Cosmopolitan Networks in Commerce and Society 1660–1914

MONIKA POETTINGER
and the guardianship of God’, 27 and as such completely disregarded
and forgotten. The local business elite preferred a good, slow walking
pace to a wild run. This conservatism also had its advantages, as
Cattaneo himself had to admit. The relative solidity of the local financial
market and the huge investment in agriculture remained typical
of Lombardy’s economy far into the nineteenth century. Was there
reason to complain? Arcadia, a large majority of contemporary intellectuals
thought, was far preferable to Manchester. 28
And yet, oblivious of all remote, profound, and intangible causes,
the specialization called for by international trade, and the lack of
entrepreneurship, commerce was slowly and gradually but irrevocably
changing Lombardy’s social and economic structures, triggering
innovation and reversing comparative advantages. Foreign entrepreneurs
were migrating to Milan, attracted by the backwardness of the
local structures of production which increased the value of their
knowledge, and by state assistance. In Milan, these entrepreneurs,
who were members of international networks, became ‘examples of
capacity and entrepreneurship’, 29 as Cattaneo acutely observed. They
created a stronger link with the European centres of industrial innovation
than the silk trade alone could ever have done, and became a
growth factor in their own right.
the open market. In the 1780s Italians were among the first to market this
kind of event, but they did so in England and France, countries economically
much more advanced than the Italian states. Like cedole di banco, balloons
long remained a distant dream for Italians. In Milan they were used as a way
of disseminating revolutionary messages in the upheavals of 1848. On ballooning,
see Michael R. Lynn, ‘Consumerism and the Rise of Balloons in
Europe at the End of the Eighteenth Century’, Science in Context, 21 (2008),
73–98. On balloons in the upheaval in Milan in 1848 see Carlo Cattaneo,
Dell’insurrezione di Milano nel 1848 e della successive Guerra: Memorie (Lugano,
1849), 50.
27 Cattaneo, ‘Alcune ricerche’, 186–7.
28 On the debate between industrialists and agriculturalists see Roberto
Romani, L’economia politica del risorgimento italiano (Turin, 1994), 12.
29 Carlo Cattaneo, Notizie naturali e civili su la Lombardia (Milan, 1844), p. xcviii.
258