is that Mazzei is coming to Annapolis. I tremble at the idea. I know he will be worse to me than a return of my double quotidian head-ach.
[A]n intimacy of 40. years had proved to me his great worth; and a friendship, which had begun in personal acquaintance, was maintained after separation, without abatement, by a constant interchange of letters. his esteem too in this country was very general; his early & zealous cooperation in the establishment of our independance having acquired for him here a great degree of favor.