Cosmopolitan Networks in Commerce and Society 1660–1914

German Entrepreneurs and the Industrialization of Milan
tions, diffusion lines, methods of financing and, above all, their social
consequences, 7 have been severely neglected. 8 As a result, the presence
of foreign entrepreneurs in all states of Continental Europe during
the industrialization process has merely been noted, 9 but not
explained.
In the case of Lombardy, 10 still one of the most industrialized and
richest regions of Europe, historians have usually dealt with entre-
93–113; Sidney Pollard, Peaceful Conquest: The Industrialization of Europe 1760–
1970 (Oxford, 1981); and Ian Inkster, ‘Mental Capital: Transfers of Know -
ledge and Technique in Eighteenth-Century Europe’, Journal of European
Economic History (Fall 1990), 403–41.
7 On the social impact of entrepreneurial migrations on England see Inkster,
‘Mental Capital’, 424. On Italy, see Agopik Manoukian, ‘Le matrici della fabbrica
in Italia’, Studi di Sociologia (Apr.–Sept., 1972), 369–77.
8 On the importance of the process of industrial dissemination, Sidney
Pollard observes: ‘It is this dynamic element, the method of transmission,
which should be a major object of study, but has inevitably been lost sight of
in the traditional approach. To change the metaphor, we have tended to treat
each country like a plant in a separate flower pot, growing independently
into a recognizable industrialized society according to a genetic code wholly
contained in its seed.’ Sidney Pollard, ‘Industrialization and the European
Economy’, in Joel Mokyr (ed.), The Economics of the Industrial Revolution
(Totowa, NJ, 1985), 166.
9 In cities such as Berlin, Vienna, and Frankfurt foreigners accounted for
between 30 and 40 per cent of entrepreneurs until the 1830s, when this figure
began a steady decline through the 1860s to the turn of the century. On this
see Wolfgang Meixner, ‘Imprenditori austriaci nel XIX secolo’, in Luigi
Trezzi (ed.), A che punto è la storia d’impresa? Una riflessione storiografica e due
ricerche sul campo (Trento, 1995) 58–78; Wolfgang Meixner and Rupert
Pichler, ‘Austrian Entrepreneurs in the Nineteenth Century’, Historical Social
Research, 16 (1991), 208–9; Dieter Gessner, ‘Frühindustrielle Unternehmer im
Rhein–Main Raum (1780–1865)’, Scripta Mercaturae, 28 (1994), 121–87;
Roberto Tremelloni, Storia dell’Industria italiana contemporanea dalla fine del
Settecento all’Unità Italiana (Turin, 1947), 136–7; Rolf Straubel, Kaufleute und
Manufaktur-Unternehmer (Stuttgart, 1995), 130.
10 On the historiography of Lombardy’s economy during industrialization
see Mario Romani, ‘Aspetti e problemi di storia economica lombarda nei secoli
XVIII e XIX’, Vita e Pensiero (Milan, 1997), pp. xv–xxix; and Angelo Moioli,
‘L’industrializzazione in Lombardia dall’Ottocento al primo Novecento: un
bilancio storiografico’, in Lucio Avagliano (ed.), L’Italia industriale nelle sue
origini: Bilancio storiografico (Naples, 1986), 17–59. Also published in Annali
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