BOTTA, CARLO GIUSEPPE GUGLIELMO (1766 1837), Italian historian, was born at San Giorgio Canavese in Piedmont. In 1786 he received his M.D. from Turin. In he withdrew to France, only to return to his native country as a surgeon in the French army, whose progress he followed as far as Venice. Here he joined the expedition to Corfu, from which he did not return to Italy till 1798. After 1814 he became a French citizen, and in 1817 he was appointed rector of the University of Rouen, but in 1822 was removed owing to clerical influence. In 1824 he published Storia d'Italia dal 1789 al 1814, on which his reputation principally rests. His continuation of Guicciardini (Storia d'Italia in continuazione al Guicciardini, 1832) is a careful and laborious work, but is not based on original authorities and is of small value. Though living in Paris he was in both these works the ardent exponent of that recoil against everything French which took place throughout Europe.
His Son, PAUL SMILE BOTTA (1802-70), was a distinguished traveller and Assyrian archaeologist, whose excavations at Khor sabad (1843) were among the first efforts in the line of investi gation afterwards pursued by Layard.
See C. Dionisiotti, Vita di Carlo Botta (Turin, 1867) ; C. Pavesio, Carlo Botta e le sue opere storiche (Florence, 1874) ; Scipione Botta, Vita privata di Carlo Botta (Florence, 1877) ; A. d'Ancona e O. Bacci, Manuela della Letteratura Italiana (Florence, 1894), vol. v., pp. 245 seq.