Guiseppe Garibaldi is considered one of the greatest generals of modern times, and one of the founding fathers of modern Italy.
He was born in 1807, in Nice, which had been annexed by the French Empire two years earlier. His family came from Liguria – the region of the extreme north–western coast of Italy, whose capital is Genoa. Garibaldi became a sailor, and in 1834 he joined the Young Italy society, led by Giuseppe Mazzini – part of the Risorgimento movement for the unification of Italy, which at that time was a patchwork of independent states, controlled largely by the Austrian Empire and the Habsburgs. Condemned to death for treason after participating in an uprising in Piedmont, he escaped to South America where he became a mercenary. He returned to Italy during the 1848 revolution, served with the Sardinian army against the Austrians, and commanded the army of the Roman republic in its defence of the city against the French. In 1849 he was forced into exile again, this time taking refuge in the United States.
In February 1854 he boarded the ship Commonwealth, to end his exile in the USA and return to Italy. He also planned to visit the major countries of Europe to advocate the unification of Italy, and this brought him to South Shields, on Tyneside, on 21 March 1854. He was enthusiastically welcomed by the local population, and hosted by the local radical politician and newspaper proprietor Joseph Cowen Jr. in his manor in Tynemouth. While staying on Tyneside, Garibaldi met with local industrialists and politicians, but he refused to speak in public. Nonetheless, Cowen organised a public subscription of one penny per head, via the Evening Chronicle newspaper, to purchase a gift for the Italian revolutionary. On 11 April, during a private farewell reception on board of the Commonwealth which was anchored at South Shields, Garibaldi was presented with a golden sword and a periscope, bought with the donations of the people of Tyneside. The next day he set sail for Genoa, and he subesquently settled on the island of Caprera – one of a group of islands off the northern coast of Sardinia.
In 1860, at the head of his 1,000 redshirts, he won Sicily and Naples for the new kingdom of Italy. He led two unsuccessful expeditions to liberate Rome from papal rule in 1862 and 1867. He also served in the Austrian War of 1866, and fought for France in the Franco–Prussian War of 1870–71.
Historian Marcella Pellegrino Sutcliffe has described Garibaldi's visit to north–east England as "the seedbed for a special relationship that Tyneside radials established with the Italian patriot." I have heard it said that it was during this visit that Garibaldi invented the biscuit that would take his name, by sitting on an eccles cake; but I suspect this may have been a sadly misguided attempt at humour.
In even less savoury vein, if possibly more serious, I've also read (on WiseGeek.com) that "there are stories concerning the campaigns of Giuseppe Garibaldi where he struggled to feed his troops. During such campaigns, it is said he took slices of bread and soaked them in horse blood. This was mixed with whatever local berries were at hand and no doubt with a multitude of flies lured by the scent of blood." This idea is (kind of) supported by a contributor to a query on the Grauniad website: "Garibaldi [fed] his Redshirts on raisin sandwiches at some point ... the biscuits are supposed to resemble this meal."
The biscuit was first manufactured in 1861 by Peek Freans, which was established in 1857 and based in Bermondsey, south London. Wikipedia notes that the company had recruited Jonathan Carr from the Carlisle–based Scottish family (famous for their Water Biscuits) – but doesn't explain why this is relevant to the naming of the Garibaldi biscuit. The New European notes however that 1861 was "the year Italy became a modern unified country following the defeat of the Austrian and Bourbon empires by the Risorgimento armies led by Garibaldi." It tells in some detail how "Garibaldi was for a time hero worshipped in [Britain] just as much as he was at home". On his second visit to Britain, in 1864, "General Garibaldi was feted in polite Victorian society and working class circles alike, swooned over by aristocratic ladies and admired by reformist activists, cheered in the streets and even had pubs, streets and, yes, a biscuit named after him."
Regarding the naming of the biscuit, the New European adds that: "The version of the story popular in Italy has it that on his visit to Britain the general liked an existing version of the biscuits so much the company simply named the thin layer of currants between two slices of biscuit paste after him." What I think they must mean by this is that the middle layer of currants was a development of an existing style of biscuit, and the new version was named after the Italian general because he was known to like the existing style. And maybe this is somewhere near the truth.
As well as those already cited, my sources for this note include the Wordsworth Dictionary of Biography and a website called Mapping Radical Tyneside.
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